Hasta La Gadget!

Check out this Mac-headed robot. It’s the cSpring Biped Educational Development Kit from the folks at the similarly-named Cognitive Spring team. According to its creators, the ‘bot is an attempt to “level the playing field between universities,” letting students tool around with an affordable bipedal robotics platform. cSpring has 12 servos in all — three per hip, one per knee and two per foot. It’s controlled by the Cognitive Shield, a bit of technology developed by the team in order to help bring the ‘bot to life. Cognitive Spring will be launching crowdfunding campaigns to bring bot of these products to life.

cSpring’s also got a “Kinect-like” camera on-board for sensing its environment, to help users perform what the company’s CEO calls “really easy controls.” Jump in after the break for a couple of videos of an early cSpring model in action, and click the source link below for more information on all of the above.

Check out the full list of Insert Coin: New Challengers semifinalists here — and don’t forget to pick a winner!

Filed under: Robots

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Source: Cognitive Spring

Back in 2011, MIT discovered that the Fisker Karma’s batteries only lost 10 percent of their battery life after 1,500 charges. Admittedly, the study didn’t examine the EV’s reliability, nor its tendency to spontaneously combust, but the MIT researchers did learn plenty about energy conservation in the process. Fast-forward to now, and YShape, a start-up spun off from that original research, is taking to Kickstarter to fund HeatMeter, a sensor that’s designed to measure the efficiency of fuel-based boilers.

While electricity usage meters are ten-a-penny, it isn’t so easy to find equivalents for gas, propane or oil-powered units. By measuring the vibrations in its casing, HeatMeter can tell you exactly how much energy has been used. Combine that data with your home size and average bill cost, and it’ll work out what you’re spending and how to use less. YShape, led by Radu Gogoana, needs $60,000 for the initial production run — and will offer you a discounted unit if you kick in $129 — or lifetime upgrades and support if you make it $149. Not convinced? Head on past the break for the video pitch.

Filed under: Wireless

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Source: Kickstarter

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.

We’ve been talking about Securifi’s Almond router a fair amount, since the new year rolled around. Darren put the thing through its paces, just after the company announced plans to release its successor — or, rather, plans to Kickstart the followup. As of this morning, the crowdfunding push has landed. The Taipei-based company launched the Kickstarter page for the next generation of its beloved touchscreen router.

The latest version, which we had the opportunity to play around with at CES, features a 2.8-inch display, as before, but adds some much welcomed additions, including support for 802.11ac, Zigbee and Z-Wave. The former promises a WiFi speed bump, the latter two bring the promise of extended home automation. Speaking of home automation, the Almond+ lets you control things like security alerts, heating and light control on the go with your iOS or Android device.

Securifi’s currently working toward a $250,000 goal, and has some solid prizes to offer up. Those who pledge $95 or more will get the $99 router, along with free shipping. Pledging at $129 will get you one of a number of Kickstarter exclusive colors. Those winning routers are set to ship around September.

Previous project update: At last look, the Pinoccio microprocessor is well on its way to becoming a real device, with around $44,000 pledged of its $63,000 goal, with a full 22 days left to get in on the action.

Filed under: Wireless

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Source: Kickstarter

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.

The fine folks over at Lomography are at it again, but this time, they’re out for something more than just quirky. In fact, this may be useful for many more people than those obsessed with retrofied / distorted photography. As so many established outfits are doing these days, Lomography has turned to Kickstarter in hopes of funding its latest endeavor. The Smartphone Film Scanner is a (comparatively) portable device that straps onto any iPhone and “most” Android phones. From there, you simply slide any old 35mm film you have laying around into the back, flip on the embedded backlight, and capture a photo of the negative using the included app. Once it’s digitized, you can flip it into a positive, stitch together a panorama, or even create a multi-frame animation. Naturally, it can be shared around the globe from there using your social media program of choice.

Head on past the break for a few demo vids, and tap the source link to hand over your credit card details — early birds can snag one for $40 + shipping, while those coming on late will be asked to fork over a bit more.

Continue reading Insert Coin: Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner does as its name implies

Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, Apple

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Source: Kickstarter

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.

Parallel computing is normally reserved for supercomputers way out of the reach of average users — at least at the moment, anyway. Adapteva wants to challenge that with its Parallella project, designed to bring mouth-watering power to a board similar in size to the Raspberry Pi for as little as $99. It hopes to deliver up to 45GHz (in total) using its Epiphany multicore accelerators, that crucially, only chug 5 watts of juice under normal conditions. These goliath speeds currently mean high costs, which is why they need your funds to move out of the prototype stage and start cheap mass production. Specs for the board are as follows: a dual-core ARM A9 CPU running Ubuntu OS as standard, 1GB RAM, a microSD slot, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Ethernet and a 16- or 64-core accelerator, with each core housing a 1GHz RISC processor, all linked “within a single shared memory architecture.”

An overriding theme of the Parallella project is the openness of the platform. When finalized, the full board design will be released, and each one will ship with free, open-source development tools and runtime libraries. In addition, full architecture and SDK documentation will be published online if-and-when the Kickstarter project reaches its funding goal of $750,000. That’s pretty ambitious, but we’re reminded of another crowd-funded venture which completely destroyed an even larger target. However, that sum will only be enough for Adapteva to produce the 16-core board, which reportedly hits 13GHz and 26 gigaflops, and is expected to set you back a measly $99. A speculative $3 million upper goal has been set for work to begin on the $199 64-core version, topping out at 45GHz and 90 gigaflops. Pledge options range from $99 to $5,000-plus, distinguished mainly by how soon you’ll get your hands on one. Big spenders will also be the first to receive a 64-core board when they become available. Adapteva’s Andreas Olofsson talks through the Parallella project in a video after the break, but if you’re already sold on the tiny supercomputer, head over to the source link to contribute before the October 27th closing date.

Continue reading Insert Coin: The Parallella project dreams of $99 supercomputers

Filed under: Misc

Insert Coin: The Parallella project dreams of $99 supercomputers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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