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

Facebook Now Supports PGP To Send You Encrypted Emails

You can now instruct Facebook to encrypt every email it sends to you so nobody — not even the NSA — is likely to be able to read your messages anytime soon. All you have to do is import your public PGP key into your Facebook settings and you’re good to go. The problem here, of course, is that most people have no idea how public/private key email encryption works and how to even get started with it. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks, a number of organizations, including Google, promised to completely hide the complexities of end-to-end email encryption from regular users. Very few of these products have materialized so far, however — not for lack of trying, but because this is actually a very complex problem, both from a technical and user experience perspective. Facebook uses the well-established PGP scheme (the GNU Privacy Guard implementation of OpenPGP, to be precise) to encrypt messages and tools lik...

Laser gun is deployed and operational on U.S. Navy warship

After several years of research and testing, the U.S. Navy has introduced a new laser gun designed to protect ships without using ammunition. Another entry on our timeline is now a reality as the U.S. Navy has authorised the first operational use of a laser weapon. This new hi-tech system – known as the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) – is designed to serve as a form of defence against drones and other small flying vehicles or small-boat enemies including suicide attackers. It is highly accurate, able to hit objects moving at up to 300 mph (480 km/h). The LaWS fires a solid-state infrared beam with two modes: high output to destroy a target, and low output for optical "dazzling", warning shots or to cripple a potential attacker. Among the advantages of this device versus projectile weapons is the low cost per shot, as each firing of the weapon requires only minimal cost for generating the energetic pulse; by contrast ordnance for projectile weapons must be des...

Intel announces the first 14 nanometre processor

At the Computex conference in Taipei, chipmaker Intel has revealed a fanless mobile PC reference design using the first of its next-generation 14nm "Broadwell" processors. The 2 in 1 pictured here is a 12.5" screen that is just 7.2 mm thick with keyboard detached and weighs 670 grams. The Surface Pro 3 – for comparison – is 9.1 mm thick and weighs 800 grams. It includes a media dock that provides additional cooling for a burst of performance. The next-generation chip is purpose-built for 2 in 1s and will hit the market later in 2014 . Called the Intel Core M, it will be the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company's history with power usage cut by up to 45 percent, resulting in 60 percent less heat. The majority of designs based on this new chip are expected to be fanless, with up to 32 hours of battery life, offering both a lightning-fast tablet and razor-thin laptop. Intel is also delivering innovation and performance for the ...

How to Choose BitLocker Drive Encryption Method and Cipher Strength in Windows 10?

BitLocker is an encryption method that enables users to lock the different drives in Windows . The drives which are protected by BitLocker are accessed by passwords. Windows has provided opportunity for users to choose and configure the cipher strength and algorithm used by BitLocker Drive Encryption. This can be achieved via the Local Group Policy editor. The Local Policy Editor will let you configure and select the cipher method for BitLocker encryption. By default it is not configured but you can choose your choiceable encryption method by enabling the Policy Setting. If the drive is already encrypted or if encryption is in progress, the encyption method will have no effect. If you leave the policy unconfigured, then BitLocker will use the default encryption method of AES 128-bit with Diffuser or the encryption method specified by the setup script. Steps to Choose BitLocker Drive Encryption Method and Cipher Strength in Windows 10 1. ...

How to prevent Recent and Phone Favorite contacts from showing in your iOS task switcher

When you double-click your iPhone's home button, you will be greeted with the task switching screen, which presents you with card deck-style snapshots of your active apps to freely browse and switch to. With iOS 8, however, where most iPhones are at the moment, Apple introduced a Favorites row there, with circular pictures of your most recently used contacts. Most people aren't bothered by their recent contacts appearing there, but for some this means easy snooping on who they've called or texted last, or simply unnecessary clutter. If you don't want to wait until iOS 9 hits and gets rid of these circular shenanigans in your task switcher, here's what you need to do to get rid of them: 1. Go to the Settings app, and scroll down to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars section; 2. From Mail, Contacts, Calendars, look for the Contacts section, which will be hosting the Show in App Switcher options; 3. Tap on Show in App Switche...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog