Fingerbot Sense smart switch by Adaprox

Kickstarter:

It’s 2022, the concept of smart products has become more and more popular in our lives. We all have experienced the convenience it brings: turn on the lights with your smartphone, schedule to turn off your A/C, etc. But there are also scenarios where a modern smart solution is expensive, troublesome, or even cannot be found.
These traditional devices have one thing in common: they all have buttons and switches for your fingers to control. To this end, we created Fingerbot to help you smartly control 99% of existing buttons and switches, and eventually give you smart control over your appliances.

The Fingerbot range by Adaprox is a smart switch that allows you to set up a smart home with your existing switches and buttons. It is not something innovative, and is considered a mature market segment in the smart home niche.

We saw this idea first with SwitchBot on Kickstarter. Fingerbot’s Kickstarter campaign was launched after SwitchBot and we thought it was a SwitchBot clone. Adaprox has been rolling out new versions as it tries to milk the Fingerbot by adding new features.

Adaprox has come a long way since it first rolled out the SwitchRobot to lukewarm response. It only raised AUD 6,000.

Fingerbot Sense is the third generation of the product line, following Fingerbot and Fingerbot Plus. It iterates upon the previous generations by providing a motion sensor to trigger it without touching it, hence the name Sense.

This new version also comes with Zigbee support and multi-state mode while also reducing the latency to improve the overall user experience.

Background check

Hangzhou Adaprox Intelligent Technology Co, Ltd owns the Fingerbot brand in the US and in China.

Adaprox seem to have problem delivering their products. There are customers who are still waiting for their Fingerbot Plus. So beware when you’re thinking of pledging for the product.

Is it innovative?

While I was initially inclined to commend Adaprox for iterating the products to bring improvements to the Fingerbot. I noticed that the companies does not even put much effort to producing their Kickstarter campaigns.

Take a look at the Fingerbot Sense and Fingerbot Plus campaign pages. They reused a lot of the visual assets, replacing only the product with the new one.

I understand that if something works, don’t change it. But this just speaks volume of the lack of respect they have for their backers.