Shine Bathroom raises $750K for a smart home add-on that flushes away your toilet doldrums

One ongoing theme in the world of smart homes has been the emergence of gadgets and other tools that can turn "ordinary" objects and systems into "connected" ones -- removing the need to replace things wholesale that still essentially work, while still applying technology to improve the ways that they can be used. Shine's immediate goal is to flush away the old, ecologically unfriendly way of cleaning toilets; and to provide the tools to detect when something is not working right in the plumbing, even helping you fix it without calling out a plumber. "Bathrooms are evolving from places where we practice basic hygiene to where we prepare ourselves for the day," said Chris Herbert, the founder and CEO of Shine.