The project team has a working demo, not the final product. Their ability to begin production may be affected by product development or financial challenges.
Designed with both form and function in mind, CarWink sets out to break the boundary between vehicles by using simple and pure communication methods.
Gone are the days of rude hand gestures, sailor mouths, and reckless driving. With CarWink’s hands-free voice control, drivers can now use a wide variety of emojis to communicate with one another. Want to signal an accident ahead? CarWink. Want to give gratitude for a lane change? CarWink. Let CarWink help you reignite your purpose for the road!
International Media Coverage
Purposeful Communication
A Whole New Way
CarWink’s unique emoji feature allows drivers to select from a wide range of pre-set phrases to be shared through fun and cute images with others on the road. Keep your eyes on the road ahead and let CarWink be your voice to the drivers behind you.
Why We Need CarWink?
Voice Control
The Voice Is Strong With This One
Not long ago in a galaxy not so far away... comes a device unlike any other. Activated by the power of your voice, this device sets out to transform your words into lights... CarWink’s voice control allows drivers to experience seamless driving. All you have to do is sync your CarWink device with the mobile App and everything is ready to go. What more can we say but, “CarWink. I am your father!”
Do We Need Another Physical Remote Control?
CarWink Emojis
Solar Powered
Harvesting The Power of The Sun
“With great power comes great responsibility!” Not only is CarWink powered by USB, our love for renewable energy called for an additional power source from the Sun. CarWink’s built-in solar panel allows for passive energy harvesting and extended usage time. Go forth mighty roadwarrior, drive to your heart's content. Gosh! No wonder Superman called and asked for his ability back...
Portable and Convenient
CarWink was designed to be your perfect little companion when on the road. Designed in a small spherical shape that resembles that of a dot, CarWink is made to be portable. It doesn’t matter if it’s your car, your parent’s car, or a rental, CarWink is with you every mile of the way.
Like a true companion, take CarWink wherever you go.
CarWink Is Flexible For Most Of Users
How To Install CarWink?
How To Operate CarWink?
CarWink only takes up between 7% - 12% of the windshield real estate
Holy Accessorization Batman!
Step aside Batman, your utility belt is no longer needed. The team will be releasing a series of add-on accessories for users to style their CarWink to match their unique style. Put a cat ear on your CarWink to give it some sass or put on a pair of glasses to give it class. Stand out above the rest. Accessorize your CarWink to give it that one-of-a-kind style!
Design Details
Tech Specification
Reward Packages
Our Story
Founded in September, 2015, InnovArt is on a mission to empower everyone to live a better life by increasing the ability to express, feel, and care for themselves and others. Being a Transportation and Interactive Design graduate of Art Center, our CEO always had a love for automobiles. It is that love for cars and the vision of improving overall driver interaction that led to the creation of CarWink. With CarWink, our hope is to create a device to better help connect drivers and create a more driver-friendly environment.
Meet The Team
We are a team of artists, creators and technologists based out of Los Angeles and San Jose, California. Although our skills span a variety of fields, we all share a passion for art. One of the biggest reasons we founded InnovArt was because we believe products should be functional and appealing. Most of our experience comes from academic and real-world work which gives us a well-rounded approach to our product development knowledge. It also provides us with additional resources to help bring CarWink to life and share with the world!
Timeline
What's Next?
Having CarWink on Kickstarter only marks the beginning of what’s to come. The team has big plans for CarWink, and this is just a start. For starters, we will be shipping our first batch of working prototypes to influencers and industry experts for review and feedback. During the same time, our team will be shooting and producing a series of funny and entertaining skits around everything CarWink. Always seeking to improve, our team of designers and engineers will be creating new emojis and refining product features. As we get into the New Year, you can find the Innovart team at CES 2018 debuting CarWink alongside with our connective bracelet, Emora.
(1) The Design Process of CarWink
(2) The Massive Production Process
Special Thanks to
How The Funds Will Be Used?
The funds raised from our campaign will be used to further the progress of your faithful driving companion CarWink in design, tooling and production. Continuous efforts will be placed on developing electronic components as well as sourcing boutique grade materials for quality and comfort.
The CarWink team will keep backers informed during the entire development process to ensure quality and delivery are the main priorities.
Risk And Challenges
While our team has extensive experience in design and technology spaces, there are a couple of challenges we expect to face when developing CarWink.
1. Since CarWink is built to fit into the driver’s daily routine, battery life is an essential factor. During the CarWink prototypes development process, we will ensure that under normal use case, CarWink is able to operate at least 1.5 months on a single charge.
2. The solar charging speed of your CarWink will vary depending on your geographic location and the average available sunshine hour. i.e: California needs half the time comparing Taiwan.
3. There’s a chance that the CarWink LED visibility will be affected by the various weather conditions. Weather will vary based on location; some places with more wet weather will have a slightly higher chance of visibility interference.
4. CarWink’s LED screen is designed to be visible under normal windshield setup. However, if your windshield is tinted in a darker than average gradient, there is a chance that it will affect the LED brightness.
5. CarWink’s adjustable hinge (2 stage of joints) is designed to fit most vehicles. Very few sports cars, coupes, or convertibles with super low and tilted windshields will have difficulty installing the device.
Other challenges include fine tuning of the overall user interface (physical device and App) and optimizing user flow. It will take multiple rounds of prototyping and user testing before perfection. This will be an ongoing process and the team will send automatic software updates to the device and its respective App.
This device has 469 RGB LEDs and 11 white LEDs. They consist of RGB LEDs controller by a 12-bit LED driver. In other words, each of the red/green/blue channel has 2^12 = 4,096 steps. In total, that is 2^36 = 68,719,476,736 combinations. Human vision may not be able to discern so many colors though. However, the mixture of colorful lights, unlike the mixture of paints, may not be able to show colors such as gray or brown.
Due to the nature of Kickstarter, we cannot offer refunds to backers once the project ends, with the exception of the unlikely instance of a defective reward being shipped out. Once the campaign ends, your pledges are put to use immediately to ensure that CarWink enters into production as soon as possible. Therefore, we cannot offer refunds once the campaign has ended.
This depends on your local tax code. Any applicable duties/VAT are the sole responsibility of the backer, and not our team. We have absolutely no control over charging each backer additional duties/VAT at the time the pledge is made, and so these fees (if applicable) may be imposed at the time of receiving the package. If you are unsure whether or not you will be charged duties/ VAT at the time of receiving your reward, please get in touch with your local post office.
No, but they're pretty close! The CarWink you're seeing in our video and images on this page are the initial prototypes of our design. The final version of CarWink will be very close to this, though small changes in materials, functionality, and design may take place as we hear more feedback from the community!
Currently, CarWink supports English as the primary language. However, CarWink does support diversified languages that “OK Google” and “Siri” support. The “OK Google” and “Siri” api will be utilized to execute the voice recognition through cloud computing technology. In the future as we expand our product to other countries, there will also be additional language support added.
You are in control of what function you want to show through the CarWink app, and from the CarWink app to the service server. Therefore, CarWInk will not be constantly monitoring and gathering your information. CarWink only processes what it needs to improve the
algorithms for keeping everyone’s uniqueness and providing highly personalized services.