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Hardware

Video Fuel 3-D Claims to be a High-Res, Point and Shoot 3-D Scanner (Video) 25

Posted by Roblimo from the two-dimensions-was-more-than-enough-for-grandpa-so-it's-more-than-enough-for-us dept.
The Fuel 3-D website has a blurb that says, "The world’s first handheld point-and-shoot, full color 3D scanner. Our planned list price is $1500 but by placing your advanced order now you pay only $1,250. Fire up your creativity!" We've thought about getting a 3-D scanner ever since we first messed with a 3-D printer, but we've thought more about something in the sub-$300 price range than in $1000+ territory. But that's just us. There is no doubt a healthy market for 3-D scanners to use in commercial applications where $1250 (or even $1500) is hardly worth noticing. Ah, well. Maybe we need to look at the The DAVID website which describes their device as an "Incredibly Low-Cost 3D Scanner for Everyone!" Their 3-D starter kit is only $529 from a randomly-selected U.S. reseller, which isn't too bad compared to the alternatives. But waiting for prices in this market niche to come down is another possibility, and it's one a whole lot of individuals -- including us -- and smaller companies will probably choose. (Alternate Video Link)

Comment Re:Offer a ROI? (Score 1) 61

by Roblimo (#47158757) Attached to: This 360-Degree, 4K Video Camera isn't Getting Kickstarted (Video)

No, the finished cam looked great. But they took Tim through the whole development process, starting with early prototypes. This jazzes people like Tim and me, but can put people off who are used to seeing the finished device, not prototypes. This is a good lesson for you if you ever do a crowdfunding campaign.

Comment Re:Well, thanks for telling us after the fact (Score 1) 61

by Roblimo (#47158735) Attached to: This 360-Degree, 4K Video Camera isn't Getting Kickstarted (Video)

Not only that, but there are other ways of raising an early round of funding if you bomb on Kickstarter. It's the biggest crowdfunding site, but neither the only one nor necessarily the best. Here's an article on Forbes.com about crowdfunding: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ch...

Now, the sad thing about Centrcam is that they had excellent engineering, and a detailed proposal, but that proposal was probably too technical for the majority of people who might have helped them through Kickstarter. Other sites might be better for them. And they might want to get some marketing advice, too.

About Slashdot running this after their Kickstarter campaign failed: I didn't know about their Kickstarter deadline until last Friday. Way too late. And I don't think they explicitly told Tim the expiration date of their K campaign. If they had, I'm sure he would have jumped the Centrcam interview in our video editing queue. If I had known, I sure would have. Ah, well....
Hardware

Video This 360-Degree, 4K Video Camera isn't Getting Kickstarted (Video) 61

Posted by Roblimo from the not-everything-makes-the-cut-even-if-we-like-it dept.
This is something that caught Tim Lord's eye as he cruised the 2014 Bay Area Maker Faire: A 360 4K-resolution video camera. It's not out yet for retail sale, but if you look at the Centrcam website you can see a number of videos their cameras have shot, including some high-motion ones that they say, truthfully, are excellent to watch full-screen. The people who came up with this aren't college students who have never done any professional design work. Rather, they're "the same team that engineered and built the Apple iPhone cameras." So it's no wonder they have made something pretty cool that has already been used to make videos for Fox Sports, National Geographic, and the U.S. Army, among others. Their Kickstarter blurb is pretty cool, too. It is one of the most detailed ones we've ever seen. It's sad that they only got $607,628 of their $900,000 funding goal, considering all the work they've put into their product, along with the great presentation. They didn't know this would happen at the time this video was shot at the Maker Faire; their Kickstarter time window didn't close until four days ago. But there are other ways to fund a startup, and we hope they manage find one -- because we would eventually like to get our hands on one of their cameras and test it for ourselves, possibly with a little help from some of the Bradenton Riverwalk Skatepark regulars. (Alternate Video Link)
Hardware

Video A Bike Taillight that Goes Beyond Mere Taillighting (Video) 86

Posted by Roblimo from the a-bike-light-that-plays-pong-on-your-back dept.
Meet David. Tim Lord ran into him at the 2014 Maker Faire Bay Area. He didn't have a display, and he wasn't obviously trying to sell anything or promote a Kickstarter campaign. He was just walking around with a panel full of LEDs that he wears as a backpack while riding his bike, which beats the heck out of regular bike taillights, even the blinky flashy ones a lot of us have these days. So good on you, David. This is your three minutes of Slashdot fame -- and please note, people, that you can now fast-forward through any preroll ads longer than 30 seconds, so you won't get bombed with multi-minute ads to watch a three minute Slashdot video. (Alternate video link)

Comment Re:NO, No its not even close (Score 1) 66

by Roblimo (#47126495) Attached to: Not A Hoverboard, but Close (Video)

(shrug) This thing struck me as something an Audi buyer would want. I have a bike, but due to recent balance problems I have "stabilizer wheels" (adult training wheels) on it. Tomorrow my banana seat and sissy bar kit is supposed to get here. Crank-forward bikes cost mucho buckaroonies, so I figure a banana seat will give me an ass-back seating position and provide similar goodness for my old, messed-up knees. End result, hopefully finished by this weekend: A lowrider Aluminum (Schwinn) beach cruiser with training wheels. One of a kind. Cost? Not enough to buy ANY of these electric skateboard thingies. Not even close.
Transportation

Video Not A Hoverboard, but Close (Video) 66

Posted by Roblimo from the if-one-wheel-is-$1500,-does-the-two-wheeled-version-cost-$3000? dept.
It's a one-wheeled, self-balancing electric skateboard called (appropriately) the Onewheel. You can't buy one right now. They've already shipped all of their first production runs and still have Kickstarter backers' orders to fulfill. After that, though, they might make one for you -- if you come up with a deposit of $500 against a total price of $1499. Plus shipping. This may seem like a lot of money to some people, but enough folks have found it reasonable that Onewheel has sold out not just its first production run but also the second one. Their Kickstarter success was nothing short of amazing, with $630,862 raised although their goal was only $100,000. Inventor Kyle Doerksen is the man behind Onewheel, but he's also one of the people behind Faraday Bicycles, whose flagship model costs $3500 -- and whose initial production run is also sold out -- which means there are people around who are willing to pay $3500 for an electric bicycle instead of putting a motor kit on a used Schwinn for a total cost of less than $500 (with a little careful shopping). Alternate video link.
Hardware

Video Bunnie Huang Shows Off His Open Source Laptop (Video) 24

Posted by timothy from the something-we've-been-waiting-for-since-1995 dept.
Bunnie Huang is both a hardware and software hacker, but that's greatly understating the case: renaissance man is more like it. Bunnie doesn't just tinker with one-off system modifications or console mods (though he's done that, too) -- he creates and repurposes at scale. (He's also an author, respected researcher with interesting thoughts on a wide range of topics, like how to think of the H1N1 flu from the point of view of a security researcher.) Bunnie's latest long-term project has been mentioned a few times on Slashdot: It's an open-source laptop computer that goes much farther than some other open-source hardware projects, and as a bonus includes an FPGA as well as a conventional -- but unusual -- processor. (Bunnie grants that there are still bits that aren't quite open source, but points out that we also don't have the software that runs the fabs; there's a point of diminishing returns.) A crowd funding campaign (via CrowdSupply) was successful enough to also fund several stretch goals, including a general purpose breakout board. I talked with Bunnie at the recent Bay Area Maker Faire. (Expect more from that show in coming weeks.) He walked us through the state of the hardware, and talked about some of the design decisions that go into making a computer that is of, by, and for hackers. (Alternate video link)
Build

Video Printed Circuits as Part of a 3-D Printed Object (Video) 42

Posted by timothy from the next-thing-you-know-we'll-be-printing-electronic-ray-guns dept.
Affordable 3-D printing is still young; just a few years ago, it would have been nearly impossible to have an arbitrary three-dimensional piece of plastic (or resin, or sometimes metal) created from a software description in a box that fits on your desk. But in the several years the printing of *things* has moved fromquaint, quixotic, futzing-about hobby into something that works (fairly) reliably in ever more garages, schools, and hackerspaces, it's gotten good enough that you can now download and print quite a few objects that are available for download, or scan small items to replicate, or scan your friends to print out as statuettes. However, for the most part, these printed pieces are static, and finished. With care, you can print things like a chain, or even a ball joint, but you're still limited mostly to one basic material at a time. (Printing with multiple colors is getting easier, though.) If you want to print a flashlight or a robot, you'll need to add wires and other circuitry as a separate step. That's what the folks at Rabbit Proto (get it?) are trying to change. With the system they're working on, a filament printer is used to fabricate the object itself, but at the same time, both capacitive and conductive features can be baked -- or rather printed -- right in, with a separate print head. We talked with Alexandre Jais and Manal Dia of Rabbit Proto about how the system works, and why you might want to use it. (Alternate video link.)

Comment Re:rebranding (Score 1) 182

Maybe not for himself or herself. Bu I got cheapie Nextbook tablets for preteen granddaughters because they didn't have cameras, and almost all the trouble a young girl can get into with a tablet or smarty phone starts with a camera and a boy. I can't do much about boys from 1000 miles away, but I sure can prevent cameras in cellphone and tablets. Give them a shared (household) HP printer & bluetooth keyboards, and their tablets aren't just toys, but homework machines. And for $80 each, loss or breakage (which happens) isn't a huge tragedy.
Hardware

Video Printing 3-D Replicas of Human Beings with a Home Brew Printer (Video) 41

Posted by timothy from the honey-i-shrunk-the-gamers dept.
When I bumped into Abram Thau at Metrix Createspace in Seattle's Capitol Hill, he showed me a few printed figurines, including a Storm Trooper (of the Star Wars variety), and I thought at first that he had printed them as duplicates of similar-sized commercial products. Not so: It turns out these are made-from-life, specifically from cos-players who have stood on Abram's human-suitable turntable (powered by a chicken rotisserie motor hooked to a 3-D printed pulley) while he scanned them in. Thau's apartment is practically shouting distance from Metrix, but that pulley was made on a large Deltabot filament printer in the corner of his living room. (A living room usefully cluttered with tools, bottles of resin, projectors in various states of repair, and more printed objects.) More interesting still, Thau's figurines are produced with a home-built resin printer. Resin is messier to work with than the filament feedstock of RepRap/Makerbot style printers (and the resin itself has a slight odor), but it allows different results. Overhanging pieces are possible without requiring elaborate support pieces built into the mesh, and the resulting product can be noticeably smoother than typical filament printing, though all 3-D printing techniques are getting better. Thau didn't buy one of the commercially available resin printers, though (like FormLabs's), but instead decided to build his own out of scavenged and off-the-shelf components. Budget concerns and improvisation rule the day (Thau is also a grad student, studying to be a middle school teacher): That means there's a book holding up the projector which is vital to curing the resin, and the printer's case is recycled from a previous one. The results look as good as the affordable commercial ones I've seen, and he's excited to teach others to make their own. Third-party resin makers and a robust market in used projectors mean that other hobbyists can follow his lead and turn their friends into figurines. (Alternate video link)

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