As announced in the blog post from 28th January 2016, the Gadget Weeks @ ICT-WG start today. For this reason, we have browsed the Internet for the latest smart home gadgets and asked more than 150 start-ups for samples. We were amazed that one fifth of them have sent us their products. Additionally, we were able to get some gadgets from a colleague at the Swisscom Sales department, who is responsible for the Swisscom Shop Gadgets. We are happy to announce that we have managed to get more than 30 gadgets for free.
Gadget Weeks @ ICT-WG procedure
During the coming weeks we are testing all gadgets and twice a week we are going to upload a blog entry about our experiences. About each product we will write a short summary and link a feedback form, which aims to give detailed feedback to the producer. Some gadgets are prototypes or only available abroad and others you can already buy in Switzerland. The first gadget I installed belongs to the latter category and is available at Manor. It’s a smart herb garden called click and grow.
Click and grow
Click and grow is designed for people without a green thumb like me. For the last five years I have bought at least five basil plant pots. Some of them dried out and the others I drowned. Therefore, I was curious about that smart indoor garden. The first step was to insert three plant capsules, fill water into the tank and plug the plug in. Afterwards I watered the plants every two weeks and have watched them growing very fast. The LED shines on the seeds and later the plants, so that they have optimal conditions to grow. At the beginning of the test I was a little bit skeptical about the electricity consumption since the LED is on 16 hours per day. But with the myStrom switch from the previous ICT-WG inhabitants I measured the electricity consumption, which was only 0.7W. Thus the electricity costs less than one Swiss Franc per year (0.7W x 16h x 365d * approx. CHF 0.2 / 1’000). I am really looking forward to harvest the fresh basil leaves. Have a look at the detailed form for more information about my experiences.
Sweepstakes
Some gadget sponsors leave us their gadgets, so that we can raffle them in a sweepstakes. In order to take part in the sweepstakes please fill out the fields in this Google form until 27th March 2016 and you will take part in the sweepstakes.