Bizarre Tech: MyndHub, Garbage Can Fly Trap and ReadySip

MyndHub

Tap into your midi-chlorians!

According to its creators, MyndHub lets you move, power and control electrical gadgets and devices using the POWAAAA OF YOUR MIIIIIND.

It’s an alleged bridge between your mind and the physical world, and your brain becomes a controller: things “act or react to your concentration (focus) and meditation (calm) in real-time.

“Simply plug and play to train your brain...

“Mindhacks without coding...

“Used by top athletes and brands.”

Well that sounds like a recipe for JEDI MIND TRICKS.

By using the MyndHub, you train your focus, improve mental health, combat burnout, all while using real-life neurofeedback.

The team says they are here to help you harness your brain, which faces daily digital distraction, leading to poor focus, lack of mental clarity and under performance. It takes neuro-feedback training off screen and makes it feel like a superpower. I wanna be Professor X, I don’t care if he’s balding.

Brainwave training has been limited to the digital world for the last 30 years, keeping you locked to the screen. MyndHub is a screen-free way to use EEG (electroencephalography) and train your brain. You don’t need any programming, or a software development kit. Switches and dials at the front allow for instant configuration and thousands – yes, thousands – of possibilities.

They’ve even come up with a lightsaber you can play with via your noggin. So how does it work?

According to the Kickstarter campaign, the MyndBand (EEG headband) picks up your brainwaves and sends the levels of focus and calm to the MyndHub, on a scale of 0-100.

You then choose calm or focus, select the direction of current, and adjust difficulty by flicking a switch or turning a dial.

The MyndHub can have anything plugged or wired into it – like a killer robot or some sort of Godzilla-type droid, right? – and the device reacts in real time to your focus or calm.

By adjusting your thresholds through time/making it more difficult, it trains your brain.

The MyndHub team says you can build your own mind-​controlled gadgets and experiences, and it works with a range of USB, 12V and 110-240V powered devices. For example, you can make your lamp turn off when you’re at risk of burnout, helping you recognise and prevent it from happening. By managing distraction by having a distracting thing happen, it can make you less distracted, right?

You can plug your brain into a water fountain, feel your fan speed up and slow down in sync with your meditation... stuff like that.

POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS. (BUT LIMITED.)

May the meh force be with you.

Garbage Can Fly Trap

‘Tis almost the season for full fly carnage.

Flies. Those icky poo-eating, vomiting, little buzzing douches. They’re already here, whizzing around, being annoying and forcing us to protect our food in the open air. I am not a fan. My dog, however, is having the best time. Mass fly slaughter has become a sport for him. I’m not keen on him ingesting them, but it does save on body disposal.

SPEAKING OF DISPOSAL...

A lot of household kitchen bins will have stinky rubbish in them. Sometimes it can be gross. And that attracts gross things.

The sweet, sweet smell of decay will get those little infection-laden ickies buzzing around for some eats and breeding grounds from which to spawn their maggoty offspring. Nobody wants that.

Enter the garbage fly trap. This nifty, simple death machine is an inhumane way to dispose of one of life’s biggest bugbears.

So how does this simple, yet effective weapon work?

The garbage can (American name, don’t judge me) fly trap doesn’t require chemical attractants, the use of fly strips – which look like a macabre murder scene – or a swatter.

There is a small hole in the centre of the trap, which lures flies in with the scent of your rubbish. Mmmmmm yummy. The cursed wing bugs believe it gives them access to the interior of the bin, but alas, there is a flypaper-lined trap lying in wait! Mwahaha. Ultimate tricksters.  

When the trap is full of dead ickies, push the quick-release button on the lid and it falls into your trash – convenient, eh? Snap on a replacement cartridge and it’s ready for more corpses! Only thing is that you have to drill about five holes in your bin to install it.

Apparently, only a micro amount of scent from your bin goes through the hole, so it won’t be pongy for you.

God speed, fly killers.

ReadySip

Will never be ready.

Basically, this is a glorified thermometer with a flashy light.

The ReadySip – unsurprisingly – did not reach its funding goal on its 2016 campaign on Kickstarter (£4,945 pledged of £15,955 goal). Sad.

The ReadySip’s patent-pending design allegedly “measures your hot beverage and alerts you when its ready to drink”.

So could you set your temperature? I’m guessing the app could’ve sorted that, as everyone is different.

For example, my partner can get to drinking a brew pretty much fresh out the kettle. Crazy. The alert needs to be adjustable depending on your relationship with heat, especially if you’re like me and need at least a whole afternoon for your coffee to cool.

The sippy enabler consisted of a temperature probe, LED notification, and protective housing. Oooo.

The thing wasn’t even capable of getting properly dunked in liquid when the Kickstarter campaign started, as the team’s mechanical engineers were “striving to make the final provisions necessary for a fully immersible ReadySip”.  

In the frequently asked questions, the team desperately tried to justify the gadget by listing the alternative uses for it, including measuring the temp for meatballs, steak, chicken and fish. However, the ReadySip people said the “user assumes all risks in using ReadySip for uses other than which it is intended”.

Yikes.

The battery “allowed 45mAh”, about an hour if constantly on, but the team said that was “unacceptable”. Unacceptable enough to just give up completely? No?

They were working on updates, so maybe one day we shall see it on the supermarket shelves. Buuuut probably not.