Light gets titillating with Tittle's connected LEDs
This color-changing LED smart lamp seeking funds on Indiegogo -- and it might just be cool enough to forgive the silly branding.
- 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
The Tittle Light Connected LED Lamp.
"Connected color-changing LEDs." I must have typed those words a thousand times in the years I've spent writing about the smart home. And yet the Tittle Light, an app-controlled, color-changing LED smart lamp seeking funds on Indiegogo, managed to catch my attention.
It isn't just the dumb name. The -- sigh -- Tittle looks legitimately high-end, at least as smart home lighting novelties go. And, though it'll retail for much more, the crowd-funding campaign's early-bird discount puts it at $199, which converts to about £135 or AU$275. To put it in perspective, that's the same price as a three-bulb Philips Hue starter kit. I can see how an all-in-one fixture with high-class design could sway people away from the bulb-by-bulb approach.
Of course, the Tittle isn't aiming for the same sort of practical lighting that you'd get with a set of smart bulbs. Instead it embraces the novelty of color-changing light, seeking to serve as a decorative centerpiece for your smart home. And from the looks of it, Tittle does a decent job. With 512 LEDs packed inside an attractive smoked glass enclosure that sits atop an aluminum base, it looks like something Nikola Tesla might have whipped up on a whim. It's a connected conversation starter.
3D LED emojis? Coming right up.
Beyond the colors and cool look of the thing, Tittle features a microphone that'll sync lighting changes to whatever music you're playing. As for connectivity, Tittle uses a Wi-Fi radio to sync with your computer or your Android or iOS device. Aside from changing the colors, you can switch it between digital and analog clock readouts, or "paint" your own custom color patterns and animations.
You'll also be able to dial up an animated emoji pattern from one of a handful of options in the Tittle app. Or, if you want something specific or are just feeling artistic, you can design your own, then save it to the cloud to share with friends.
As with all crowdfunding efforts, there's room for skepticism here. Spin-R, the startup responsible for Tittle, has focused solely on making high-end watch-winding devices until now, so the move to an LED novelty fixture is a bit out of left field. Still, Spin-R has brought high-end products to market before, and it brought working Tittle prototypes to CES last month, too.
Tittle estimates it'll ship units out to backers in September of this year. We'll keep an eye on the campaign and, fingers crossed, plan to test the lamp out this fall.