Hasta La Gadget!

Otterbox has teased its new Defender case here at CES but there’s an important new addition inside the iON Intelligence case — this one is a bit more considerate how it charges your iPhone 4 (or 4S). There’s a strip of LED lights along the bottom edge which indicate how charged the case is, and it will only ever start topping up your phone when it dips below 100 percent, all without the need to flip a switch. An installable app will monitor how power is transferred between the iPhone and the 1,450mAh pack housed inside that Defender casing. This is still an experimental sample, but Otterbox tells us that the case will arrive before the summer. Until then, we’ve got a teaser video after the break to tide you over.

Continue reading Otterbox unveils iON Intelligence iPhone case with automatic power management and Defender protection (hands-on)

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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At large trade shows like CES, we’re accustomed to seeing tried and true products receive refreshes — sometimes major, sometimes minor — year after year. But here on the Showstoppers floor, we came across the type of gadget that gets us positively giddy: the Puzzlebox Orbit. Originally a Kickstarter-funded project that’s just now hitting retail shelves (available for $189), the copter-in-a-cage works with Neurosky’s EEG Bluetooth-enabled headset and companion app (compatible with iOS or Android) to help users achieve specific meditative or focused mental states. Hack-happy geeks take note, Puzzlebox encourages your creative tinkering, so it’s made the software open source, opening the door to any number of applications. But the primary focus for this is education, as combos of this kind can be used to explain neuroscience to children — brainwaves and the like.

To get the Orbit’s blades whirring, users first need to set a pre-determined goal by adjusting a slider in the app. And once that desired state is achieved, the included IR transmitter (which plugs into your smartphone or tablet), will send a signal to the Orbit, effectively giving it flight. It’s not the weak sort of take-off either — this spherical delight can really grab some air. But don’t just take our many words for it. Why not just check out our demo after the break?

Continue reading Puzzlebox Orbit mind-on: brainwaves and hack-friendly helicopters (video)

Filed under: Peripherals

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The HR34 hasn’t been around that long, but DirecTV is showing the replacement at CES, the HR44. The new box does just about everything the HR34 does, including record five HD shows at once to a 1TB hard drive, but in a smaller package. The small package also happens to be almost fan less — there is an emergency fan that is designed to only turn on in extreme cases — and has a faster chip. This speed improvement is noticeable on both the main TV in your house, as well as on the various clients. Speaking of which, in addition to the DirecTV C31 set-top box and 2012 Samsung HDTVs, the new 2013 Samsung and Sony HDTVs — as well as the PS3 — can also connect directly to the HR44 (and older HR34) and deliver the entire DirecTV Genie experience. Inside you’ll find integrated WiFi, but no internal power supply. We’re told that an external power supply helps keep the heat down inside, and you can see in the images below, there are large heat sinks either side and a heat pump to cool the processor. No word on price, but we’d suspect it’ll be the same as the HR34 — free for new customers, up to $300 for existing — and we could only nail them down to “this year” in regards to availability.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Dacor’s ninth-generation oven pulls together a 1GHz processor, 512MB of DDR2 RAM and Android 4.0.3. It also cooks food. At the front of the Discovery Wall Oven, there’s a 7-inch LCD touch panel, while the UI behind its oven-centric widgets is apparently the product of a design collaboration between Dacor and BMW’s DesigworksUSA — they’re all simple enough to navigate and get things done. The oven-maker’s Discovery IQ controller cooking app will offer up interactive cooking guides, recipes and all other things cooking, although you’ll still be able to install more standard apps from Google Play. The built-in cooking app offers preprogrammed dishes and adjustable timings for several dishes, while you can even program the oven to cook food remotely from any Android device.

You’ll also get notifications (text message or on-screen) through your other Android device when your meal is done. An iOS version of the app will be ready to launch alongside the oven sometime this summer, with the double unit priced at a wallet-trembling $7,499 and the single oven at $4,499 — so there’s the price for convenience. It’ll arrive in three different finishes, but sounds like it should go well with our other digital white goods and digital cutlery. We’ve got our hands-on video uploading at the moment, but take a look at our gallery for a closer look.

Continue reading Dacor’s Android oven packs 1GHz processor, 7-inch screen, heat (hands-on)

Filed under: Household

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3D Systems isn’t exactly new to the consumer 3D printing space, but its history lies in professional additive manufacturing. Its machines have found homes around the globe in high profile businesses like Boeing. That hasn’t stopped the company from rolling out a pair of impressive home options at CES. The company’s CEO Avi Reichental stopped by our stage chat for a while and let us play with the two new devices, the CubeX and the second-generation Cube.

The Cube X is a rather beastly device. While technically it might able to sit on a desk, we wouldn’t exactly call it a desktop printer. The 1,030 cubic inch-build platform is large enough print a basketball, though, one that wouldn’t bounce very high. Such a build would take quite a long time however, with the lower 500 micron resolution taking up to 12 hours to spit out. If you bumped it up to 125 microns an easily breakable sphere would be yours in about 24 hours. Still, that’s quite a bit faster than some printers out there, and it can accomplish the feat in three colors — something no other consumer model we’ve seen is capable of. Even though we’ve seen high resolutions out of machines like the Replicator 2, the difference 25 microns makes is practically indistinguishable. Everything from chain mail to mugs are within reach. Rather impressively, just like its little brother, the CubeX relies on cartridges instead of spools for dispensing plastic — either ABS or PLA. 3D Systems even calls them “smart cartridges” since it can distinguish between the two plastics and adjust the properties accordingly.

Continue reading Eyes-on with 3D System’s CubeX and next-generation Cube (Update: video)

Filed under: Misc

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