Smart lights are one of the easiest ways to start upgrading your home to be a "smart home," and there are so many options for inside the home — but what about something a bit more portable that you can use to light your balcony, patio, or garden?
LuminAID has a rather elegant solution with its new line of Smart Solar Garden Lanterns. Available in two unique styles — Gem and Star — these origami-inspired solar lanterns simply look magical while offering ambient lighting in your backyard, letting you set the mood for any occasion using a Bluetooth connection and the LuminAID app (iOS or Android).
Check out the campaign trailer to see these lanterns in action:
For every Kickstarter pledge, LuminAID will donate one if its original inflatable solar lanterns to a family still living without power in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
Just like other smart lights you may have seen, these lanterns are packed with smart features, with eight high-powered RGBW LEDs that let you choose from pure white or hundreds of colors. Since they're solar powered, you never have to worry about running wires or replacing batteries, and you can even use the app to check in to see how well your lanterns are charging in the sun, or schedule the lights to come on at a specific time each day. They're built tough to be both waterproof and weatherproof so you don't have to worry if a storm rolls in. Want to take them along on a camping trip or to the cabin? Both the Gem and Star lanterns fold down to be flat and compact. Each style is best suited for different use cases — the Gem is best suited as a path marker along a walkway or as a table lantern on a patio, while the Star is perfect for hanging up around your backyard or as an accent piece for a social evening under the stars.
LuminAID has already surpassed its initial Kickstarter goal, but there's still plenty of time to back this project and get your own smart lanterns at a discounted price. The Gem will retail for $70 and the Star for $80, but you can save some money by backing with a pledge today. With a pledge of $59, you'll get one Gem lantern, or pledge $69 to get a Star Lantern. But that's just the start — you're probably going to want more than one of these beautiful and LuminAID's pledge rewards to scale up nicely. The best reward is probably around the $179 mark, which gets you four lanterns of your choice — maybe get three Gems to line your front path and a Star to hang by the door. The choice is yours! LuminAID plans to start shipping these lanterns by June 2018 — just in time for summer!
But this campaign is about more than just launching a new product. Since it was founded in 2010, part of LuminAID's company mission is to also assist in humanitarian relief efforts. For every Kickstarter pledge, LuminAID will donate one if its original inflatable solar lantern to a family still living without power in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. In fact, if LuminAID reaches their next stretch goal of $100,000, they'll donate an extra 1,000 inflatable lanterns to families in need.
This is LuminAID's second Kickstarter campaign, and they're building off of the success of the LuminAID Solar Inflatable Lantern, which is the lantern style they will be donating for each pledge received. You can back with confidence knowing that the team at LuminAID has been through this process before and are also a socially conscious company that aims to give back.
