For families who are spread all over the world, it is very hard to get in touch, literally. The Good Night Lamp family of Internet-connected light, currently featured on KickStarter, intends to facilitate that.
The principle on which this family of lamps is pretty simple. All of them are connected to the Internet and whenever the Big Lamp is turned on, the others light up, too, no matter where in the world they are. And here is the first problem that I found with this concept. The majority of families have two grown-ups (I won’t say a mum and a dad, since in recent times this situation has changed a lot, to reflect a major change in the mentality of people) and one or more kids. If Good Night Lamp intends to reflect a real family, then it should feature two Big Lamps and a set of smaller ones. Maybe I’m just being picky here, cause it isn’t mandatory for such a set of lamps to be used by related persons.
The developers of this concept believe that the Good Night Lamp family is great for people who are home alone and should be given a Big Lamp, so they let others know when they get home or when they go to sleep. For elder people, this is great, but in other cases… there is a very thin line between monitoring someone out of love and doing this out of slightly maniacal reasons.
Additionally, the lamp family would also help global families and global teams to keep in touch. Connecting worlds seems to be one of the major goal of the developers.
As mentioned before, this concept is currently featured on KickStarter. At press time, the project had 211 backers, £18,115 ($29,121) raised and 23 more days to go. Given that the goal is of £360,000 ($578,736), a lot of things could happen in the following 23 days, depending on how much publicity this concept gets and on how people perceive it.
The ones who think that the Good Night Lamp should be mass produced are encouraged to back the project. By offering £89 ($143) or more, backers secure a family of lamps for themselves, while £150 ($241) grants them a bespoke set of lamps, upon successful funding.
The creators of the Good Night Lamp family were also present at CES 2013, in Las Vegas, last week. There seems to be a pattern here, if I’m not mistaken. Some designers of innovatory products go to CES to raise awareness about their concepts before or while being featured on KickStarter, while others attend the electronics show upon failing to raise on the very same platform the necessary funds for mass producing the gadgets. Not sure which option is better, since Xi3 is found in the latter category, and they’ve just scored a major deal with nVidia.
If you liked this post, please check the Fender electric guitar lamp and the electric eraser lamp design.
