Hands-on with Ambient's Weather Forecasting Umbrella

by Evan Blass, posted Jan 9th 2007 at 4:15AM

It may always be sunny in Philadelphia, but the weather can get pretty wild at Engadget HQ in NYC. Sure we could look out the window or watch the morning news to get a bead on the day's weather, but if we didn't employ some extraneous tech in our morning routine, we wouldn't be Engadget. Well were it to be available for purchase, our meteorological gadget of choice would be Ambient Devices' Weather Forecasting Umbrella -- but since it's not, our only chance to live the future came at Monday night's Showstoppers event. As you probably know by now, this umbrella features an LED ring at the base of the handle that lights up if rain is predicted (courtesy of Ambient's nationwide network); when you use it properly and store it handle-up, a quick glance is all it takes to decide whether or not you'll need some protection from Mother Nature later on. Unfortunately for our hands-on experience, it's pretty damn beautiful in Las Vegas this week, so our helpful demonstrator had to cheat and trigger the light manually to give us the full experience. After staring blankly at the ring of light for several minutes, we finally managed to avert our gaze long enough to suggest that the company hook up with the makers of NanoNuno to jack up the functionality even more. Team Ambient told us to stick to blogging and let them worry about product design. Anyway, check out some more shots in the gallery below...

Filed under: Household, Wireless

Tags: ambient devices, ambient information, AmbientDevices, AmbientInformation, CES, features, hands-on, weather forecasting umbrella, WeatherForecastingUmbrella

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Danny @ Jan 9th 2007 6:24AM

aa then the umbrella brakes like all others and now your stuck with just to computer part. Which you could put some ware to let you know if it will rain.

Neutral

jonathanavery @ Jan 9th 2007 6:46AM

Ah, I would of prefered a widget to stick onto existing Umbrellas. Maybe using the MS Spot technology so if you leave it at work you would know if you needed it on the way home as well.

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