Sony’s Reon Pocket is a wearable air conditioner that you control with your smartphone.
When it comes to staying cool in the summer time, many of us are willing to try just about anything we can by the time July and August roll around. It’s a time that’s often referred to as “the dog days” of summer. For many of us it creates a sense of maddening desperation that we can only hope to find a bit of relief from. Luckily, Sony may have just created a solution that can work without compromising the dignity of those who use it.
Sony has just developed a new piece of technology that could be a game changer when it comes to surviving the heat wave. Set to release next year, the device is called the Reon Pocket. It comes packed with loads of features that will help you keep your cool in the summer heat. It may even help you stay warmer when the temperatures dip. This device was almost completely funded via a crowdfunding campaign, which has achieved its goal as of this writing.
How does the wearable air conditioner work?
The wearable air conditioner is rather small, not much bigger than a card or a wallet. It slips into the base of the neck of a special garment that you wear along with it. It connects to an app via Bluetooth. To use it, you just put on the undershirt, start up the app, and start enjoying your own personal air conditioning service. After conducting hundreds of simulations, the device is said to cool the body by about 23 degrees Fahrenheit. It can even warm a body up to 14 degrees.
What are the specs?
Reon Pocket supports both iOS and Android functionality. It has a battery life of up to 24 hours and a charge time of just around two hours using a USB-C hook up. And probably one of the best features is size of the device. It’s so small it’s barely noticeable – weighing just around 3 ounces total. It will be available in two sizes, the Reon Standard and the Reon Lite. The Lite will be the cheaper option, but will only be available with a manual mode, however the Standard will let you manually control the temperature with the app on your smartphone. The Standard version will eventually have capabilities to set an automatic mode and even a “self” mode.
Where is it available?
For now, the wearable air conditioner will only be available in Japan, but this is definitely a trend to watch. If it performs well, we may see it become an international best seller because it solves a problem many of us have: staying cool during the heat.
Startup
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential. Some startups become unicorns; that is privately held startup companies valued at over US$1 billion.
Actions
Startups typically begin by a founder (solo-founder) or co-founders who have a way to solve a problem. The founder of a startup will begin market validation by problem interview, solution interview, and building a minimum viable product (MVP), i.e. a prototype, to develop and validate their business models. The startup process can take a long period of time (by some estimates, three years or longer), and hence sustaining effort is required. Over the long term, sustaining effort is especially challenging because of the high failure rates and uncertain outcomes. Having a business plan in place outlines what to do and how to plan and achieve an idea in the future. Typically, these plans outline the first 3 to 5 years of your business strategy.
Design principles
Models behind startups presenting as ventures are usually associated with design science. Design science uses design principles considered to be a coherent set of normative ideas and propositions to design and construct the company's backbone. For example, one of the initial design principles is "affordable loss".
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