Awesome Stuff: A Post-Holiday Grab Bag
Techdirt. 2015-12-26
Summary:
This week, instead of a closer look at one product, we're rounding up a bunch of interesting Kickstarter campaigns that aim to ship in 2016. So, if you didn't get everything you wanted this Christmas — or if you are planning really far ahead for the next — take a look.
From The Simple-But-Cool Department: The Arcade Switch
Light switches are boring, and that's... probably fine, actually. But just in case it's not, the Arcade Switch is a pretty great way to give them some flare. These classic-arcade-button light switch covers have a customizable color selection (with new glow-in-the-dark options coming if they hit some stretch goals) and start at only $4. Unfortunately, they only work with flat "rocker" switches, but if you've already got those then installation looks pretty easy.
This campaign is nearly over! If you're reading this after the weekend, you're too late.
From The Science-Is-Beautiful Department: μPeek
The μPeek is an impressive little microscope the size of a credit card. It performs great for something so portable — it even crams motorized auto-focus into the tiny package, and achieves up to 350x magnification. Of course, it needs to be controlled by Bluetooth from an Android or iOS phone, and while this makes some sense considering it's all about portability, I'd really like to see more such products include simple desktop software as well, or at least an API that allows others to build apps on any platform.
From The Slow-And-Steady Department: Enlaps
While the μPeek is enabling microscopic photography, Enlaps is enabling time-lapse photography. The Enlaps Tikee is a self-contained, ultra-efficient time-lapse photography device that is designed to shoot practically forever with no memory or power limitations. It has a big battery and is self-charged by a solar panel, and ample internal storage that is regularly offloaded to the cloud via a wireless connection. All of this is managed by software that maximizes efficiency to get the longest standalone shoot possible, adjusting the schedule of uploads according to the recharge rate from the solar panel. Even without any solar charging whatsoever, it can take photos at ten-minute intervals for a week on one full charge. Of course, as you might expect, all this doesn't come cheap.
