First of all, the ICE xPC is no ordinary machine when you take a closer look at it. After all, it tips the scales at a mere 4 ounces, where the physical size itself is so tiny, that it will be able to fit into your shirt pocket without missing a beat. Apart from that, the ICE xPC can be docked into peripherals, allowing it to transform into an intelligent core of a pad, notebook, desktop, or gaming device. The xPC itself has been specially constructed for performance and it will come with a high-performance motherboard, the most recent x86 CPU/chipset, 4GB RAM, anywhere from 64GB to a 128G SSD, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, an accelerometer and a camera.
Every year at CES, the Eureka Park outpost where they stick the scrappy startups is the best damn part of the whole shindig. This is where all the people with a screw loose or a decided lack of good common sense come to peddle their spaghetti-cooking robot or aroma-powered computer – or, as happened this year, their solar-powered beer cooler.
SolarCooler is a “world first,” which is a common epithet at Eureka Park, and it’s currently undergoing crowdfunding on Indiegogo. The startup is looking for $150,000 to make their portable refrigerator (it even makes ice!) a reality, but it’s currently looking like it’ll need a real groundswell of support to get there.
Here’s the big issue: the entry-level model costs just under $1,000, and that’s a special backer-only price. Retail for the SolarCooler is $1,200, which is bound to be a bitter pill to swallow even for the most ardent of tailgaters. Still, this is essentially a solar-powered 12V battery backup for everything combined with a cooler that offers true, continuous refrigeration, so that price tag starts to look at lot more reasonable when you consider its other potential uses.
It also has a lot of potential to help out in commercial and medical settings as a transport for goods that need to be kept cool when direct power is in scarce supply and loading up a device with a significant number of batteries would make it cumbersome to use.
SolarCooler is pursuing a flex funding goal, meaning it walks away with whatever it raises, and the founder seems keen on building it whatever the outcome, but there are still over 40 days left in the campaign, so it could still turn into a Cinderella story. All I know is I like beer, and I like it cold (that ‘best served at room temperature stuff’ is BS) so SolarCooler makes sense to me.
Qardio was one of the startups competing in our battlefield competition at Disrupt Europe 2013, last October. On stage in Berlin it showed off a forthcoming consumer ECG monitor, the QardioCore, along with a wireless blood pressure monitoring device, QardioArm. The startup has now kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to help get the less expensive of the two, the QardioArm, to market — using the Indiegogo platform as its springboard.
Qardio’s devices are designed to undercut the high cost of current-gen medical kit, while also offering a simpler and more passive way for people to monitor their health that leverages the power of smartphones/tablets — with data from Qardio’s hardware streamed or synced to the user’s mobile device where it can be tracked and reviewed.
Qardio is looking for $100,000 in crowdfunding via Indiegogo to help it get the smart blood pressure monitor to market. It previously said it expects this device to retail for $99 but is offering it to early backers for $75.
This campaign is a flexible funding one, meaning Qardio does not need to meet that target in order to get the pledged funds. Indeed, it largely looks to be using Indiegogo to boost visibility — i.e., mostly as an additional marketing channel — and to get feedback and ideas to help further development, rather than because it needs the cash for manufacturing.
The QardioArm syncs blood pressure readings to Qardio’s secure cloud, where data can then be shared with others, such as your doctor. Users can also view their blood pressure data in Qardio’s companion iOS app.
As to when the QardioArm will be in the hands of users, the startup says it’s currently awaiting “final clearance” from the US Food and Drug Administration (for shipping to the US) and certification under EU Product Directives (for Europe).
It’s currently expecting to get clearance in time to ship the QardioArm to backers in March 2014 — which fits with its previously discussed timetable. At Disrupt Berlin, Qardio said it was planning to retail both the QardioCore and QardioArm online and through brick-and-mortar partnerships early this year.
At the time of writing, a few days into its Indiegogo campaign and with 27 days left to run, Qardio has raised more than $30,500.
These special shotgun shells take the green revolution to the next level. If planting stuff the traditional way is too boring for you, then you might want to shoot up gardens instead with Flower Shells as your ammo. You could also pack a couple of seed bombs that you can toss when you’re out of shells.
The Flower Shells were thought up by developer Per Cromwell of Studio Total. Unlike Flower Grenades, Flower Shells actually contain gunpowder so you can blast them as you would blast real bullets with your shotgun. Each shell contains a reduced amount of gunpowder and is filled with flower seeds. Shoot the shells into patches of dirt or grass with it and you’ll see daisies, sunflowers, and meadow flowers blossoming in those spots in a matter of weeks.
The Flower Shells are currently up for funding on Indiegogo, where a pledge of $50(USD) will get you a set of four shells. Shotgun sold separately.
If you have ever wanted the biggest speakers you can get your hands on, AudioOrbs might be just what you are looking for. AudioOrbs are claimed to be the first and only speaker that you can actually sit inside of. The speakers are housed inside a massive clear sphere with a small circle cut out to allow you to climb in and out.
The developers behind the speakers say that the round design almost completely blocks noise from the outside of the speaker. Inside, the speaker is fitted with Tempur pillows to make for a comfortable time inside. The orb has 18 speakers to immerse its occupants with a full audio spectrum.
The company says that it will build two units, perhaps the only two ever built. Each of the orbs will sell for $15,000. The project is on Indiegogo and hasn’t raised a dollar yet. That’s because the only thing you can do is pledge your $15,000 and get your hands on one of the AudioOrbs.
Do you sometimes wonder whether your pooch actually understands all that you want to say to it? I know, some dog owners swear that they have a telepathic link with their four legged friends, while others claim that their dog is oblivious to all that is going on around them. Here is a new and easy way to communicate with your dog – thanks to the new Pet-Remote. The Pet-Remote happens to be a tiny vibrating device which will be able to play nice in tandem with a free iPhone App. All you need to do is to push a single button, and the Pet-Remote will be able to vibrate or play an acoustic signal, which your dog should then follow the Pavlovian principle and do what it is supposed to!
Of course, owning the Pet-Remote without a dog is pretty much useless, although we would not recommend hooking it up to a cat or other kinds of animals. Basically, once you have downloaded the free Pet-Remote iPhone app, do remember to attach the device itself to your dog’s collar. This is the first step when it comes to training your dog, and it could not get any simpler.
Once the Pet-Remote App is launched on your smartphone, you can then go ahead and push one of the command buttons. The tiny device on your dog’s collar will then vibrate and/or play an acoustic signal, depending on which particular setting it has been assigned to. This would allow your pooch to feel or hear the signal, followed by a relevant and corresponding reaction. In the first place, however, you would need to teach your dog just what you expect him to do when he receives a signal. It does seem as though the Pet-Remote is a high class clicker, but I guess this is one Indiegogo project that would be worth checking out. The Pet-Remote device itself tips the scales at a mere 10 grams, and it has a battery that can last it an entire year, now how about that for energy efficiency?
Paintball is a pretty straightforward game in which you scout out your opponents and shoot them with your paintball gun. You hit your target, they’re out and you win, simple as that. However it seems that one particular startup company has decided that even a classic game of paintball needs upgrading in the technology front and are looking to bring Call of Duty-like technology into the game. As you guys know, Call of Duty is a video game but it does sport features such as maps that lets you know where you are, where your team mates are, and etc. That’s one of the features that Innovis Labs is hoping to bring to the paintball arena with their Indiegogo project for a piece of technology called Project Overwatch.
By attaching their smartphone to their paintball guns, it will allow players to track realtime movements of players on the map. The company’s CEO, a certain 17-year old Josh Moody, believes that with Project Overwatch, it will allow the bridging of the gap between real world and digital world gaming. Apart from just mapping out player locations, Project Overwatch will also allow gamers to communicate with each other via voice chat, and will also come with features that allows gamers to jam the radar of the opposing team. It will also allow “commanders” to coordinate attacks from a remote location, such as from the sidelines or even at home lying on the couch.
It is a pretty amazing idea and could take paintball games to new heights, but as to whether it’s worth fixing what ain’t broke remains to be seen. As it stands the project is seeking funding via Indiegogo and has managed to raise almost $4,000 out of its $50,000 goal at this time of writing, so if you’d like to learn more or pledge a donation, hit up its Indiegogo page for the details.
Just how creative can we get? Apparently, the limits for creativity has yet to be reached, as new kinds of art are being churned out every single day. Having said that, the Panono throwable panoramic ball camera has generated its fair share of interest ever since the idea of it was introduced to the masses, and the team behind the Panono is currently working on its final development. Their efforts have not been in vain at all, since they ended up procuring camera modules with better optics and higher resolution which will be able to boost the camera from 72 to 108 megapixels, giving the Panono the proud distinction of being the first consumer camera to exceed 100 megapixels.
Here is a little bit of background history for those who want to know what the Panono is all about. It comes in the size of a grapefruit, and is obviously ball-shaped, while sporting three dozen (that’s a whopping 36!) camera modules that have been embedded all around it. These camera modules will be able to fire away simultaneously when it is thrown into the air, allowing it to capture everything in every direction in 360° X 360°, delivering fully spherical panoramic images.
With the inclusion of upgraded optics and higher resolution, consumers can now zoom in to see even greater detail when they view their Panono panoramic images on their computer or mobile devices. Checking out a panorama on a mobile device is a snap, thanks to the free Panono App which will offer a fully immersive experience as you will be able to move the images through the simple act of tilting the device up or down, and left or right, as though you were inside the image itself. Those who are interested can pick up the Panono over at their Indiegogo project page.
When your dog barks, what does it mean? For the more astute, they might realize that their dog wants to be let out for a walk, or it might mean that someone is at the door, or it could be that they’re hungry, or for those particular superstitious, could it be that our dogs are sensing something otherworldly? Jokes aside, it’s hard to tell what our dogs mean when they bark, but as we had reported earlier, a headset known as the No More Woof is hoping to translate a bark into something humans can understand. It might seem somewhat novel but the project has been met with huge success and has since managed to exceed its Indiegogo funding of $10,000 by almost $5,000 at this time of writing.
For those unfamiliar, No More Woof is a headset designed to be worn by dogs which uses an EEG hooked up to a Raspberry Pi computer and a loudspeaker to help dogs “talk” to their human owners. Initially the EEG unit is expected to be capable of picking up a few thought patterns, such as hunger, tiredness, and curiosity, and will be updated over time as the team conducts more research and is able to determine more thought patterns that could be translated into speech. There are two options available to backers: a NMW Micro that can understand 2-3 thought patterns, and a NMW Standard which will be able to distinguish more. For more information, check out the video above for the details.
This is something I never knew I wanted: it’s called BeatBuddy and it’s basically a crowdfunded guitar stomp box that allows you to cue up and play drumbeats through your amplifier. That means you can run this in line with your guitar effects and add some undistorted, funky fresh breakbeatery, making yourself into a formidable and frightening Voltron-like all-electronic band. And who doesn’t want that?
It’s essentially a drum machine in a pedal and is, according to the team, the first of its kind. You activate various fills and patterns with your foot and you can do a lot of offline editing on your computer. A knob turns the tempo up and down. The team has blown past its goal of $75,000 and is now hovering at $111,000. The early bird pledge is $150 for a pedal, and they expect to ship by April.
It’s a fairly simple system. You can trigger drumbeats by tapping the pedal to the tempo you want and you can also tap the pedal to add fills and alternate between verse and chorus. You can prepare MIDI beats that you can then load onto the device or just use the pedal’s 200+ built-in sounds.
1. Press pedal to start beat2. Press again to add a fill. Different fills are played each time to create a live drummer sound
3. Hold pedal down to begin transition beat
4. Release pedal to end transition and go to next song part (e.g. verse to chorus)
5. Use footswitch to add accent hits. Accent hits are customized to the song part (e.g. hand claps for verse, cymbal crashes for chorus)
6. Press pedal twice to stop beat with ending fill (or 3 times to stop immediately)
It also comes with GoranGrooves Studio, a drum-tracking program. The Miami-based team is led by David Packouz, a guitarist and songwriter. While there are plenty of ways to get drums onto your red hot rock-and-roll tracks, this one looks to be the most fun and it would be great if Union Square buskers used this to drown out their endless caterwauling of Brown Eyed Girl. Just sayin’.
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First of all, the ICE xPC is no ordinary machine when you take a closer look at it. After all, it tips the scales at a mere 4 ounces, where the physical size itself is so tiny, that it will be able to fit into your shirt pocket without missing a beat. Apart from that, the ICE xPC can be docked into peripherals, allowing it to transform into an intelligent core of a pad, notebook, desktop, or gaming device. The xPC itself has been specially constructed for performance and it will come with a high-performance motherboard, the most recent x86 CPU/chipset, 4GB RAM, anywhere from 64GB to a 128G SSD, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, an accelerometer and a camera.
