[CES 2015] Invoxia Announces Triby: The Phone Made For The Kitchen
People are always looking for ways to make us more connected. In some respects it might be too much. Most children under 10 simply don’t need their own cell phones and with more and more families abolishing the land-line, it’s difficult for parents and children to stay in touch if the child is home alone for a short period. That’s where Triby comes in.
Invoxia, a company based out of France, has created a new device that they call Triby. Its only job is to bring back communication between children at home and their parents who are on the move. It’s a small box that mounts on the refrigerator using magnets and connects to your home WiFi to make calls and take messages with VoIP.
Triby Features
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Triby’s basic functions of sending messages and making phone calls are pretty straight forward, and are all operated through the companion app which is already available for iOS and Android, though the latter is currently in the beta stage. Sending messages are a snap, with the ability to sent simple messages with text, or write it out by hand and make it a little more personal. When a new message is available on the Triby, a little yellow flag pops out of the side, like a mailbox and pushing it back in marks it as read. There are two buttons for pre-programmed phone numbers (presumably one for mom and one for dad) on the front, to make things easier for kids and prevent misdirected phone calls.
In addition to those basic functions, they have also added in Bluetooth functionality so you can use it as a hands-free call handling device when you’re at home and your hands are full. The Triby also takes advantage of a technology called In Vivo Acoustic technology that was designed by Invoxia and to this point was only available in professional conferencing equipment. It uses dual microphones that cross “beams” to cancel out any background noise and concentrate on who is talking. Triby’s dual loudspeakers and 3D algorithms also help to create an immersive sound environment so you can hear the conversation no matter where you are in the room.
The screen is a 2.9 inch e-paper display with high contrast and viewing angles, which will also save a lot of battery life vs LCD or LED displays. Speaking of battery life, Invoxia did their best to optimize Triby to conserve power, so you should only need to charge it about once per month, which you can do with a standard mini-USB charger. As if all of this wasn’t enough, they also added in the ability to serve internet radio through your phone and an FM radio tuner so you can listen to music while you’re working in the kitchen (or any other part of the house) without needing to have extra devices lying around.
A few stats for nerds: The Triby supports end-to-end wideband (200Hz – 8000Hz) voice calls and supports G.722 codec, as well as uses passive radiators in the speakers to save space and keep the unit small.
Triby will most likely retail for $199 and will be available as early as this summer.
Hi Nick, love this device ! What do you see as competing products / services for Triby ?
@romaincoirault:disqus did you purchase Triby? Honestly, I had never heard of anything like this before since it is a standalone product, not just a speaker for taking calls when you’re in the room. Although it isn’t nearly the same thing, I think that Amazon’s Echo would be a great product if your main concern was being hands-free in the kitchen.
Hi Nick, thx for your feedback. Looked into the Echo which seems great in terms of voice recognition capabilities and music streaming but it doesn’t seem to work as a hands free for mobile calls… Any other reco for devices like that ? Otherwise i think Triby will do just that 🙂
@romaincoirault:disqus my apologies, I didn’t realize the echo didn’t have that feature, it should! Alternatively, maybe you want to take a look at a product that I saw at CES 2014, called the Creative Sound BlasterAxx http://us.creative.com/p/speakers/sound-blasteraxx-axx-200 it’s great at doing exactly that.