Last week, the popular ABC television show Shark Tank showcased some pretty cool products. The Keen Home smart vent, and Scholly mobile app, in particular caught our eye.
Keen Home designs and develops smart devices for your home. The product they showcased on Shark Tank was their smart vent. The vent helps you cut down on heating and cooling costs by regulating temperature room-by-room as opposed to heating the whole house via the central thermastat. For example, the vents can be strategically placed in rooms that you most frequent—bedroom, living room, bathroom, etc—the vents are then set to either restrict or increase heat/air flow into that specific room. Then when that room is not in use, the vents close and don’t waste energy by heating/cooling the area.
What’s the big deal? Well, the vents are connected to a central smart hub that’s connected to your home’s internet. The vents can be controlled via your smart phone and/or tablet, or can be set to automatically recognize when you enter or leave a room. So if you’re spending a lot of time hanging out in the living room, the vent in the bedroom recognizes you aren’t there and the heating/cooling is concentrated in the living room.
The vents currently cost $80 and the smart hub is roughly $40. Keen Home recommends replacing about one third or fewer of the vents in your home with smart vents. This is because if all the vents are closed because you aren’t at home, a great deal of strain can be put on the home’s heating and cooling system.
The Scholly mobile app was also another product that caught our eye. After all, we are rather fond of mobile apps.
Scholly is a mobile app that tracks down scholarships for high school, college and graduate students. Millions of dollars in scholarship money go unclaimed every year largely due to people not knowing of the variety of scholarships available. By inputting some information—such as the state you live in, GPA and intended major–the app locates scholarships you’re eligible for. All you have to do is select the ones you want to apply for, save and then apply for them.
So let’s get some more kids applying for scholarships. Then we’ll have even more awesome developers, designers, and tech gurus producing better and cooler products!
What do you say? What cool products will we see on Shark Tank tonight? Hopefully some more mobile and tech awesomeness!
