A new Kickstarter project called “Instacube” was launched yesterday and has already achieved financial support amounting to over half of its $250,000 fund raising target. The full name of the project tells you what it is “Instacube: A Living Canvas for your Instagram Photos”. It’s an update to the old digital photo frame idea, wirelessly linked to your Instagram account and feeding you “your favourite images wirelessly at 3x the size”.
Instacube manages to extract stylish Instagram functionality and bring it into your living and/or working space. “With Instacube you’re seeing and interacting with your photostream like never before” said Instacube designer John Whaley of Design to Matter. He explained “Currently our Instagrams are trapped on our mobile devices, since this is a real-time feed photos get pushed to the cube as they happen.” The cube is also usable in a social context as multiple users can stream to the same cube in an office or party for example.
The cube is a fully fledged touch-screen operable Android device with the following tech specs:
- ARM Processor
- 4GB Internal Flash Memory
- 256MB RAM
- 7.5" Square Frame, frame depth is 2.5”
- 6.5" Square LCD Active Viewing & Touch Area
- 600x600 Screen Resolution
- Built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
- Capacitive Touch Screen Display
- Android OS
3 hardware buttons on the top of the unit to interact with it:
- Power
- Toggle; between feeds and full screen
- And a heart shaped button for ‘liking’ pictures that show up on your cube
In addition to the capacitive touch-screen control options.
The Design to Matter company is quite established and offers design, engineering and production services with offices in Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. The company, which has prior design, manufacturing and distribution experience should have no problem in the bringing to market the Instacube hardware and software product. Already the first 1,000 devices available for $99 on Kickstarter have sold out. People now have the option to buy an Instacube for $149, for delivery in March 2013. However if you would like two cubes you can still get a unit price of $99(ish) by buying a “Lover’s Pair” of Instacubes for $199 (860 of 1,000 left at this price).
I’ve never been interested in Instagram but I actually like this product a lot. It looks like it will be another popular innovative tech product from the Kickstarter crowdfunding stable.
