Ubi is Your Always On, Voice-Activated Android Servant for the Home; Passes Funding on Kickstarter
Kickstarter is proving to be the place to go if you have an Android concept in need of funding. Exhibit A is Ouya, a $99 Android console that blew by its original goal of raising $950,000 in funds and ended up with nearly $8.6 million instead, and now we're seeing similar excitement for Ubi (Exhibit B, if you will), a ubiquitous Android PC that is always on and responds to voice commands.
Ubi's developers only sought to raise $36,000 to pay the bills, lower costs, and pay for safety certifications, and with 26 days still to go, the project has more than doubled its funding goal with over $81,000 in pledges from 500 backers.
So, what exactly is Ubi? From a hardware standpoint, Ubi is an Android PC that plugs into the wall and consists of an ARM Cortex A8 processor clocked at 800MHz, 1GB of RAM, 802.11n Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0, various sensors (temperature, humidity, air pressure, ambient light) and a few other odds and ends.
The promise of Ubi is one of convenience, giving users an always-on portal to the Internet simply by talking. It's like having an Android servant ever present in your home, only instead of fetching your slippers and newspaper, it digs up data from the Web and tells you the weather, how many ounces are in a cup, and so forth.
"It can scribe, listen, analyze," the developers explain. "Ubi will either talk back to you the information you seek or indicate information through multi-color lights."
Ubi will also be an open platform with tools for developers to create their own functions. But will it be a success? Thanks to Kickstarter, which has fully backed the project, we're going to find out.
Ubi's developers only sought to raise $36,000 to pay the bills, lower costs, and pay for safety certifications, and with 26 days still to go, the project has more than doubled its funding goal with over $81,000 in pledges from 500 backers.
So, what exactly is Ubi? From a hardware standpoint, Ubi is an Android PC that plugs into the wall and consists of an ARM Cortex A8 processor clocked at 800MHz, 1GB of RAM, 802.11n Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0, various sensors (temperature, humidity, air pressure, ambient light) and a few other odds and ends.
The promise of Ubi is one of convenience, giving users an always-on portal to the Internet simply by talking. It's like having an Android servant ever present in your home, only instead of fetching your slippers and newspaper, it digs up data from the Web and tells you the weather, how many ounces are in a cup, and so forth.
"It can scribe, listen, analyze," the developers explain. "Ubi will either talk back to you the information you seek or indicate information through multi-color lights."
Ubi will also be an open platform with tools for developers to create their own functions. But will it be a success? Thanks to Kickstarter, which has fully backed the project, we're going to find out.
