Five Easy Pieces: Short Product Presentations from CES 2014 (Video)

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At CES and other big trade shows, small companies and start-ups are often overshadowed by industry giants whose huge promotional budgets let them dominate a show's exhibit area. In this video, Tim Lord asked the spokespeople for five small companies exhibiting at CES whose products interested him to give one-minute presentations about their products. So take a quick look at the ZeroHour USB "tactical grade" battery backup flashlight; MadeSolid, a 3-D printing material company; TangoPC, "the world’s most powerful Pocketable, Officeable, Entertainmentable, Gameable, Windowsable, Linuxable PC; Google Glass competitor GlassUp; and DoorBot, "the doorbell for smartphones," which was featured on the ABC TV show Shark Tank in November, 2013. DoorBot got no investment from the "sharks," but managed to raise $1 million from "traditional technology investors." DoorBot's fundraising success aside, today's video is about companies that are unlikely to get much coverage from "mainstream" news channels that cover CES. If you don't see the video (probably because you're enjoying the thrill of Slashdot Beta), you can view it here.

Five Easy Pieces: Short Product Presentations from CES 2014

1.

Interviewee:Here I have a ZeroHour USB Tactical Grade Battery Backup Flashlight. It is a tactical grade flashlight with an integrated USB battery backup. So you can actually charge your iPad, your other tablets, and your other mobile devices.This is very very bright. We are using a CREE XM-L U3 LED. I can show you how bright that is right now.That’s 1000 maximum lumen output right there. There’s 20, 400, and 18.

Tim:How is it different from other flashlights?

Interviewee:Well, it is different because it is modular. Sure, it is a flashlight but it is also a battery backup. It can also be used independently of one another. So you can actually detach the flashlight, attach a cap, and now you have a portable, USB battery backup that’s nearly indestructible.

2.

Pete Walton :We are MadeSolid a 3D printing materials company. We are here at CES. We produce, we do research, and we formulate our own resins, photopolymers and filaments for 3D printers.

Tim:Why is that important?

Pete :That’s important because there is a lot of room for development in terms of materials. There needs to be more functionality and lower prices. So for example, in the Form 1 we are the only other people to be able to get our resins formulated to work in a compatible way with Form 1. We are cheaper, we are easier to work with, and we offer a lot more colors. With filament printers, we actually have a PET derivative that is strong like ABS easy to work with like PLA but a lot more flexible.

Tim:How long has that been under tension there?

Pete :This has been under tension for three weeks and it is still holding strong. Still springing. That’s right.

Tim:Very cool. What’s the future for 3D printing?

Interviewee: The future of 3D printing is all in the materials. The more and better materials you have, the more functionality you bring the better you can actually do things with your printer.

3.

Bhavesh Shah :This is Tango. This is the world’s most powerful pocketable, dockable, officeable, entertainmentable, gameable Windows PC. What we have inside this is a quad core AMD 25 watt processor which is a standard laptop performance.We got a DDR3 slot for RAM. You can put up to 8 gig RAM. We have a slot inside for data drive you can put up to ½ terabyte of SSD inside. All in a small box with Windows 7, or Linux or any other PC based operating system you like, you can install it on it. It is pretty open hardware.

4.

Francesco:I am Francesco Giartosio. This is our company GlassUp. We are developing eye glasses that allow you to see information.Very simple very basic. This is how they will look like. And the prototype that I have in my other hand shows what next offering we have to show.We want this to be monochrome, low resolution 320 x 240. We want to give information depending on the alphabet, it can be of very different kinds. We wanted it to be cheaper than our competitors. We want the information to be seen in front of you, overimposed on reality, and we want to come around to market in this year so that the users that are waiting for it, can get it. Our price will be $399. And the difference with Google Glasses is that Google has it on the side, we want to see the information just in front of you. And we want them to look like a normal pair of glasses. No camera in the first version. We will have a camera VGA for industrial uses in following versions.

5.

Caith:My name is Caith. I am a product designer/operations at Doorbot. Doorbot is a Wi-Fi wireless doorbell that pings your cell phone no matter wherever in the world you are. All you got to do is press the button, it is going to send a push notification to your cell phone, just like a facetime call, you could answer the call, decline it.

Tim:So is there a camera in there that lets you see who is at the door?

Caith:Yes, there is a camera installed in it. You can actually rotate the camera as per your needs.

Tim:And how is it powered?

Caith:It is actually dual powered so you could actually power it through the existing doorbell wiring installed and it is battery operated too.And the battery lasts up to a year.

Tim:So you can access the images then from anywhere?

Caith:Anywhere from the world.

Tim:Alright. Now this is for Android and iOS.

Caith:Yes, it works for both Android and iOS devices.

Tim:Why not desktop PCs?

Caith:Sorry?

Tim:Why not desktop PCs?

Caith:Well, we are building that interface yet, but for now it is only for iOS and Android.

Tim:Talk about price and availability.

Caith:So it is available at GetDoorBot.com for $199 retail pricing.

Tim:And that’s now?

Caith:Yes, it is available now.

Re:

[zippthorne]

Painted matte black with no shiny surfaces to give away your position when using it, I assume. Not sure how useful that would be in a flashlight, though.

Another option might be tactical vs. strategic. As in, it's good for one operation, very good for that one operation, but don't count on keeping it with you for an entire campaign. A flashlight that burns extra bright or extra long or both, but only has a single use might be considered tactical.

Or it could have several components made of cast 6061 Alumin

Re:

[Sockatume]

It means somebody found a marketing gimmick that not only lets the buyer pretend it's a serious investment in their future survival, but allows the seller to engage in a five-blades-style over-engineering race with their competitors that drives up the profit margin. Make it "everyday carry" and people will both buy it and carry it everywhere without actually knowing when or if they'll ever need it, because by definition those are "just in case" items.

Tango?

[atari2600a]

Unless they also found a way to modularize the APU, then genericized it ALL with open standards, it won't sell. Think about it: what good is the portable form-factor if it REQUIRES a dedicated dock? A dock here, a dock there, look at that you've ALREADY spent more than the laptop you were gonna get. They didn't even bother to have a laptop enclosure at launch of the kickstarter, because they used that time to pick library music for their ad. It's easier than it sounds when LCD's now have genericized in

Doorbot

[swb]

The doorbot looks pretty cool. I hate getting up to see if the person ringing the door is someone I want to answer the door for (like my son's friends when he's not home, morons ignoring my no soliciting sign, etc).

One thing I couldn't tell was whether it was possible to query the doorbot's camera arbitrarily without having someone necessarily ring the doorbell. I suppose not for power management reasons, although the power management angle makes me wonder how long it takes between someone pressing the door bot button and getting a notification. I'm guessing the device has to warm boot, including making an 802.11 connection, which seems like it could add a delay.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like the sound of this:

What happens if my personal Wi-Fi network goes down?

If your Wi-Fi network goes down, doorbot will not be able to send notifications to your connected devices. If your network temporarily goes down, you will need to go through the Wi-Fi setup again in order to get your doorbot online.

Seriously?

Captcha: approval

Re:

[microcars]

The upside is that it is "fully integrated" with LOCKITRON.

So that means I still have to go to the door to unlock it manually.

[/sarcasm]

Re:

[jrumney]

Based on their statement that if your WiFi goes down, you'll have to set up the doorbot's WiFi connection again, I don't think it is going into suspend and waking up and remaking the connection every time someone presses the button. Also it is 802.11b, so say goodbye to reasonable speeds on the rest of your wireless network.

Re:

[swb]

I don't know how they can get months of standby time on a charge without "sleeping" the 802.11 connection and reconnecting. Maintaining a continuous wifi connection would kill the batteries in hours, not months like they claim.

Video + Beta = Mindblown

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

So...the SlashDot community asks for "no more lame videos, ever" and the editors give us FIVE videos? What's next...keeping beta?

+5 sarcasm

[Ex-MislTech]

(probably because you're enjoying the thrill of Slashdot Beta) +5 sarcasm.