Many of our smart home news stories and reviews have been about products that came to life through the power of crowdfunding. Kickstarter is the place to go to find new, innovative, wacky or clever uses of smart home technology.
However, over the few short years of this and other crowd-funding services, we have seen a full spectrum of results from success to disaster, dubious quality and spectacular failures to launch.
Consider this article a salutary reminder of the pleasures and perils in backing some clever new smart home technology. And exactly what you can put yourself through when it comes to putting your money in the hands of an often untried and untested company trying to work on the cutting edge of technology.
They raised how much?
It is all too easy to think about just how attached some people are to certain aspects of their lives. So while a non-doggy or cat person might wonder how the hell PetCube raised over a quarter of a million dollars, feline-lovers everywhere will know it was money well spent. Their original goal was only $100,000.
The project was funded in 2013, manufactured in 2014 and we guess it all went well as PetCube is still available on Amazon or the PetCube store.
What you get for your money now ($199, while early backers got one for just $100) (For the latest prices and discounts, check here)is a laser firing cube with a camera and microphone, allowing people to talk and play with their pets, and see the results on their smartphone while they are out at work or away from home.
Buoyed by that success, the makers went back to Kickstarter again in 2016 for a pet treat dispenser called PetCube Bites.
This required $200,000 but fans raised almost $320,000 with the new product due to ship this year, proving that if you find a successful niche you should stick with it. Sure, you can buy similar devices in a pet store, but doing things the PetCube way has been a lot of fun for backers.
It Was all Going So Well!
Badged as Plugaway: Your Smart Home on Your Smartphone, this was a 2013 project that was funded in its first week, going on to raise over three times the required Australian $50,000.
The plan was to top what was on offer from most smart home electronics at the time, to build a more compact, intuitive, open and affordable plug to help make dumb products smart.
The plug offered sleep/wake modes, power monitoring, scheduling, light dimming and alerts to the smartphone. Through 2014, design and production were finalized, and for such a relatively small project things seemed bright.
Then in 2015, they ran out of money while waiting for an audit/certification for their chosen factory in China. Bang, just like that the project was cancelled, and since then there has been nothing but angry feedback from disappointed backers who lost money.
The rules of Kickstarter say backers should be refunded if a project fails, but with no money left, there was nothing to pay out.
The creators did release all their design files for others to take on the project, but for most that has been of little comfort. At least there are plenty of other similar products now on the market to choose from.
Was it one bad business decision, choosing a slow or poorly prepared factory, that led to this, it is hard to say, but it proves just how perilous getting a small project made can be.
Now A Big Name!
What a funny world where a company that didn’t exist five years ago is now competing with the likes of the mighty Philips. In 2012, LiFX took to Kickstarter to raise money for a smart light bulb that you could control via Android or iPhone.
That campaign found almost 10,000 backers and over $1.3 million in funding, when they were only after $100,000.
The LiFX project was a success, with no apparent hiccups along the way. Since then the company has gone mainstream with some $12 million in business investment and a second generation of products to compete in the increasingly competitive smart home lighting market.
Aimed at helping consumers save power and make lighting fun and simple to use, the company has certainly succeeded, and become one of the shining lights (pun intended) for smart home technology success.
The odd thing is, at the time backers were paying $69 to get a single bulb, something that anyone can now pick up for $55 or less(For the latest prices and discounts, check here). So, there’s always that aspect to consider when putting money into a Kickstarter.
Stay Cool Kickstarter Backers
Kickstarters cover the sphere of human existence, not just indoor smart home products, But we’d all like a beer cooler right, especially a smart one with speakers, Bluetooth, a blender and USB charger among many accessories.
Well the Coolest Cooler did very well on Kickstarter, so well in fact that it raised over $13 million. How could you struggle with that much money? Early backers could pledge $165 for the cooler.
The trouble is the company ran out of money to produce the product, so ended up selling its first batches on Amazon, and then in retails stores, at the full $499 price, so that it could earn more money to make the quantities needed to fulfill the orders of those early Kickstarter funders.
As you can imagine, there was a lot of anger over this move, with thousands of unhappy backers, still waiting for their Coolest Cooler, with some strung along for over three years.
Still it looks like everyone will get one of the products eventually, but it goes to show that success can be a perilous journey, and too much success can ruin some very good ideas.
Advice for Backers
These are just a few of the better Kickstarter stories out there. There are many products that never found a single backer, many that failed before they could come to market for one reason or another.
For those that do make it, the rewards can be modest or enormous, as can the joy and pain for those of us who choose to back them.
If you’re considering backing a project, always check for previous business experience among the people running it. If they’ve run previous projects, check how well they went, and don’t be afraid to ask questions before committing your money.
Think in your own mind if the project sounds feasible, even if many people are backing it, you never know how much blind optimism there is in the world. Naturally, we’d suggest you only invest money you can afford to lose, and treat Kickstarter or other crowdfunding services as a hobby rather than a science.
If you have invested in a project with an interesting story, or a troublesome development, do let us know how it turned out. Is your smart home full of crowdfunded gadgets? Do they all work as well as you’d hoped, perhaps there’s another feature in that!
The post The Top Kickstarter Smart Home Campaigns: A Retrospective appeared first on All Home Robotics.