Hasta La Gadget!

Huzzah! A group in Germany has created a new food-grade polypropylene filament for 3D printers that is food safe and washable. Most current 3D printing filaments, while not exactly poisonous, can react in negative ways to moisture and acids, resulting in some nasty stuff. For example, you could use this to print anything from a plate to a pitcher.

The filament costs $129 for a 2 kg roll. Apparently, as we see from this picture, it also makes great candy dishes.

The plastic is as washable as any standard food storage container and it is highly flexible. It is produced according “to US FDA regulations and the relevant EU standards” to maintain safety and can even be used in children’s toys. Now, finally, you can suck on your 3D printed objects!

via 3Ders

Thanks to microcontrollers and mini computers it’s become far easier to build intelligent robots. But, until recently, you’ve had to jury-rig most of your off-the-shelf components to work in unison. That’s why Rex, a new “robot brain” is so important. Like Hardware Battlefield finalist ModBot, Rex offers one important part of your robot project and streamlines the process of implementing intelligence into your robotic projects.

Created by former Carnegie Mellon Master’s students Mike Lewis and Kartik Tiwarti, Rex is a cross between a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. Not unlike Udoo before it, Rex allows hobbyists to add powerful hardware control I/O to a powerful on-board processor without connecting multiple shields together with various tools.

“It’s designed specifically for robots,” said Lewis. “It’s a higher price than the RPi, but the experience of building a robot is less of a pain – no hassles for wiring, it has built-in battery inputs, and it boots up directly into a robot programming environment.”

The team is also offering online support and a fully featured help site for robot builders who are using their platform. The basic model starts at $99 for a fully-featured board with OS preloaded and a power supply. It also includes a serial cable. They are looking for $90,000 in pledges.

“Kartik and I knew we were both interested in consumer robotics and building things that could solve problems for regular people,” said Lewis. “Robotics is such a complicated field where the requirements for a system depend so much on what the system will be used for, that none of the platforms out there were really what I wanted, so I proposed that we attack this issue directly. As we continued to think about it, Rex seemed to make more and more sense for people who had already built Arduino-based robots but were having a difficult time stepping up to a more advanced platform.”

Interestingly, the team built their own OS, Alphalem OS, to run their boards and by building a developers platform right into the board they were able to offer a way to program your robot directly without uploading to a microcontroller. Most importantly these boards are about as big as an Arduino Uno, one of the smallest general-purpose micro controllers available. The board also includes a DSP and camera and microphone inputs, making it far more powerful for the robotics hobbyist and engineer.

The team isn’t stopping at basic motor controls, however.

“The OS will offer an easy-to-use development environment that is similar to Arduino’s ‘sketches’ and a task manager (MCP) that will allow you to launch multiple ‘sketch’-style processes in parallel for different tasks. It will have built-in drivers for devices that are useful for robots, like cameras and USB WiFi adapters. In the future, we will also be adding a layer for AI and Machine Learning applications.”

There’s also a motor kill switch in case your robot becomes sentient. In short, Rex has it all. It makes it easy to build great robot projects and, at about the same price as a few really nice stepper motors, the total cost isn’t very high. Now if only there were pneumatic controls so I could finally build my robotic soup taster.

The Pebble smartwatch is a great gadget in many respects, but the one thing that has always struck me as less than convenient is the fact that it uses a proprietary magnetic cable to charge. I lose said cable with fair frequency, and in fact I have no idea where it is right at this very moment. New Kickstarter project Sidekick will at least make it harder to lose, with a Pebble dock that holds your charger cable and provides power to your Pebble.

The Sidekick is a small rounded triangle, hewn either from black or white plastic or from wood, with a special channel cut out to perfectly fit the cable. It also supports your Pebble in an upright position, providing a clear view of the screen if you’re sitting at your desk working on your computer for instance.

Sidekick creator and design company Documont founder Rodney Timbol says that he has become a devoted fan of the Pebble itself, but also found that it wasn’t quite as convenient as it could be for off-wrist use.

“My wife and I purchased the Pebble and both had the experience of the Pebble and charger dropping on the floor from our nightstand so needed a really simple way of avoiding damaging our newly purchased watches,” he explained. “I started thinking I needed a stand but I got so consumed by the functions of the Pebble and that began my quest to design a different docking experience.”

It’s definitely true that as a watch-wearer myself, I always take mine off while typing in order to allow for free and easy typing. Usually, I keep my iPhone in a dock below my monitor to also keep up with info coming in on that device, but the Sidekick might better serve that purpose for those looking to maintain the kind of information prioritization that smartwatch notifications can provide.

With no moving parts and an attractive design, the Sidekick is a deceptively simple Pebble accessory that actually seems like something you’d expect Pebble might eventually ship in the box itself. It’s extremely affordable, too: $15 gets you one in the natural maple finish, and currently you can get a black or white version for just a $19 pledge. It can dock a Pebble either with charging or without (which means you won’t unnecessarily be putting stress on your battery), and it supports after-market bands as well as those that ship on the Pebble.

Timbol says that he plans to build a Pebble Steel version as well once he receives his device in early February, so anyone who has pre-ordered this device can expect something similar to emerge to suit the new Pebble magnetic connector, which differs from the original design. The Sidekick has an anticipated ship date of April 2014.

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.

Smart locks are all the rage these days, and it makes sense: using a device instead of a hardware key means you’re far less likely to lose the means to opening the lock, and you can do it remotely from anywhere with a connection. TEO is a new Kickstarter Project that wants to bring smart features to that most basic of everyday security devices, the padlock.

The TEO uses an app to control a Bluetooth LE lock device, which has a basic hinge and a design that instantly sets it apart from other padlocks out there. It’s also a rights-management platform, whereby you can see the location of your TEO locks on a map, and share access to each individually with anyone else that has the TEO app as you choose. So if you need a friend to pick up the bike you left outside their apartment last night and bring it back to you, it’s as simple as granting them temporary access to that TEO.

The padlock hardware itself is designed to be at least as theft-resistant as existing options on the market, as well as rugged and able to withstand all kinds of weather while keeping the smart features operational. It’ll be made by Heliox Tech, a manufacturer based in California that has worked on U.S. military and underwater tech for nearly a decade, though the design is from Vancouver-based Form3.

Of course, using BLE means that battery is a concern; TEO says that using a sophisticated sleep mode, it will last for at least one year in its final design. Users will be able to monitor battery life via the companion smartphone application, too, to make sure they don’t run out of juice and get left with a locked locker. The company also offers support that will swap out exhausted batteries, and help with bugs that cause locks to become unresponsive.

TEO creator OckCorp is looking for $165,000 to get its product off the ground, and has already raised around $34,000 as of this writing. A $79 pledge will currently get you one of the first production units, with a target ship date of December 2014. While the basic combo lock won’t be going out of style anytime soon, this definitely suit the needs of bike sharing organizations, delivery locker companies and others who have the need for a distributed, managed solution, as well as adventurous early adopters.