Knocked Sense-less: Startup reverses plan to bring smart hardware to your home

A startup hoping to inject some computing smarts into your living room has decided that building its own hardware isn't the best way to achieve that goal after all.

In February, Silk Labs launched the $225 Sense, a device designed to bring computing smarts to home electronics like lightbulbs and security cameras and link them to internet services, as a Kickstarter project. The company aimed it at technophiles and programmers, not mainstream buyers, hoping to give developers what they needed to support and extend the company's Silk software and services.

A few hundred people signed up for the project. But on Tuesday, Silk Labs announced that it's scrapping the Kickstarter project, refunding the contributors' money. Instead, it's promoting a RedMi Note 3 built by Chinese phone maker Xiaomi and helping people install its software on unlocked Android phones.