Unplgged via Gizmodo

Hydra™ is much more than a television. It is a personality. For the first time, you can get a television that matches an imported marble shower, a colorful backsplash, or even a favorite shirt. Choose from hundreds of colors to make a statement completely unique. This option is in addition to Hydra™’s standard colors: white pearl and black onyx.

Key Features

SÉURA’s Hydra™ is the first and only of its kind. SEURA is known for combining high design with advanced home technology and Hydra delivers. The experts at SEURA have studied design trends and have found that consumers want more than function: they want superior design. For Hydra, that means color, performance and safety. Consumers have never before had the option to choose from a myriad of colors. Hydra is award-worthy for its sleek design, color options and premier performance in a wet environment, safely.

In addition to color, Hydra’s flush profile is appealing for unconventional environments. Displays are becoming more and more popular for kitchens and bathrooms, but nothing on the market matches the design and sleek appeal of the Hydra. Forget complicated mounting systems. Once installed, the recessed Hydra becomes an elegant addition to any room’s décor.

Integrator Info

Consumers are spending more time in the home than ever before. As a result, displays are in demand for every room of the home – including the wet environments like the kitchen and bathroom. For the first time ever, the Hydra™ provides a design-friendly solution.

While there are many types of complicated mounting brackets and slim profile televisions on the market, none provide a flush solution like the Hydra. With cords and mounting fixtures completely hidden, this television is all form and function with zero aesthetic distractions. Out of the box, the unit is 3” in depth, designed to recess into an opening in the wall. Once installed, the Hydra television surface lies directly on the wall for a sleek presence.

In addition, the glass face of the Hydra is available in an unprecedented multitude of color options. Custom mixed and pristinely screen-printed to match any specified color, Hydra’s glass is designed to match any customer request – ensuring a completely customized, luxury design solution.

Additional

Designed for use in showers, kitchens and other indoor wet environments, the 19” LCD Hydra™ waterproof television brings technology to the most unexpected settings.

Hydra is much more than a television. It is a personality. For the first time, you can get a television that matches an imported marble shower, a colorful backsplash, or even a favorite shirt. Choose from hundreds of colors to make a statement completely unique. This option is in addition to Hydra’s standard colors: white pearl and black onyx.

In addition to color, Hydra’s flush profile is appealing for unconventional environments. While there are many types of complicated mounting brackets and slim profile televisions on the market, none provide a flush solution like the Hydra. With cords and mounting fixtures completely hidden, this television is all form and function – with zero aesthetic distractions.

The Hydra is a complete solution, making home integration a breeze. Designed to work seamlessly with systems like those manufactured by Savant, Crestron, AMX, and Control 4, this solution is bound to be a favorite among integrators. In-demand features include 16:9 widescreen ratio, 19” LCD display, HDMI input, PC input, VGA input, RS 232 control, and ultra-sleek waterproof remote control.

Unplgged

The possibilities include any touch application from a virtual keyboard, to similar interactions found with a touchscreen handheld device. The Light Touch is currently on display at CES.

Visit Light Blue Optics for more information.

Unplgged

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A startup based in Bangalore, India, is selling an off-the-shelf device for less than the cost of a one-night stay in an average hotel in downtown San Francisco that can offer rural Indians a way to generate and store solar power, charge cell phones and other appliances, and run a set of LED lights. The startup is 2-year-old Duron, and the device, also called the Duron, retails for about 5,999 rupees, or around $130, John Howard, Duron’s co-founder and president, explained to me on a Skype call interview.

The price point might seem ridiculously low for a device that can fundamentally change the way a family uses electricity, replace dangerous and dirty kerosene lamps, save customers money on electricity costs, and help small business entrepreneurs. But it’s high enough to create a solid business out of. And Duron has attracted an undisclosed amount of funding from investors that know how to make a profit: Bill Gross’ Idealab, David Gelbaum’s Quercus Trust, and Solgenix.

The price is also not all that cheap considering that the targeted customer makes on average between $400 and $4,000 per year in income. That’s one reason why Duron is in the process of adding in a microfinance component, where customers can take out a small loan to purchase the system.

The idea to build such a device — a plug-and-play package that includes a 5-watt solar panel, three wide-angle LEDs, a cell phone charger connection, and AC grid charger — came about in mid-2008. Howard, a Caltech grad (Gross also hailed from Caltech), and his early team began conducting research on a business idea for clean power in the developing world, and by the fall of 2008 had set their sights on an inexpensive solar home system.

When fully charged, the Duron offers three hours of bright lighting or 10 hours of dim lighting, and requires about a day of sunlight to charge the system. Eventually the company is looking to develop other energy-related products, but it’s currently focused solely on the Duron. (It also recently changed its name from Distributed World Power to Duron.)

Like startup D-Light’s solar lighting products, Duron’s device could do a lot of goodby replacing the use of kerosene lanterns at night. Amit Shah, Duron’s VP of Operations, explained in a company blog post that one family who tested a Duron for a week quickly realized the benefits, and the children could more easily study at night, the mother could cook at night, and the neighbors could socialize at the house, without the smoky kerosene lamp.

Teachers, organizations and small businesses are common customers, given they can use the tool for their work. For example, schools can offer night classes with better lighting. Howard also tells us that more than half of Duron’s customers have some form of access to the grid, but that access is oftentimes unreliable and sporadic, so the Duron can make their power much more consistent.

Currently Duron is focused on selling into two of the bigger states in India — Uttar Pradesh in the north and Karnataka in the south — with plans to scale up the company throughout 2010. Howard tells us that the company is currently selling on the scale of “a few thousand devices per month” and has partnered with NGOs like World Vision.

The biggest hurdle for the 13-member team is the simplest: just doing business in rural India. Howard, who moved to India less than a year ago, has been heads down figuring out the landscape and how Duron can ramp up sales and expand throughout India and beyond. 2010 is a big year for the young firm and we’ll check back with the team later on in the year.

Earth2Tech

Duron

The Rechargeable Solar Charger holds several batteries at a time and also features a USB port that can charge some cell phones, GPS units, cameras, and even iPods. Besides drawing energy from the sun, the unit can also be plugged into an electrical outlet for quick charging in the event of a cloudy day. The device is neat and compact without extra parts or cords (aside from the AC power cord), and it is weatherproof and can handle the elements.

The solar charger should be available this summer for $49.99 and comes with two rechargable batteries. No details on charge rates or power output, so we can’t compare it to the other great solar charging devices, but at $49.99, this seems like a pretty good price and a great way to charge your batteries in an environmentally friendly way.

Inhabitat

Popular Science

Budget Gadgets

The SilverPAC SilverSTAT 7 is embedded on Windows® CE 6.0 R3 and Intel® Atom™ platform and aims to replace standard household thermostats with an advanced home climate control system. The device is elegantly designed with its seven-inch touch screen display that is able to illustrate the distribution of household energy down to individual appliances.

The device has an 802.11 Wi-Fi interface that allows it to successfully communicate with a home network and Internet services, a Z-Wave Home Automation interface and Zigbee protocol for lighting and appliance control. Zigbee is among the list of communication protocol the US Congress has recently approved for devices supporting new Smart Energy grid system.

Gizmodo

Silverpac, BusinessWire

Source: Huffington Post via The Design Blog

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