Skip to main content

Awesome tech you can’t buy yet: 3D printing ceramic, swim trackers, collapsible bags

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 no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there – alongside some real gems. We’ve cut through the Pebble clones and janky iPhone cases to round up the most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects out there this week. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project — even the best intentioned — can fail, so do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.

Swimmerix — Swim-tracking wearable device

 

OK, before we get into anything else: How did the creators totally miss the mark with the name of this thing? It’s a wearable designed to track swimming metrics, so “Swimmetrix” seems like a logical name for it — but for some reason these guys chose to forego the T and call it “Swimmerix.” The name definitely isn’t a big deal, but seriously? Swimmerix? It sounds like a new cereal brand created by Michael Phelps.

Anywho, if you can get past the name, this is actually a unique little device. There reason you don’t see a lot of swim-focused wearables on the market right now is because designing them poses a bunch of different challenges. They suffer all the requirements of a general tracker – light weight, long battery life, and most importantly, high accuracy – but they also need to fit in a waterproof package that’s easy to use in the water. That’s all pretty difficult to achieve, but Swimmerix has some pretty clever ways of meeting those goals. Most notably, it uses a two-part design. There’s a module on your wrist, and a base that sits outside of the pool — a configuration that helps the system provide far more accurate distance and speed measurements.

Read more here.

Neit — Fully collapsible smart luggage

Tired of stuffing your suitcases into the little space you have available in your apartment? This sweet new collapsible suitcase might be just what you need. Premium luggage brand Neit has recently taken to Kickstarter with a new line of suitcases that can be broken down into a flat-pack form when they’re not in use. Suitcases can be collapsed down to  a height of just 3 inches, so they can be stowed pretty much anywhere — under your bed, couch, or hanging in your closet, thanks to its carabiner-style hanger.

And that’s not all. To sweeten the deal, Neit also built a boatload of smart features into the luggage as well. Each suitcase also comes with a built-in GPS tracking system. By downloading their Travel App, you’ll be able to locate your luggage with the tracker, store your boarding pass, check your flight status, book additional flights or hotels, and even map your way to a hotel from the airport.

Read more here.

ScopeAround — Multipurpose wireless camera set

Ever needed to get a look at something in a tight, hard-to-access space? What about something that’s too small to see with the naked eye, but in a location that’s ill-suited for a magnifying glass? Chances are you probably don’t encounter these situations all that often, but for those rare occasions that you do, Scopearound is the tool you’ll wish you had.

The device is basically just a slim, lightweight handheld camera that comes with with three interchangeable lens heads. There’s a macro lens for looking at small stuff, a micro lens for looking at even smaller stuff, and flexible “snake cam” attachment that can slither its way into all those tricky nooks and crannies you might encounter. The cool part is that all the images it collects are beamed wirelessly to your mobile device in real time, so you don’t have to don any special glasses or look into a viewfinder to see what the camera sees. It kind of makes you wonder why this kind of thing didn’t exist until now.

Read more here.

Pagaré — NFC-enabled watch strap for Pebble

Paying with your smartphone via services like Apple Pay and Android Pay is still a relatively new feature, but what about paying with your watch — without even needing your phone? Recently launched on Kickstarter, and fully backed by Pebble, Pagaré is an NFC-enabled strap for the Pebble smartwatch, so all you have to do is place the side of your wrist to a payment terminal to make a payment.

Because it uses NFC, there are more than 9 million terminals in the world where you can use the Pagaré to make a payment.  Once you get the strap, download the Pagaré app on the Pebble Appstore and add your credit cards. You can switch between cards with the up and down buttons on the watch, and you can set a default card in the app. What’s especially neat is that once you set up your cards, you won’t need your phone to make contactless payments with your watch.

Read more here.

Porcelite — Ceramic resin for 3D printers

3D printers have come a long way in the past few years, but the materials they print with have also been progressing in leaps and bounds. It’s not just ABS and PLA anymore. Nowadays we’ve got 3D printing filament made from dozens of different materials. Wood, bronze, nylon, carbon fiber, water-soluble plastic, flexible rubber — you name it and there’s probably a printing material made of it. And the list just keeps on growing.

The latest addition to the ever-expanding category isn’t actually a filament at all; it’s a new kind of resin designed for SLA printers — the kind that use UV light to “grow” objects out of a pool of liquid. This particular resin is called Porcelite, and it’s totally freaking amazing. It’s basically liquid ceramic that partially hardens and becomes something like firm clay when it comes out of the printer. From there, it can be sculpted and manipulated to a certain degree, before finally being fired in a kiln and fully transformed into solid porcelain.

Read more here.

Drew Prindle
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…
Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027
Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
The Nikkei report suggests the company plans to diversify its production footprint beyond Japan and China and expanding into the U.S., Thailand, and Argentina. This would help mitigate the impact of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all car imports, as well as reduce delivery times. Toyota is also building a battery plant in North Carolina.
For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X  and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
Separately, Toyota and Honda, along with South Korea’s Hyundai, all announced on April 4 that they would not be raising prices, at least over the next couple of months, following the imposition of U.S. tariffs. According to a separate Nikkei report, Toyota’s North American division has told its suppliers that it will absorb the extra costs of parts imported from Mexico and Canada. Another 25% for automotive parts imported to the U.S. is slated to come into effect on May 3.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Audi halts vehicle deliveries to the U.S. as it mulls impact of tariffs
2021 Audi Q5

If you’d been thinking of buying an Audi, now might be the time.  The German brand, owned by the Volkswagen Group, has announced it would halt shipments to the U.S. in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all imported vehicles.
Audi is currently holding cars that arrived after the tariffs took effect, on April 3, in U.S. ports. But it still has around 37,000 vehicles in its U.S. inventory, which should be able to meet demand for about two months, according to Reuters.
Automakers on average hold enough cars to meet U.S. demand for about three months, according to Cox Automotive.
Audi should be particularly affected by the tariffs: The Q5, its best-selling model in the U.S., is produced in Mexico, while other models, such as the A3, A4, and A6 are produced in Germany.
Holding shipments is obviously a temporary measure to buy time for Audi and parent company Volkswagen. If tariffs stay in place, vehicle prices would likely have to go up accordingly, unless some production is shifted to the U.S. Volkswagen already has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is planning a new plant in South Carolina. That latter plant, however, isn’t expected to be operational until 2027 and is currently dedicated to building electric vehicles for VW’s Scout Motors brand.
Other global automakers have also taken drastic measures in response to Trump’s tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover on April 5 said it is pausing shipments of its its UK-made cars to the United States this month. The British sports-luxury vehicle maker noted that the U.S. market accounts for nearly a quarter of its global sales, led by the likes of Range Rover Sports, Defenders, and Jaguar F-PACE.
And on April 3, Nissan, the biggest Japanese vehicle exporter to the United States, announced it will stop taking new U.S. orders for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs, the QX50 and QX55.

Read more