UK-based tech company Den is setting out to reinvent the plug socket and light switch market around the world with the launch of its campaign on Seedrs.

Den is looking for £300,000 of funding in the next 23 days, with its sights set on getting its range of light switches and plugs into production and on sale.

Founders Yasser Khattak and Shamshad Ahmed say: “We have created a new and intuitive way to remotely control and manage your light switches and plug sockets, however this time the products have been built around our environmental responsibilities and our modern needs; our products have been built to be more efficient and convenient than ever.”

Although the switches can still be turned on and off by hand, they also include other features, including remotes and sensors to make them seamlessly fit into the 21st century home, powered by technology.

They company is developing a smartphone app, so your electronics can be controlled by a single device and your home will be more efficient than ever, with you able to turn them off remotely if they’re not in use.

“65% of UK consumers admit to leaving chargers plugged in when not in use, and 63% forget to switch the lights off when leaving the room,” Khattak and Ahmed continued. “In the UK alone this energy wastage equates to nearly 16% of the nation’s energy bill, in simple terms we’re wasting £1.3 billion in energy every year, which is enough to power almost 2.5 million homes.”

The innovations by Den mean that ebergy will no longer be wasted despite us using more mains-powered devices than ever before.

Other features in the system include occupancy sensores on light switches and parental controls, so you can ensure your kids can only use distracting electronics when you permit them to.

Den is offering 16 per cent equity in exchange for the £300,000 and with 21 days to go until the campaign ends, the company is looking for two-thirds more funding before it can start putting the devices into production.

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Even though the Apple Watch is months away from being released, that hasn’t stopped Swiss watchmaker DWISS launching a campaign to produce customisations for the device.

The company has launched an Indiegogo campaign for a line of Apple watch accessories that can snap onto the smart watch to give a little bit of individuality.

The campaign started at the beginning of October and is asking for $30,000 (£18,601) to develop custom watch faces to display the watch’s home screen, covers to protect the face’s edges and straps to give the watch a distinctive look and feel.

The project doesn’t seem to be particularly successful so far, raising just shy of $2000 (£1240), although there’s still 35 days left before the funding cycle will end.

It could be said that DWISS is aiming too low, with its starter pack $1 (62p) and for that, DWISS will send you a watch face to be used on the watch.

For those who’d like a real piece of hardware to add to the Apple Watch, you’ll need to stump up $19 (£12) and that will give you one of the covers to place over your Apple Watch to protect it. They’re available in white, black, blue, yellow or red. The Cover Candy protectors are made ofT hermoplastic Polyurethane and slip onto the watch, just as a cover slides onto your smartphone for protection.

$49 (£30) will get you a strap and lug, which attaches to your watch. The lugs are made from stainless steel 316L, while the straps are available in a range of materials and styles including silicon, leather and silver.

You can buy all watch faces, straps and lugs for $399 (£250) if you’re the type of person who likes to change their style every day, but for those who’d just like one look, a strap will cost you between $49 (£30) and $79 (£50).

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Kickstarter is now available in Ireland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, meaning natives can fund their schemes in their own currency.

Although the countries won’t have a dedicated site, the biggest news is that those wishing to launch a campaign on the crowdfunding site don’t have to worry about the exchange rate, because Kickstarter will pay all their raised funds in the local currency.

Kickstarter said on its blog: “Local currency for everyone! Danish kroner, Swedish kronor, Norwegian kroner, and the euro in Ireland. You can use your local banking and business details, and if your project is successfully funded, pledges will be collected in your local currency and transferred to you.”

The projects from each of the countries can be uncovered by searching Kickstarter by country. This does mean anyone from around the world can fund campaigns, even if they’re not located in the same country.

In celebration, we’ve rounded up the best Kickstarter campaigns from each of the new territories.

Kickstarter projects in Ireland

Z-Charge

The Z-charge allows you to charge and store up to six devices while you’re asleep. It’s a bedside piece of tech that plugs into a power socket and runs under the mattress with a pouch on either side for charging devices by USB. The company is looking for €40,000 (£31,800) of funding, which currently stands at €14,365 (£11,320) and each Z-Charge will set you back from €49 (£38.61).

Kickstarter projects in Denmark

Sitpack

Sitpack allows you to take a seat wherever you are. It’s a plastic moulded device that folds out to become a seat on a stick and is perfect for taking on trips where there may not be any seating available such as when you’re queuing or fishing. With 32 days to run, Sitpack has raised DKK230,706 (£24,000) of its DKK450,000 (£48,000) goal and it’ll cost you DKK175 (£18) now all the super early bird options have been snapped up at DKK120 (£12.70).

Kickstarter projects in Norway

AlpineHawk

If you’re a skier or snowboarder, losing your equipment whether stolen or lost can be a real pain and an expensive problem. The AlpineHawk attaches to your equipment and allows you to track it and control it from your smartphone. Any sudden movements will trigger the alarm so you can track the thieves if it’s stolen. The company is looking for a total of NOK600,000 and has so far raised NOK50,000.

Kickstarter projects in Sweden

PFO Shield

The PFO Shield allows your friends and family to track you wherever you go, which is expcially useful if you like to partkae in sports that take you offroad, such as skiing or mountain climbing. You can also send out alerts from the wristband should you get in trouble during your travels. A PFO Shield will cost you from SEK990 if you’re one of the first 1000, up to SEK1290. The maker of the PFO Shield is appealing for SEK500,000 funding and has so far hit SEK39,051.

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The Bluesmart suitcase has launched on Indiegogo and it may just give you a bit of peace of mind when travelling around the world.

The luggage will fit in the cabin of an aeroplane and is controlled by a smartphone app, allowing you to lock and unlock, weigh, locate, receive alerts and track your suitcase and trips throughout your journey.

For those who always run out of gadget juice on the road, it also features a built-in battery charger making sure your gadgets are up and running wherever you are in the world.

Tomi Pierucci, Co-founder of Bluesmart explains, “We came up with the idea for Bluesmart after suffering a couple of bad experiences with our luggage, when airlines forced us to check bags only to have them mishandled or lost. We realized that with all the amazing technology available today, we could do better. Suitcases haven’t seen much innovation in decades, so we decided to design a suitcase for this century.”

The suitcase features embedded micro-sensors, actuators and a microcomputer with GPS to measure the status of your luggage and connects to your smartphon via Bluetooth.

The campaign has already surpassed its goal of $50,000 (£31,000), raising more than $100,000 (£62,000) after it went on Indiegogo yesterday morning.

There’s still 34 days to run, but you’ll have to be quick if you want to back this product – the 200 super early adopter suitcases have sold out at the cost of $195 (£120), so you’ll have to fork out a minimum of $215 (£135) to get your hands on one by August next year.

The other available options are $25 (£15) for a tshirt or $50 (£30) for a $100 (£62) off coupon. For those with a little more money to invest, you can snap up the final version of the suitcase for $235 (£145), $265 (£165) with a t-shirt, stickers and a signed poster, $295 (£182) for a personalised titanium plaque or up to $5,000 (£3000) if you want to visit China and Taiwan to see where the suitcases are made.

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A 3D printing company is appealing for £5000 funding to help make its business go mobile, allowing the team to head to events and make mini-mes for everyone in attendance.

LittleMe3D.com already has an established 3D model company, but now wants to branch out, enabling the firm to attend events such as weddings, graduations, fresher balls, parties, gigs, concerts and corporate events and create 3D models of people.

The process starts off by scanning your body using the Sense scanner from 3DSystems. This 3D image is then sent to the full-colour printer and your six-inch figurine will arrive in the post within 10 days.

The scanning process takes around five minutes, even if you’re out and about and the result will cost £100 less than other rival services at £60 apiece.

If you’d rather not have a model of yourself sitting on your mantelpiece, you can have any other 3D object or even a pet scanned and LittleMe3D also accepts existing 3D files if you’d rather have something more useful created.

The company is also trying to educate people about 3D printing. “Being able to offer an affordable service is one of the key reasons I want this to be successful, because the more people to learn about 3D printing, the more beneficial it is to the whole industry. This ties in quite nicely with our community initiative to allow travelling to schools to show the processes and adaptability of 3D printing,” says founder Matthew Blythe.

The campaign is running on both Crowdfunder and Kickstarter and the company is appealing for £2,000 to build its business.

Options to fund include a personalised keyring for £5 or more, a 3-inch Mini You voucher for those pledging £45, an early bird 6-inch voucher for £50, right up to £5000 for advertising on the company’s site. If you’re holding your own event, you can pledge £1000 and the company will come along and provide 100 3-inch scans for the attendees.

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A 3D printed quadcopter campaign has launched on Kickstarter, offering both children and adults hours of flying fun.

The FPV racing quadcopter is produced from lightweight, biodegradable PLA plastic and all the parts are interchangeable, meaning if you want to replace a part (say, if your copter crash lands during an intense flying session) or mod your design, it’s cheap and simple to do.

The toy was inspired by open source designs, but to create something truly unique, the founders developed a unique build on Autodesk Inventor, with Flashforge Creator utilised to bring the parts to life on a 3D printer.

“We just wanted to build something FUN! Who doesn’t like racing? There’s a little bit of racing in all of us and FPV Quad Racing is all about being immersed in racing…Quadcopters are cool, 3D printing is cool, racing is cool, which makes the 3D printed FPV Quad Racer super cool,” the manufacturer says on its Kickstarter page.

In addition to being a fully-functioning flier, the FPV racing quadcopter also integrates a camera so you can record HD videos of its flying experience.

The company was set up by Wayne Ratcliffe, the 2014 New Zealand F3C Model Helicopter Aerobatics National Champion, professional aerial photographer Sam Thurtle and Hai Tran who designed the copter and owns Australia’s largest remote aerial cinematography company.

The developers of the FPV racing quadcopter are appealing for $6000 AUD (£3250) to buy extra printers and up its production line to meet growing demand.

At the moment, the threesome’s equipment can only produce two 3D printed FPV Quad Racers a day, but boosting equipment levels to 5 – 10 3D printers means they can make 10 – 20 quadcopters a day.

The purchase of these extra printers should happen in November, with the first 3D printed rewards being sent out in December and the fully developed FPV racing quadcopter shipping in January 2015.

Pledges start at $5 AUD (£3), but to get a real life reward, you’ll need to stump up at least $40 AUD (£22) to get a non-working model with the option to buy the flight controller, radio control, ESCs, motor, propellers, batteries, charger and FPV gear separately. If you want to support the project with a higher pledge, you can pay $175 AUD (£95) to get the full kit when it’s ready next year.

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The economic recession of the last five years has had a devastating impact on local businesses, but a new crowdfunding site aims to change that, filling empty storefronts with innovative business ideas.

Hoodstarter doesn’t just encourage people to come up with products or campaigns, but whole space concepts to spruce up the high street and get the area back up and running.

Thought up by two entrepreneurs inspired by a forum conversation about the sheer volume of empty spaces in shopping centres, the site aims to get people backing companies that want to make something good of retail and hospitality.

Founders Justin Ley and David Berglund say the idea is made up of two parts: the first is getting ideas from the community and hearing about empty retail or restaurant units that need to be filled. Citizens come up with an innovative use of the space and then the other half of the community, comprised of entrepreneurs, create pitches and then drum up interest from crowdfunders willing to contribute.

“I’m sure everyone has that moment. You see it, maybe it’s by your house or where you work,” Berglund said. “We didn’t know of a solution to that. So we put our minds to it.”

Throughout the process, Berglund and Ley advise the entrepreneurs and in some cases, will help them get additional funding from VCs to create their space-filling idea.

Hoodstarter currently only offers projects based in and around Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota, but Ley and Berglund are hoping to move out of their hometown shortly and spread around the US.

At the time of writing, the most popular projects were to fund a produce co-op in Minneapolis (posted by Ley himself), an ice cream parlour in Saint Paul and a BrewPub in the Metro area.

Hoodstarter makes money by taking a five per cent commission on any project funding.

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The Mobile Museum is a Kickstarter project with a unique aim – to create a mobile museum of cultural activity across 11 housing estates across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

Local crowdfunding mission

The idea is pretty simple:

Take a large truck, convert it into a functional museum and travel between these estates to gather photos, words, images and examples of all existing current cultural activities from residents across the area, generating publications, exhibitions and discussions among people who live in the area.

“Contemporary cultural activity across the borough will be documented, mapped and deposited in the collection; from galleries, to photography clubs, reading groups, knitting circles and jigsaw making clubs,” the project team explain.

During the five-month journey across the Barking and Dagenham the museum will create personalized magazines detailing cultural activity across each one of the eleven estates it visits.

Creative community

This is great, because it should galvanize existing creative activity while also evangelizing and encouraging further work in the sector – and creating a record of what is happening now. What’s interesting too is that this is a classic example of crowfunding from within the community to address a local goal.

The project will culminate in a screening and celebration event at Valance House, the home of London Borough of Barking and Dagenham’s archives and a museum.

Another strand to the project is reaching out to the local community to encourage them to use the borough’s existing museums, galleries and archives.

Big society?

The project seems to be an innovative attempt to use crowdfunding to  bring communities closer together, to activate creative activity and to break down barriers between communities, while also recording what kind of creative activity is taking place in this part of London today. It seems an interesting example of an innovative project with a clear social and artistic message.

Take a look at the project here.

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Looking for a crowdfunding project to put some cash into? There’s an app for that, as Indiegogo launches its own for the iPhone.

Reaching the crowdfunding crowd

While Kickstarter introduced its own iPhone app some time ago, Indiegogo’s introduction arguably suggests the importance of mobile services within the emerging digital democracy of crowdfunding, after all — potential investors and projects need to be able to reach each other no matter where they happen to be. That’s something the crowdfunding services seem to recognise.

Indiegogo CEO, Slave Rubin told TechCrunch that if the company were launching today it would be a mobile-first company.

“Having a mobile presence like this will allow for an even more localized and personalized experience, which will take away even more friction,” he said.

What it does

The new app has tools for supporting and managing campaigns on the service:

Supporting Indiegogo campaigns

• Discovering new campaigns through recommendations based on past activity and preferred categories
• Exploring and following campaign categories
• Claiming campaign perks
• Sharing favorite campaigns with friends

Managing Indiegogo campaigns

• Receiving notifications each time a contribution is made to a campaign
• Monitoring campaign comments
• Posting campaign updates and photos
• Thanking contributors
• Sending custom messages to phone contacts and Facebook friends
• Promoting campaigns on social networks

It doesn’t stop there—campaign creators will soon be able to publish an Indiegogo campaign using their phone.

The best mobile experience?

“Since day one we have been dedicated to providing our campaigners and contributors with the best funding platform in the world,” said Rubin. “This year has been one of tremendous growth for us and we’re investing heavily to continue improving Indiegogo for mobile users globally. The Indiegogo App is the first of many advancements focused on delivering the best mobile experience imaginable.”

Is the app available for the iPad? Not quite, the company states:

“We love tablets! Optimizing the Indiegogo app for iPad is one of our priorities, and we’ll make an announcement as soon as we have news to share.”

Perhaps reflecting the fragmentation of the platform, neither Kickstarter nor Indiegogo offer an app for Android just yet. However the Indiegogo promises this to be “on the radar” for release later this year — watch this space.

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NudeAudio is a new audio start-up launched by innovators with over a decade’s experience in consumer electronics and smartphone accessories. The company is currently seeking Kickstarter support for the high performance NudeAudio Super-M Bluetooth speaker – and has already achieved four times the funding goal.

Pocket power

They promise their pocket-sized speaker system delivers the kind of punch you’d expect to find in a far more powerful device, with 360-degree sound and 8-hours playtime between each charge. The powerful little system is waterproof, sandproof, and even lets you take a call with your mobile device left in your pocket.

Already backed

We can’t guarantee the technical promises NudeAudio are making for the product, but we do point to the 3,688 backers the project’s picked up (with 21 days to go) and the $341,320 pledged to the project since July 16 – over four times what they asked for on Kickstarter.

Experienced team

Could this be the wisdom of crowds at work? Maybe, or maybe it’s that this particular product comes from a team with an existing track record in developing good quality audio devices which also has the manufacturing contacts and clout to ensure the product makes it from the drawing board and onto the beach. Hopefully with you.

More info.

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