It’s just days away from Apple Music’s launch, and there are still a few details that haven’t been nailed down yet. Can we listen to Taylor Swift? Does it work with AirPlay? The second question may soon be of interest to people who want to listen to music through their lights bulbs. There are a few bulbs that have speakers in them right now, but they use Bluetooth to pair. Astro’s Twist, which is available for preorder starting today, is an LED that works with AirPlay.
Twist is the brainchild of Shaun Springer, who was frustrated with the $100,000 worth of smart-home equipment in his apartment — the product of his time at home-automation company Creston Electronics. He hoped to design something simple that would make apartments feel more homey. “What I really wanted was a really awesome lighting experience and an awesome audio experience,” he tells Digital Trends.
The product really is aimed at apartment dwellers. For one thing, installation is literally just screwing in a light bulb. For another, it’s selling in a three-pack — two LEDs and one speaker bulb — along with a dimmer, for $249. There’s no need to hook up the battery-powered dimmer, either. The dimmer is essential to Astro’s vision of simplicity: Instead of pulling out your phone, unlocking it, opening an app, and switching on or off the lights, you can use the dimmer or your usual light switch.
The three light bulbs are meant to work as a “group,” so if you have the dimmer in the bedroom, shutting them off turns them all off. “If we were making a light bulb, we couldn’t degrade the light bulb experience,” says Springer. The bulbs also transition from cool blue to warm yellow as the day progresses and should last 12 to 15 years.
The company hopes to raise $50,000 to help with production cost during preorder, and the Twist won’t ship until 2016. Hopefully by then the whole 1989 thing will be sorted out.
