Day three of CES 2016 was straight up weird. We wandered through the Sands Convention Center, where 3D printing and bluetooth light bulbs reigned supreme. But the real fun was the back room where 2-3 person teams were showing alpha builds for anything from car HUD projectors to WiFi connected dildos.
Two printers did catch my eye though. The awesomely named Lulzbot and the insanely badass Voxel8. Lulzbot’s hardware is completely open source, so all parts can be exchanged or upgraded over time. It can print a variety of plastics, with an an available upgrade for flexible materials (called NinjaFlex) so you can finally make the army of rubber duckies you’ve dreamed of for so long. Voxel was showing a dev kit for a 3D electronics printer. Yup, homeboy was wearing a watch he printed at the show. He had to pause to place the chip, battery and LEDs, but all the connections were automatically set in via high conductive silver ink. www.lulzbot.com and www.voxel8.com
Most enthusiastic award goes to Joy Garner from GameRunner Productions. After watching her 8 year old nephew instinctively move his legs while moving forward in a first person shooter, lightning struck and the GameRunner treadmill was born. Brilliant in its simplicity, it’s pretty much a standard treadmill with bicycle handles and a whole bunch of buttons. Obviously, walk to move forward, but continue walking while hitting a button near your thumb to jump, back up or strafe in either direction. Rotate the motorcycle handle to look up or down, and another button on the grip fires your gun. All the physical data is transferred to a USB port, allowing for immediate plug and play with any computer or console compatible with a mouse and keyboard. The Far Cry demo ran surprisingly well, and the whole setup felt natural within minutes. I wouldn’t necessarily go head to head online with it, but I would definitely feel like much less of a piece of shit when using it to go through any game’s campaign. It’s cheaper than most regular treadmills, and unlike any I’ve ever had, this one would actually get more than 3 weeks of use. www.gamerunner.com
Smartwatches were big this year, but pretty much all looked the same. But I was glad an attractive saleslady stopped me to talk about the much more subtly attractive Nex Band. There’s no screen to read texts, but five fully customizable touch-sensitive nodes can be set to receive notifications via haptic feedback and multicolored LEDs. It can also connect to devices in your home or office using IFTTT to turn on lights, adjust your stereo volume or make sure you turned off that WiFi toy before leaving your room. It’s a great way to have an extra degree of connection and control with your electronics without looking like a total nerdlinger. The one problem is that it’s only compatible with iOS right now, so I’ll have to wait till they upgrade to Android before I flood their inbox with requests for a demo unit. www.thenexband.com
Noise canceling headphones are a godsend when traveling, as we are ones to do here. Heck, we even have headphones in just so we don’t have to listen to each other after nearly a week of being constantly together. But what is you could skip on buying extra headphones for noise canceling, when you can use the earbuds you already have? Audasis is doing just that with a new type of headphone system that is yet to have a classification. Users can simply plug in their earbuds into the Oasis unit, of which looks straight out of Back to the Future, and create the first earbud/headphone hybrid.
Home tech was also on display, and we saw something that was both super cool, yet made us question where we are going as a species. Laundroid is the worlds first laundry folding robot. That’s right, this Watson looking contraption will fold all your clothes for you so that you can get back to your busy life. TECHNOLOGY!
#SevenDreamers #Laundroid laundry folding robot. #CES2016 #CES
A photo posted by J. Luis (@retroguy1985) on
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