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At any given moment there are approximately a zillion different crowdfunding campaigns happening on the Web. Take a stroll through Kickstarter or IndieGoGo and you’ll find there’s no shortage of weird, ambitious, and downright stupid projects out there – far too many for any reasonable person to keep up with. But here at DT we are not reasonable people. We spend an inordinate amount of time poring through crowdfunding sites and product blogs in search of the next Oculus Rift or Pebble Watch, so we’re here to bring you a quick roundup of the best projects that are currently up and running.
If you’ve ever tried to build a serious cryptocurrency mining rig with a regular PC case, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a few problems. Normal cases are built for normal computers – they’re simply not designed to handle a gazillion GPUs (the component needed the most for mining), the high temperatures that result from running so many GPUs, multiple power supplies, and multiple high-RPM cooling fans. DopaMINE, however, is designed with all these things in mind. It’s six GPU slots – all of which are spaced to promote airflow – dual power supply support, triple 120/140mm fan support, and even a modular, stackable shroud so you can easily scale up your rig as it gets bigger. Back the project now and you can lock one down for around $220.
A prolonged lack of exposure to natural sunlight can have a noticeable effect on your physical and mental wellbeing, but the problem is that it’s nearly impossible to tell if you’re getting enough. Until now, that is. SunSprite is basically like a fitbit for sunshine – instead of tracking how many steps you take in a day, this badboy measures how much light you’re soaking up with an array of embedded solar cells. Once turned on, the device will give you a daily goal, and indicate how far along you are via a low-power LED strip. Better yet, it also syncs with your smartphone via Bluetooth to give you more detailed info, and doesn’t need to be charged. Ever. Thanks to the high-efficiency solar cells on its surface and energy-sipping components, just a few minutes of sunlight can power SunSprite for nearly a week.
Breadboards and cheap microcontrollers like Arduino have given rise to an electronics renaissance, allowing hobbyists and inventors alike to develop prototypes at an astonishing pace. But they’re far from perfect. Despite their usefulness, breadboards can quickly become messy and disorganized, which makes transitioning your design to a printed circuit board (PCB) much more difficult. AgIC Print offers an alternative solution. It’s basically a printer modification kit – you can install it on your busted old inkjet printer, boot up the accompanying software, and start printing working circuits on paper. To make this possible, the kit comes with special metallic ink and thick paper, and once you’ve got the design worked out, you can easily apply the very same design to a PCB.
Feel like you’ve seen this before? Probably because you have. Smart gesture-control rings definitely aren’t the most original idea at this point, but Ring is definitely one of the most intriguing ones we’ve seen. It works by tracking the movement of your finger – you actually write out words and draw pictures to enter various commands. For example, lets say you want to open up your email client and compose a message without taking your phone out of your pocket. If configured correctly, you could just tap on the side of the ring to activate it, draw an envelope to open the appropriate app, and then just start writing with your finger to compose the text. The project has already blasted past its $250K funding goal, and is currently sitting pretty at well over half a million dollars in pledged funds.
Move over, Jesus – you’re not the only one who can turn water into wine anymore. The aptly-named Miracle Machine is essentially a teched-out tabletop fermentation machine designed to allow average boozers like you and me to make our own high-quality wine from the comfort of our homes. Technically, DIY small-batch fermentation chambers have been around for ages, but what’s noteworthy about this particular one is that it’s app-enabled, and uses some technological wizardry to produce custom-made wines in just a couple days. To use it, you start by adding a bit of water to one of Miracle Machine’s pre-made kits containing grape concentrate and yeast. The you just hit the Start button and let the technology take over. Check out our full article for more details.
CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:
Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.
Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."
4 simple pieces of tech that helped me run my first marathon
The fitness world is littered with opportunities to buy tech aimed at enhancing your physical performance. No matter your sport of choice or personal goals, there's a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It'll cost plenty of money, but the gains can be marginal -- and can honestly just be a distraction from what you should actually be focused on. Running is certainly susceptible to this.
A few months ago, I ran my first-ever marathon. It was an incredible accomplishment I had no idea I'd ever be able to reach, and it's now going to be the first of many I run in my lifetime. And despite my deep-rooted history in tech, and the endless opportunities for being baited into gearing myself up with every last product to help me get through the marathon, I went with a rather simple approach.
