This week’s Smart Living roundup features a smart baking companion, an immersive movie and lighting experience for home entertainment, and more star power behind smart home products.

PantryChic’s smart baking tool

Nicole Sollazzo Lee, inventor, Founder and President of Nik of Time, Inc., knows the frustrations of bakers, creating a connected kitchen tool for precise measurements, a necessity for any pastry chef.

PantryChic is a smart storage and dispensing system that allows the user to precisely measure ingredients as the base of the system is also a digital scale. It features airtight, stackable containers that fit at the top of the dispensing mechanism.  The dispensing mechanism accurately measures by weight and connects to your smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth for following recipes and tracking which ingredients are most used, or which recipes are frequently prepared.

PantryChic can also help people who are trying to lose weight as they can use the scale to make sure that they consume just the right amount of food, and keep custom mixes of dry ingredients for those who have special dietary needs or restrictions.

You can help PantryChic meet its goals by funding it on Kickstarter, where the campaign launched today.

Syfy + Philips team up for immersive movie experience

Now your TV can talk to your light bulbs, thanks to a partnership between the Syfy channel and Koninklijke Philips N.V. (commonly known as Philips).

On Wednesday, July 30, 2014, “Sharknado 2: The Second One” will have its global premiere on Syfy, and the cable channel has partnered up with Philips to make your viewing experience more interesting.

Sharknado and Sharknado 2 will be aired at 7PM and 9PM EST, respectively, and if you happen to have Hue, Philips’ color-changing connected lightbulb, you can download the Syfy Sync app to experience what it calls a “light track” or a visual soundtrack.  The app will sync with the hue to deliver an immersive movie-watching experience, and it also acts as a second screen where users can get additional information about the two shark infested movies, as well as deliver a social experience to movie fans.

In other Philips news, the company has partnered with Indiegogo for this the second annual Innovation Fellows Competition, a competition aimed at finding the ‘next big thing’ created by average people. The contest seeks out inventors who have no means to get their product to market or have failed to get financial support from the industry or the government.  The projects will be launched on Indiegogo and the winner will be awarded with $60,000 plus the money they raise through the crowdfunding platform.  The winner will also be mentored by Philips executives, and four runners-up will be awarded $10,000 each.

The Orange Chef Co. gets backing from M7 Tech Partners

M7 Tech Partners, the venture capital firm founded by NBA star Carmelo Anthony and his friend Stuart Goldfarb, a former executive at NBC and Bertelsmann, announced that it has invested in The Orange Chef Co., makers of smart connected kitchen tools such as the Prep Pad.

Terms of the investment were not disclosed but Anthony and Goldfarb will become advisors who have the power to influence the expansion of the company’s focus on fitness and health, as well as add to its marketing strategy.

Image via PantryChic