Cyrano is your own personal jukebox for scents
You're hosting a beach-themed party. You've got the decorations, the music and the snacks. You're hanging out with floaties on your arms and rocking out to the unmistakeable sounds of crashing waves and "Wipeout" on repeat.
It looks like a beach party and sounds like a beach party, but it's missing something. It doesn't smell like a beach party.
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Vapor Communications aims to change that with Cyrano, a "scent speaker" that uses multiple, interchangeable scent capsules to make your space smell nice. By mixing up different scents, Cyrano creates different "mood medleys," emitting scents one after another to trigger different feelings like relaxation, energy or freedom.
The cylindrical device, about the size of a squat jar of peanut butter, holds three interchangeable scent capsules at once, each containing four different scents. Some of the smells include lilac, honeysuckle, sunscreen and a bunch more. Instead of emitting one scent for a long time, Cyrano switches between them before your brain has a chance to block out the smell.
"One of the peculiar things about the way we smell is that after about seven or eight minutes, we don't smell it anymore," Vapor Communications founder David Edwards told Mashable. "So if you have a constant scent, you go 'deaf,' or get what's called olfactory fatigue."
Image: Wayne E Chinnock/Vapor communications
Cyrano can be controlled with the smartphone app oNotes, which is where you can build your own scent playlists. The device will "play" different scents, switching between chosen odors so you can continue to experience the smells.
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Scent is perceived differently than things like music or visuals, and different smells can cause visceral reactions before you even realize you're smelling something.
"There is only one sensory nerve that goes right to your brain, and that's the olfactory nerve," Edwards said. "So you feel it before you cognitively analyze it — you begin to cry, you remember somebody or you are hungry before knowing what you smelled."
Scents are very closely linked to memories and emotions, so scent playlists can cause reactions very different than music playlists, and will likely stir up different feelings for different people.
Cyrano had a limited launch Wednesday with plans to adapt based on customer feedback. It costs $150 and come with a scent package. The scent packages, which last about a month with regular use, cost $20.
