I'm surprised this didn't pop up here yet...

It looks like there's a Kickstarter going (well, ending) for the first possible Electric Imp product! Hiku appears to be a shopping assistant, the kind the internet seems to have been trying to produce for years. This one looks like it gets the closest to something really usable, though.

Check out the Kickstarter if you haven't already (I'm sure other folks here saw it). Looks like there's only about 17 hours left at the time of posting. I've put in a little, but it looks like it's going to be tough to get this thing funded. It seems most objections are based around the fact that smartphones can pretty much do what this thing does. I think that ignores the simplicity and ease of use for something like this (provided it works well enough).

Anyway, I tend to root for people on Kickstarter (as long as their projects aren't completely stupid), and I definitely root for the Electric Imp guys!

At first I thought it was a device that you take with you to the store - I thought that after reading above and first visiting the KS page. But I'm pleasantly surprised that it lives in your kitchen instead. Simple. Brilliant. Useful.

This is most definitely something that could technically be done with a phone, but it would be clumsy and wouldn't help anyone else in the household.

I think if it had received more blog publicity it would have been backed a long time ago. I'm sending a tip to a few places now.

Several Android shopping list apps do this sort of thing already with the barcodes. I guess the voice recognition part is novel, though.

I'm sure there are apps for Android that can add items to lists based on voice commands. There may even be some for iOS. But no consumer phone has a dedicated barcode scanner. Using a camera for scanning barcodes provides mixed results and is much more of a hassle than using a dedicated device, especially one geared specifically for automating list creation and as compact and idiot-proof as Hiku.

Even forgetting the software integration for a minute, if someone were considering using a phone for this then they'd have to have that phone available in their kitchen at all times or set up software on multiple phones so that each person of the household could add to the lists. Sure everyone in the house might have a phone and they may even carry it at all times. But we're back at the hassle state when you have to take it out of your pocket, unlock it, fire up an app and then tap the screen at least once to activate the scanning/voice feature.

IMO, Hiku over a smartphone (for the scanning) is like the Nest thermostat over a regular programmable model.

I'm already a fan of Ziplist, which does the same thing without the extra hardware device. My phone can scan the barcodes or take voice dictation and put the shopping list in the cloud.

This device looks like it would do it simpler and faster than the phone though! One button scanning and voice recognition. Not bad. Right now I have to unlock my phone, select the Ziplist app, wait the precious 3-4 seconds while the app launches, and then do a couple of taps to scan or speak. If this device shortens all of that, that'd be awesome.

Here's the trick, the main thing that I'd need it to do: Shared shopping lists. In other words, more than one user, each with their own user name and password, can currently log into ZipList and we can share our shopping lists with each other. For instance, we have a household grocery list and a household hardware list that we share with each other. This is the hyper-critical feature!

And you'd want the web-based alternate entry system that lets you poke stuff into the shopping list while you're away from the device.

If they've got those things, I'm interested.

Tony, I thought of Ziplist immediately when I saw the Hiku. I love Ziplist and use it every time I go shopping. I'd completely forgotten it could do barcode scanning, but I agree that it would be nice to have a dedicated device stuck on the fridge (I believe the Hiku has magnets*). I've tried both Evernote and Remember the Milk in the past, and never liked those products. I would hope this device could add Ziplist integration in the future.

...unfortunately it looks like it's not going to happen...

Yeah, Mighty Grocery (Android) gives us basically everything on your list.

The simplicity of having a single-use device and the reliability of a dedicated barcode scanner does sound nice, but whether it's worth it would depend on final pricing.

I'd be willing to pay $5. Until then, I've never really had a problem with a pad of paper and a pencil. They stick to the fridge with magnets, too.

It doesn't need ziplist integration as long as it matches all of ziplist's features. I'm happy to switch to a different system if it's better.

I'd pay $20 if it worked as well as the video suggests, maybe a bit more, but only if it includes a lifetime sub for the cloud sync service.

A synced-to-the-cloud shopping list is one of those things like a DVR that is so hard to assess your need for until you've tried it, because it allows you to change your behavior in ways that make you more productive. Paper and pencil is great, but fails the "unplanned run to the store and the list is at home" test, or the "planned run to the store, and we need something else, but the list is with my wife" test.

With Mighty Grocery, it's nice to be able to add something to the list and know that regardless of whether I or my wife do the shopping, we'll always have the most up-to-date list on us, and won't have to read items over the phone, text them, etc. It's also great to be able to scroll through the "pick list" of all items that you've bought before, to jog your memory about stuff you might be running out of.

My understanding is that the Hiku needed to work with an Evernote or a Remember the Milk-type service in order to use it. I was saying I really dislike those two services, so I was hoping Ziplist might be added as a possibility. That's all.


Mighty Grocery looks pretty good, but I think I prefer Ziplist for a few reasons, one of the biggest being that the web portion of the service doesn't seem tacked-on like it does with Mighty Grocery. It looks like they just added that. I also think they're really missing out by not giving potential users any screenshots of that web interface. When I went to look at it all I got was a login page that told me to go download the app and sign up for an account on the phone. That's really not the way to go.

But I agree on the shared shopping lists. My wife and I do the same thing, and it's extremely convenient.

Some of my favorite things about Ziplist, since we're on this topic:

Stores: I can set up several stores that I frequently go to. As a part of this, I can tell Ziplist the aisle order of the stores, then when I have the app open I can specify which store I'm in, and my list will get re-ordered for that store, making it possible to make a single sweep through the grocery store. Fantastic!

Recipe storage: I can add recipes to Ziplist, including all the relevant details and most importantly the included ingredients. Then I can click on recipe and tell the service to add all the ingredients to my shopping list. It gives me a chance to deselect items before it goes ahead with it, and at the same time auto-deselects items Ziplist thinks I might already have on hand based on previous shopping trips. Pretty neat.

More recipes: I can add recipes from the web. There's a Ziplist Chrome extension that will scan the page you're on for a recipe (Foodnetwork.com, for example) and add it to your recipe box. Some sites, like Martha Stewart for example (surprisingly good site for inexpensive, easy to make, tasty meals, BTW) have Ziplist functionality built in.

The app: the main thing I actually don't like is the look of the app. I think it's a little low-res and not designed for a wide variety of screen resolutions. That said, I do like how it works. Adding items is easy, and checking them off is too. I like that when I check something off, it's moved to the bottom of the list. That way it's out of the way so I can see what I still need, but I can refer back to it to double check that I got everything I need. This is great for something like the product section. I'll go through the produce, checking things off as I go. These items drop to the bottom of my list, and I only see the produce items I have yet to get. Then when I think I'm done with the produce section, I double-check the items in my physical and virtual carts. Once I'm certain I didn't forget anything, I "checkout," clearing the items in the virtual cart.

The app again: one place where that stores functionality becomes important is that I can assign items to specific stores. That way I can plan to stop at three places, but when I go into one of them I only see the items on my list that I want to get from that store.


So there's my mini-review. Clearly I'm a fan of Ziplist, but mostly I'm a fan of moving this kind of list-making into the digital space.


But for some reason my brain hates these kinds of list. I always tend to miss at least one item on paper lists, despite double- and triple-checking at the end of the trip...