New smart home gadget wants to be better than your phone at telling you useful stuff

“The phone has become the default for our lives,” says entrepreneur Berni War. But he feels that all the important information in our life has become trapped in our phones. He wants to put it in a more convenient location in your home, like on your front door. All that info – like your schedule, the weather forecast – should not be nagging you, War feels, and it should be accessible in a way that’s “more passive. So we don’t have to seek information.”

He wants to do that with a new smart home gadget called ELLA Assistant. It’s a tiny screen that can be stuck on any surface. There’s also a single button and a programmable LED.

“It can work with the phone, but very importantly it can work without the phone,” he says.

Crowdfunding goals

The startup team, which is based in Shanghai, sees it being used for things like telling you that you should take an umbrella, reminding you that you’re running late to an appointment, or for turning off all your smart lights at once. With a single press, it could alert your significant other that you’re leaving the house.

All that will depend on it working nicely with the brand of smart lights that you have, or syncing with the online calendar service that you use. The fact that the ELLA Assistant is subservient to your phone and other smart gadgets means it has to work with them all with ease, or it won’t gain favor with consumers. War tells Tech in Asia that the team will add support for various things as demand arises, but there are no specific supported devices or services listed yet – which is because the little gizmo hasn’t even launched. Once it’s out, it’ll come with eight apps preinstalled, and an app store is in the pipeline. (Update: Changed references to Kickstarter and a clarification to the apps situation.)

The ELLA Assistant will hit either Indiegogo or Kickstarter some time in August.

War and the two other co-founders of the China-based startup – all of whom are foreigners – are spending the next two months developing the working prototype as well as figuring out the best way to explain ELLA to prospective crowdfunders. He concedes it’s not easy to spell out what it does – it’s not just a controller, it’s not some kind of smart home hub, and it’s not just a thing for notifications.

“What Pebble did for wearables, we want to do for places,” War says, adding that they’re initially going after the same kind of people who bought the Pebble watch – people who are keen to fiddle with something that’s highly customizable.

Shaping up in Shenzhen

“We’ve put it in front of hundreds of people and talked to thousands of people. All roads lead to crowdfunding,” he enthuses.