This gesture-sensing frame will let you swipe through artwork

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 Meural is an Internet-enabled, digital canvas that will change the way you view and collect art.

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If the recent surge of network-connected picture frames is any indication of what the future holds, it seems that digital art may very well find itself adorning the walls and sitting on the mantels of tomorrow’s smart home. Hoping to bring something different than its predecessors, New York-based startup Meural has introduced a digital canvas that can display fine art with just a swipe of a hand.

This canvas features a 27” matte LCD screen along with ambient light sensors, all nestled within a handmade maple wood frame. With its vivid imagery and a super sleek design, Meural will undoubtedly be a welcomed addition to any home, museum or gallery. What’s more, the device is connected via Wi-Fi and cloud-based controls enable users to upload their own work for some show-and-tell.

Mindful of the art community’s rich traditions, the startup has ensured that they respect the exclusivity of collections and the curation process. In fact, CEO and co-founder Vladimir Vukicevic explains, “Meural is working closely with museums, galleries and artists to create an innovative new layer in visual culture by increasing the opportunity for exploration and accessibility.”

The digital canvas, however, isn’t just aesthetically-pleasing, it’s extremely functional and smart. Meural can be controlled in one of three ways: through gestures, the web and its accompanying mobile app. It will even adapt to the light in a particular room, and go to sleep when not needed.

With the Meural Timeline feature, users can create their own collections and discover new artwork via a personal webpage, which enables them to schedule different artworks for various occasions, moods and settings. Beyond that, its unique subscription service provides users with a constant stream of high-quality pictures of both iconic and up-and-coming masterpieces.

The Meural frame wirelessly connects to a mobile app, which lets users change the image being exhibited from across the room. Unlike frames before it, Meural is equipped with a set of motion sensors and gesture recognition software that allows viewers to change what’s being manifested on the screen by simply waving their hand through the air. (Think of it almost like Tinder for art.)

While the Meural frame is not yet available for purchase, it’s now ready for pre-order. Shipment is expected to begin this fall. Head over to its official page for more.

Digital photo frame doubles as an energy monitor

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While it might look like an ordinary digital picture frame, it’s so much more.

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A digital photo frame that shares memorable moments of your life and saves you money on your electric bill each month? Picture that! That is the premise behind CEIVA Energy’s HomeView digital picture frame, which allows users to keep tabs on home energy use, without the need for another display showing boring information about kilowatt hours.

Founded in 2000 by former Disney executives, the Burbank, California company officially launched in 2011. Since its inception, the infiltration of smart devices throughout the home has led to an assortment of sophisticated thermostats, like the Google Nest and Honeywell Lyric, that can learn a homeowner’s energy consumption habits and automatically adjust the temperature accordingly to mitigate costs and unnecessary use.

While the idea of merging a digital photo display with energy data may seem a bit absurd, the team behind the frame believes it has developed a new, more intuitive alternative to increase customer engagement. And, as the smart home market continues to emerge, some consumers may find connected devices to either be too pricey or unnecessary, or the average consumer may just not be interested in another form of technology. What’s great about CEIVA HomeView is that it simply brings an accessory already found throughout your home into the digital-savvy era.

How it works is pretty simple. The frame displays a montage of photos uploaded by its owner on its 8-inch screen. Meanwhile, the ZigBee-enabled device wirelessly receives energy use data from the home’s smart meter. Once the information has been sent to and processed by CEIVA’s servers, the frame then displays home energy consumption approximately every 90 seconds. The data points are reduced to two or three numbers, not an entire chart or graphical representation that shares a bunch of confusing information. Instead, the gadget reveals useful things like electric rate and an estimated utility bill for that month.

While receiving information about current and historical electricity, water and gas usage is a welcomed addition into any home, users can also invite friends and family to send photos directly to the frame, send pictures to a frame remotely via the web, email, camera phone, tablet and social media channels, as well as insert a memory card and view a camera’s photos in real-time.

One of, if not the, most important feature of the HomeView is its security — an imperative element as the number of smart home hacks are on the rise. Equipped with an Atmel ATECC108 crypto engine, CEIVA notes that the frame never be replicated and all communications to and from frame are uniquely assigned for that specific. In other words, only you can view information and control your devices. This is because the ATECC108 provides a full turnkey Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) engine using key sizes of 256 or 283 bits, which are appropriate for modern security environments without the long computation delay typical of software solutions.

Want a HomeView frame for your home? Head on over to company’s official page here. In the meantime, watch as CEIVA’s Jack McKee and Jack Brooks provide a hands-on overview of their latest smart device below.