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Awesome tech you can’t buy yet: A camera with brains, turbo toothbrush, and more

At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion crowdfunding campaigns 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. In this column, we cut through all the worthless wearables and Oculus Rift ripoffs to round up the week’s most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects. But don’t grab your wallet just yet. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project can fail — even the most well-intentioned. Do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.

Frodo — AI-powered wearable camera

 

Action cameras like GoPro and others have made it easier than ever to capture footage of your adventures — but they don’t offer much help when it comes time to edit all that video. When you’re back home, you still have to sift through hours of footage and manually cut out all the scenes where you’re riding the ski lift, carrying your bike up a hill, or paddling out to catch a wave. There’s not really an easy way to cut straight to the good stuff.

That’s where Frodo comes in. It’s a clever smartwatch-inspired action cam that uses machine-learning algorithms to edit and shorten long video sequences. It has a number of different modes, but arguably the most useful is Action mode — in which the cameras software will analyze the video, search for scenes with lots of movement and action, and then automatically edit the footage into a highlight reel of your biggest jumps, tricks, and moves.

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Dollo3D — Self-replicating 3D printer

A self-replicating machine that makes other self-replicating machines sounds like the premise of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller flick — but it’s also the concept behind a nifty new Kickstarter campaign. Dollo3D is a project aimed at producing an affordable, modular 3D printer which uses fewer off-the-shelf components (and a higher percentage of 3D-printed components) than most other DIY printer projects, such as those under the RepRap umbrella.

Unlike most DIY self-replicating printers, Dollo is designed to be almost entirely 3D printable, and is built in such a way that it doesn’t require a lot of rods, screws, and other hardware. The frame is designed to  snap together with all the ease of a LEGO model, requiring just 15 3D printed parts and 24 screws — with an approximate “build time” of just one hour.

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HoverSeat — Lawn chair hoverboard attachment

If you think that standing upright on a “hoverboard” requires too much effort, then this newly-launched Kickstarter project will be right up your alley. Taking the laziness level up a notch, a brilliant company called BoatsToGo has developed a new ‘hoverboard’ attachment that allows you to operate your self-balancing scooter while lounging in a lawn chair. Seriously.

The HoverChair, as its called, is basically a lawn chair bolted to an aluminum frame that has two wheels on the back. When affixed to your hoverboard, the contraption effectively transforms your scooter into a roving, foot-steered go-kart. Pretty brilliant, right?! The best part is that if you act quickly, you can get yourself one of these suckers for the bargain price of just $79 on Kickstarter. Thus far, the campaign has raised over $2,500 from 20 backers, and still has 25 days left to meet its funding goal of $90,000.

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Turtle Shell 3.0 — Linkable waterproof speakers

Portable Bluetooth speakers are a dime a dozen these days, but rugged ones – ones that can withstand things like being kicked into a pool, dragged through a mud pit, or dropped down a flight of stairs – aren’t quite as common just yet. The category is growing fast though, and the latest addition to the pack is the Turtle Shell 3 from LA-based manufacturer Outdoor Tech. If it looks familiar, that’s probably because you remember seeing (or hearing) a few of its predecessors — like the original Turtle Shell, which hit Kickstarter back in 2012 and raised a boatload of money.

The third generation boasts a number of cool improvements, including considerably longer battery life and drastically improved range. The coolest feature, however, is its ability to wirelessly sync with other Turtle Shell speakers. If you own a few of them, you can daisy chain them together and use them like a surround sound system.

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GlareSmile — Radically redesigned electric toothbrush

Don’t have time in this busy, busy world to spend four minutes per day on dental hygiene? Not a problem, says dentist and inventor Aldo Dominici. Together with friend and entrepreneur Niccolò Cerizza, Dominici has created GlareSmile: a slightly ominous-sounding smart toothbrush that can supposedly clean your teeth in just ten seconds.

Unlike your regular boring toothbrush, GlareSmile features three rotating brushes that (allegedly) allow it to clean every dental surface at the same time; brushing teeth simultaneously with oscillation and rotation motions. The two outer brushes respectively brush the vestibular and lingual/palatal surfaces of each tooth, while the central brush cleans the occlusal surfaces. The easily-guided rotation movement from bottom to top reportedly removes plaque in the same way a manual or standard electric toothbrush would — but in a toothpaste-spitting 2.5 seconds per quadrant of your mouth.

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…
ChatGPT’s awesome Deep Research gets a light version and goes free for all
Deep Research option for ChatGPT.

There’s a lot of AI hype floating around, and it seems every brand wants to cram it into their products. But there are a few remarkably useful tools, as well, though they are pretty expensive. ChatGPT’s Deep Research is one such feature, and it seems OpenAI is finally feeling a bit generous about it. 

The company has created a lightweight version of Deep Research that is powered by its new o4-mini language model. OpenAI says this variant is “more cost-efficient while preserving high quality.” More importantly, it is available to use for free without any subscription caveat. 

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Star Wars legend Ian McDiarmid gets questions about the Emperor’s sex life
Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

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While speaking with Variety, McDiarmid noted that fans have asked him "slightly embarrassing questions" about Palpatine including "'Does this evil monster ever have sex?'"

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Waymo and Toyota explore personally owned self-driving cars
Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

Waymo and Toyota have announced they’re exploring a strategic collaboration—and one of the most exciting possibilities on the table is bringing fully-automated driving technology to personally owned vehicles.
Alphabet-owned Waymo has made its name with its robotaxi service, the only one currently operating in the U.S. Its vehicles, including Jaguars and Hyundai Ioniq 5s, have logged tens of millions of autonomous miles on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin.
But shifting to personally owned self-driving cars is a much more complex challenge.
While safety regulations are expected to loosen under the Trump administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has so far taken a cautious approach to the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles. General Motors-backed Cruise robotaxi was forced to suspend operations in 2023 following a fatal collision.
While the partnership with Toyota is still in the early stages, Waymo says it will initially study how to merge its autonomous systems with the Japanese automaker’s consumer vehicle platforms.
In a recent call with analysts, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai signaled that Waymo is seriously considering expanding beyond ride-hailing fleets and into personal ownership. While nothing is confirmed, the partnership with Toyota adds credibility—and manufacturing muscle—to that vision.
Toyota brings decades of safety innovation to the table, including its widely adopted Toyota Safety Sense technology. Through its software division, Woven by Toyota, the company is also pushing into next-generation vehicle platforms. With Waymo, Toyota is now also looking at how automation can evolve beyond assisted driving and into full autonomy for individual drivers.
This move also turns up the heat on Tesla, which has long promised fully self-driving vehicles for consumers. While Tesla continues to refine its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, it remains supervised and hasn’t yet delivered on full autonomy. CEO Elon Musk is promising to launch some of its first robotaxis in Austin in June.
When it comes to self-driving cars, Waymo and Tesla are taking very different roads. Tesla aims to deliver affordability and scale with its camera, AI-based software. Waymo, by contrast, uses a more expensive technology relying on pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar and lidar (a laser-light radar), that regulators have been quicker to trust.

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