Welcome to another week in Kickstarterland, and its jam packed with huge projects. Read about bone conducting glasses, gamified trash, pigeons and a $400 electric bike.
Glow Headphones with Laser Light – Seriously, how could you go wrong with fricking laser beams in headphones!?
Soundglasses – Sun glasses with built in Bluetooth bone conducting headphones. I am still waiting for my first bone conducting headphones I backed in 2013. The only issue I see is wearing your glasses with clear lenses to make a phone call at night.
Fly12 cycling camera – This bicycling attachment has lights, camera, batteries and continuously looping memory. Awesome.
Pon – A puncture-less push pin. Sometimes the lowest tech innovations are the most fun.
National Paper Airplane Contest – I rest my case Your Honour.
XLR-ONE Personal Robot Companion – Seriously, who has $1500 to invest in a half-arsed toy like this?
OctoFire 8 Port USB 3.0 Hub – More ports, more joy. 8 is still not enough for my house.
$400 Electric Bike – Second time is the charm. At $400 it’s really really tempting.
Shrinkified Arduino – For when an Arduino is an overkill, here is the Tiny Arduino. Faster than nothing! Less powerful than a toy locomotive! Unable to leap even small buildings in a single bound. But small and cheap.
RasPiO Duino – … or for when your Arduino isn’t enough why not strap it on the back of a Raspberry Pi for fun.
007 “Agent” – Move the user interface functionality onto a PIC based daughter board over UART. Looks like it was designed in the 60s but still useful for many people.
Clinicloud – Home digital medical equipment (initially stethoscope and thermometer) for guilty mothers. As a father many times over, I don’t need or want these things.
Screenstick Joystick – Not the first but a great looking product and definitely one of the cheesiest videos I have seen in a while.
Goodnight Lad – Another second attempt gone right. A really fun looking kids book with an augmented reality companion app. I hope this is the first of many such books as my kids would love it.
Robocore – The brain of your next robot project. It looks like they have just taken the Lego Mindstorms open source project and wrapped it in a nice video. If they don’t add some unique and original value, it will be disappointing.
Pigeon – Another wifi and Bluetooth connected digital picture frame. There have been lots of these in the last few years but I like this one. It seems to have all the bits I needed two years ago.
Zrro – Android based game console for TVs with cool conductive hover technology. Great video, clever product. It should be a winner and a game changer for this niche.
ISS Above for Raspberry Pi – Tracks the ISS on your HDTV plus adds a wearable LED badge that lights up whenever the ISS is above. A nice evolution.
Kanega Watch – Wearable old person monitor and watch. The mum sounds more robotic than the watch in this video but the daughter/founder has some good credentials.
ICeU Spectres – A personal aircraft with VTOL and a seriously cute kid. Great combination.
Cognitoys – It looks great but I am generally cynical about kids toys. I will wait and see if they can deliver on the promise. But if they have IBM and Watson behind them it could be interesting to watch.
Skyprowler – This is a high speed, long range, VTOL drone aircraft and it scares the bejesus out of me.
Radium – A Geiger counter for the masses. I can just see the look on the supermarket attendant when you pull out your Radium and wave it over their fruit.
Tetrabin – You know this is an Aussie project because its a rubbish bin not a trash can. Gamification of rubbish. Who knew that was a thing.
Rayger – LED light strip controller that reacts to music. Why does everyone think they are the first? Dude!
OWL drop-in filter adapter – Clever idea to put the filter behind the lens instead of in front and then make it hot swappable. I don’t believe it adds enough value to make it a mainstream product but it is still pretty cool. Pity it only work for mirror-less bodies, not SLRs. The video reminds me of an old Bruce Lee film.
Shitstarters
Sound Torch – Assuming he edited his own videos, this guy is on psychedelic drugs. If he paid someone else to do it, they might be tripping together.
iBridge Translation App – Since when is KS a app searching service. These guys are clearly not looking for assistance in developing their app, they are looking for customers. This app is nothing new at all.
Goto Browser – On one hand I applaud these young kids for their entrepreneurship but on the other hand, their motivation, idea and resulting product are seriously useless. It looks like a project for their mates funded by their family.
Lenzindex – I don’t mind the concept but £5 per sticker is absurd. Plus it won’t help with large lenses that lie on their side.
Pi Debug Clip – I am not a Pi user but this seems like a good enough product. But Ryan really should find a friend who doesn’t have a lisp to read out “Mac OSX” for him. I am a mean bastard, I know.
Steam Age Tech – As an adult I find the confluence of science, technology and history fascinating. My kids expect way more to keep them interested. Plus this guy doesn’t have much of a clue how to make quality videos.
Left Fielders
Beam Smart Projector – This weird project plugs a projector into a light socket for power. Why? What is wrong with using a GPO for power? Maybe if all you want is to have a screen on your desk but surely a monitor does that pretty well.
Rocket Ride – A slap on dildo for a couple to enjoy together with a founding engineer names Max Peak.
Beater Meter – Wanking in the 21st century involves a smartwatch application with social media integration.
Moocall Sensors – Sends the farmer an SMS when his cow is about to calf. This isn’t a crowd funded project, but I couldn’t resist including it!
And remember, its only limited by your frigging imagination.
This week in Kickstarterland 