Kinetic Battery Startup Ampy Raises Seed To Shrink To Fit Wearables

Kinetic charging battery startup Ampy — which makes a wearable spare battery pack charged by human movement — has closed an $875,000 seed round led by Clean Energy Trust and NewGen Ventures. Angel investors including Howard Tullman, CEO of 1871; Steve Olechowski, co-founder of FeedBurner; and John DiNardi, co-founder of Norlux also participated.

The Chicago-based startup says it will be using the new funding to work on shrinking its tech to fit wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, with the aim of expanding beyond its original consumer-focused proposition of a spare battery that can be charged while you walk/run/cycle.

“On integration [into wearable tech], we have prototyped it and proved the concept. We are now working on looking at our customers’ (wearables companies) needs in terms of not only size and power, but durability, comfort, etc,” CEO and co-founder Tejas Shastry tells TechCrunch.

The challenge is clearly whether it can shrink its magnetic charging tech to fit what can be very small wearable devices. Shastry touts the advantage of “flexibility in form factor” for manufacturers to work with it in reaching that embedded wearable tech goal. It is already apparently in talks with some makers.

The new seed financing will also be used for scaling production of its current consumer product — and expanding its six-strong team with new hires.

Ampy ran a crowdfunding campaign to turn its original human-powered prototype into a shipping product a year ago — going on to raise just under $310,000 on Kickstarter.

It says now that all devices will be shipped to backers by the end of November, adding that some have already been shipped. The campaign originally slated a June 2015 delivery schedule — but delay is no surprise for a hardware crowdfunder.

An Ampy spokesman says delays were down to it making some changes to the product itself — based on backer feedback (such as adding a LED to indicate how charged it is) — and also because it found that more work was required to get a supply chain in place and perform quality assurances on the first production parts.

The battery capacity of Ampy was also stepped up, from the 1,000mAh detailed in the crowdfunder — to 1,800mAh.

Comments

Five budget-friendly open source storage servers

Storage is essential for the enterprise: Data must be stored. Data must be retrieved. Data must be shared. Data must be secured. At the same time, storage must not consume the entirety of your IT budget. Fortunately, you can find effective solutions in the world of open source. Outside of cost effectiveness, one of the biggest benefits of these solutions is the ability to modify them to perfectly fit your needs. You can make minor changes or even roll your own storage solution based on one of these tools. If you want enterprise support and a "solution in a can" that will meet just about any enterprise storage need, you should turn to Red Hat or SUSE. Both Linux-based companies offer some of the most powerful enterprise-ready tools on the market. But if you'd rather get your hands dirty and craft something of your own—something that won't demolish your budget—these five open source tools are a great place to start. 1: ownCloud ownCloud ( Figure ...

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Use Cortana to define words for you in Windows 10

Microsoft’s Cortana has many uses including sending emails or checking the weather. One of the best uses though is a simple look-up feature for words and their definitions. Combined with the Hey Cortana voice recognition using Cortana to tell you quickly what a word means is a great hands-free tip. There are multiple ways to get Cortana to define a word. If you have Hey Cortana enabled you can simply blurt out your request: “Hey Cortana what is the meaning/definition of inchoate ?” “Hey Cortana define ubiquitously “ You can, of course, also just type in your request e.g “ define beatitude ” although this admittedly takes some of the speed (and fun) out of using the personal digital assistant. For many words, Cortana displays the definition within a card, and OxfordDictionaries or EncartaDictionaries powers it. Sometimes, if Cortana misunderstands you or does not have the definition, the assistant opens up a web page after performing a web search for...

Detail

hi this is ajijulla sahib from sri ganesh college of engineering and technology

Airbnb will open its Cuba listings to users outside the United States

Airbnb will now let travelers from outside the U.S. to book properties in Cuba after receiving authorization from the U.S. government, reports the Associated Press . Previously, only Americans were allowed to reserve the site’s Cuban listings . They will open to international users on April 2. Airbnb launched its Cuban operations in April 2014 , four months after the Obama administration revealed that it will begin to restore diplomatic relations with the Communist country . The historic policy change means that travel and trade sanctions will be lifted , which is expected to boost tourism to Cuba dramatically because Americans no longer need licenses to visit. In fact, President Obama is currently on an official visit to Cuba , the first president since Calvin Coolidge to do so. According to the AP, Cuba is currently Airbnb’s fastest-growing market, with about 4,000 homes added since it opened listings. Other travel businesses...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog