Thanks to our friends over at Nicolites Electronic Cigarettes, I’ve just got back from a day looking through some very interesting gadgets and gizmos which you can buy now (or soon!) in you’re local high street at The Gadget Show Live 2013 in Birmingham. There were a number of things that caught my eye, so I thought i’d do a quick round up of some of the more interesting products I spotted.
Maker-bot’s Replicator 2
First up, the Soladapt Touchscreen. The guys on the stand were really great, and have a superb product which will take any monitor and turn it into a touchscreen! If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a giant iPad, then this is the thing for you! There were a number of companies there with new touchscreen monitors, but that has 2 draw backs. 1 – they’re expensive. 2 – You have to throw away a perfectly good monitor… And if you’re an iMac user, that’s not really possible, as the monitor is the computer… So the guys at Soladapt have come up with a device which fit’s easily over most screen sizes, and with a bit of software… Wham! Instant touchscreen monitor! All for under £150 for screens under 24″, and not a whole lot more for larger monitors.
3D Printers used to be a thing only available to large corporates, however the price has dropped a lot over the last few years making them far more affordable. Whilst they’re not quite in the realms of general consumer pricing yet, if you’ve got a company that could benefit from being able to make quick and cheap prototypes from 3D modeling files, you might want to take a look at Maker-bot’s Replicator 2. Retailing at £1,799.00 from UK supplier Robosavvy, the Replicator 2 is a small desktop unit that can produce actual 3D models with a resolution capability of 100 microns and a massive 410 cubic inch build volume. On the stand I was at they were modelling busts of Batman an Yoda at the time, and for that I salute you for being enormously geeky! ;)
CatGenie Tabby
As a cat owner, there’s one thing I hate, and that’s cleaning litter boxes… However, the folk at Cat Genie have decided to save cat owners that hassle with the worlds first (and only) self-flushing, self washing litter box! The box just needs to be hooked up to either a toilet or a laundry room, so the… erm… ‘solids’… have somewhere to go once it flushes, and have an electric supply. It’s fair to say, this is a bit of a luxury item, as the unit price outlay isn’t cheap (£279). However, the running cost are less than the cost of buying standard litter, and they estimate savings of around £66 a year. So you will make your money back over time, and all without having to deal with cleaning out a litter box ever again!
H-5D is a projection gaming system… Nothing new there. However, this one projects in 3D, giving you you’re own massive 3D screen in your home! It’s fairly pricey (£3,500), but massively impressive! I sat watching someone play through a level of Batman: Arkham City, and the extra depth it gave really pulled you into the game. I’d have loved to see it running an FPS or racer, as I imagine that would have been incredibly immersive.
There were also a couple of people selling these great little sound systems which are designed to turn anything into a speaker, but I’ll have a full GeekTest on them soon. :)
