2017 January 04

Jan

SpeedX’s Unicorn bike comes with smarts already installed

If you’re serious about cycling, you’ll want to track every ride. How far you went, the amount of calories you burned — that sort of thing. Until now, that’s meant equipping your bike with a slew of third-party sensors and a less than sleek cycle computer on the handlebars. Not so with SpeedX. The company is building carbon road bikes that integrate all of these components in a sleek, seamless way. Its latest creation, the Unicorn, takes the concept one step further with a new, detachable “SpeedForce” computer that runs on Android and — in a first for the cycling industry — comes with a built-in power meter to measure your effort on the pedals.

At CES, I was able to hop on the bike for a brief moment. I couldn’t ride it, because I was in a hall packed with curious visitors, but that didn’t stop me from pretending I was Chris Froome and Nairo Quintana for a moment. The new computer was underwhelming, because it didn’t turn on — the bike was merely a prototype, so I could only imagine what its various screens looked like. Lame. Otherwise, it’s quite the looker. All of the break cables are hidden inside the frame, so it feels like a complete, unblemished package. It’s the cycling equivalent of an all-in-one desktop, basically.

SpeedX is also touting a new “Vibration Control System,” which uses different carbon fiber blends to give the frame some flex. For now, I’ll have to take the team’s word that it works — the showfloor was caked in carpet, with not a single pebble or discarded paper plate to test its effectiveness.

The concept isn’t for everyone. If you’ve already sunk hundreds of dollars into a top-end road bike, you’re probably better off buying the ride-tracking parts separately. It’ll be cheaper and easier to upgrade when you decide to switch them out. For novice cyclists, however, or people that are ready for an all-new rig, the SpeedX Unicorn could be worth considering. The only problem is getting one — SpeedX is using Kickstarter to crowdfund its bikes, and doesn’t have a good track record shipping them in a timely manner. With the Unicorn, maybe that’ll change — but seeing some unfinished prototypes today didn’t fill me with confidence.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Jan

Send your love around the world in this box

LoveBox is a French messaging startup that, in exchange for $120, will let you send messages of love to your amour… or your paramour. Simply hand your beloved one of the boxes, pair it to your phone with the companion app, and you’re all set. Then, when you’re out and about, you can send text-message length missives back home, for the box to receive over WiFi.

On the front of this boîte d’amour is a little plastic (or paper) heart that’ll spin whenever a communication is received. Then, once the box is opened, the recipient will see a dot matrix display embedded into a mirror that shows both the message and their own face. Yes, that is actually what you’re meant to be using this thing for, we haven’t made a mistake.

The story, because of course there’s a story, is that company founder Jean Gregoire was going to the US. Afraid of leaving his loved one alone for an extended period of time, he developed the technology for her alone. Then, at some point afterward, he decided that he wanted to share his invention with the rest of the world.

Considering that you could do the same thing with a $10 dumbphone, the ratio of money to utility here is pretty damn out of whack. But then romance was never about cold, hard calculations, instead it’s about showing how devoted you are to your loved one and that budgetary concerns don’t matter.

But, just so we’re clear, you’re a dummy if you buy one of these instead of just sending a text message the normal way. Even if you are deep in the throes of love.

Nick Summers contributed to this post.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Jan

DataTraveler Ultimate GT Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Meet the world’s largest capacity flash drive.

Kingston

At CES in Las Vegas, Kingston announced its new DataTraveler Ultimate GT flash drive. With 2TB of storage, it is the world’s largest capacity flash drive. Despite looking a bit bloated, you will now have plenty of storage for all of your kid videos and cat photos.

The drive has a metal alloy case for shock resistance. It sports USB 3.1 through a USB Type-A connector, but sadly lacks USB-C — time to break out the dongle.

The Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT will ship in February, but no word on pricing yet.

Jan

Daqri Smart Glasses Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Daqri

Maybe, in your future robotics assembly plant, you’ll be wearing a pair of augmented reality smart glasses, linked into your coworker’s viewpoint as you help them align joints. At least, that’s Daqri’s plan.

At last year’s CES, the eye-catchingly odd Daqri Smart Helmet was announced. The helmet was designed for factory-type enterprise locations where hands-free work was required. Unlike Microsoft’s HoloLens, it was designed to be a bit more rugged. But now Daqri’s latest product wants to find a lower-key way into your industrial office.

Not for a dinner date.

Daqri

Daqri’s newest streamlined product is more like a pair of superwide glasses, similar to what other competitors like ODG and Epson offer. Daqri’s press release promises heads-up guided work instructions, a co-worker observation mode where someone could wear a pair and see their companion’s POV and give guidance, and indoor/outdoor use. The Smart Glasses connect to desktop PCs, but we haven’t had a chance to demo a pair yet.

How one might use smart glasses at a factory.

Daqri

Here are some photos provided by Daqri of the smart glasses in everyday corporate use, though, to satisfy your James Cameron sci-fi fantasies. Daqri will start taking reservations for its Smart Glasses at CES, with the cost for a developer edition coming in around $5,000. Daqri promises a wider field of view than the competition, with what they call 44 degrees per eye. The Smart Glasses use USB-C to connect, and can work across Linux or Windows, supporting CAD software and working with Unity for developers. They won’t be compatible with Microsoft’s Windows Holographic environment, however. That’s a shame, because there’s going to be a lot of competition in the smart glasses space.

Daqri

Then again, if I were building an aircraft in the future, I’d probably want to wear one of these, too.

Daqri

Jan

GeniCan Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The GeniCan will scan barcodes of the things you throw away to figure out what to add to your shopping list.

GeniCan

It was only a matter of time before our trash bins got brains. The GeniCan is a Wi-Fi-enabled attachment for your garbage cans that will respond to voice commands, scan barcodes to build your grocery list and automatically order items you need through Amazon’s Dash Replenishment service. The GeniCan company will demonstrate the device this week at CES in Las Vegas.

The GeniCan will fit on the side of most rectangular garbage or recycling bins.

You can preorder the GeniCan now for $125, or about £100/AU$170 (the full retail price will be $149, or roughly £120/AU$200), and the company aims to begin shipping them in early 2017.

The GeniCan attaches to the side of most rectangular garbage cans (or recycling bins, if that’s your fancy). Before you toss your empty box of Frosted Flakes, you hold the bar code up to the GeniCan, and it will automatically add “Frosted Flakes” to a grocery list in your GeniCan iOS or Android app. If the GeniCan can’t find a bar code, you can use voice commands to tell the device what you want to add to your list. Order a lot of your household items from Amazon? Once you register for the Amazon Dash Replenishment service, anything that the GeniCan scans that’s available through Amazon will ship automatically. Imagine: you throw out an empty diaper box, and another one is automatically on the way.

We first learned about GeniCan during its 2015 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. The company surpassed its funding goal and raised a little more than $7,800 to help create this product. The hard part will be to convince you to literally throw $149 into your trash.

Jan

Somfy One Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The new Somfy One is an all-in-one security device.

Somfy

Motorized shade company Somfy has decided to enter the DIY home security fray with an all-in-one device dubbed the Somfy One. Somfy’s inaugural home security product follows the company’s 2016 acquisition of security startup Myfox, whose tech-centric but pricey DIY system we reviewed in 2015.

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Here’s an overview of the $229 (£185 or AU$320 converted) Somfy One’s core features:

HD resolution
Motion sensor
24-hour free event-based cloud storage
100-decibel siren
IntelliTag door/window sensors
Key fobs
Optional continuous recording
Optional professional monitoring (only available in Europe)
Night vision

Up until this point, startups have been the brains behind all-in-one DIY security systems. The Piper Classic, the Piper NV and their closest competitor, the Canary Smart Home Security Device, all got started on crowdfunding sites. Like Somfy One, all of them have offered high-definition cameras with built-in sirens and additional security features that go beyond your typical HD cam.

But the Somfy One seems to offer a few more options than its counterparts. In addition to the IntelliTag door and window sensor accessories that use vibration detection to differentiate between a knock and a forced entry (a carryover feature from Myfox), neither Piper nor Canary systems support professional monitoring. The Somfy One is also supposed to work with Amazon Alexa, IFTTT and Nest at launch.

If Somfy decides to integrate the Somfy One with its line of connected shades and other products, this motorized shade company could become a surprise contender in the smart home security market.

Click here to find out what else is happening at CES 2017.

Drag

Jan

Linksys WRT32X MU-MIMO Gigabit Gaming Router Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

The Linksys WRT32X’s paint job will fit in perfectly in many gamers’ bedrooms.

Linksys

Linksys’ stackable WRT design has been making a comeback as general home routers in the last few years, starting with the WRT1900AC. Now it ventures into the gaming realm as the company unveiled today, here at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, the Linksys WRT32X MU-MIMO Gigabit gaming router.

Killer Mode

If you’re a hardcore gamer, you probably know the Killer line of networking features, made by Rivet Networks, a vendor that makes network adapters for gaming PCs. Linksys says the new WRT32X router uses enterprise-grade hardware to build a platform that delivers the best online gaming experience, by combining customized Linux firmware with Killer networking features.

This built-in “Killer Mode” can automatically detect a Killer-enabled computer, then syncs its Killer engine to the Killer Network Manager on the PC. This means that not only the computer itself but the entire network, hosted by the WRT32x, is tuned for the best gaming experience.

But the router doesn’t just work for games only. Linksys says while it prioritizes gaming traffic, it also include features that allows other online activities like streaming or downloads to work smoothly. It’s also smart enough to prioritize only the actual gaming traffic and not all traffic related to games. Downloading a patch for a game, for example, will be treated as a regular download and not automatically prioritized.

Powerful hardware

Other than that, the WRT32X is a powerful AC3200 router that runs a 1.8GHz dual-core processor and has the combined Wi-Fi bandwidth of 3,200 megabits per second. It also supports MU-MIMO and dynamic frequency selection (DFS) and is open source-ready with OpenWrt and DD-WRT right out of the box.

The WRT32 is slated to be available in the spring in the US and will cost $300. UK and Australian availability were not announced, but that converts to £245 or AU$415.

Click here to find out what else is happening at CES 2017.

Jan

Linksys EA8300 Max-Stream AC2200 Tri-Band MU-MIMO Gigabit Router Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

If everyone in your house wants to watch Netflix at the same time, this Linksys router can handle it.

Linksys

You may be saving money off your family’s entertainment bill by using streaming services like Netflix instead of subscribing to cable television, but watching all of those HD video files will demand a fast network. That’s where something like this new Linksys router unveiled today at CES 2017 comes in.

The ridiculously long-named Linksys EA8300 Max-Stream AC2200 TriBand MU-MIMO Gigabit Router (henceforth known as EA8300) takes advantage of faster Wi-Fi standards found in top-of-the-line, tri-band routers without being too expensive. Previous pricey routers such as the Asus RT-AC5300 or the Netgear R8500 are costly while offering little practical advantages over cheaper routers in real-world usage.

The EA8300 is a dual-stream (2×2) router with two 5GHz bands that each cap out at 867 megabits per second and one 2.4GHz band capping out at 400 Mbps. While it’s not the fastest on the market, the router has some of the fastest real-world Wi-Fi speeds that can be beamed to devices like laptops, smartphones and tablets. Plus, that extra 5GHz band means the router can serve up that signal to even more devices with minimal congestion.

Other than that, the new router includes these features:

Powerful hardware: Quad-core 720Mhz processor, equivalent to a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 256MB of DDR3 system memory and 256MB of flash memory
Four high-performance antennas and powerful amplifiers to deliver the best coverage and range
Advanced beamforming technology for stronger connections to all of your devices
Airtime fairness: Faster devices can transmit at faster speeds while the slower device will not affect the speed of Wi-Fi networks
Linksys Smart Connect: automatically selects the best band for the fastest wireless speeds
Seamless Roaming: When used with Linksys’ Max-Stream Range Extenders, the home network will have seamless signal hand-off
Linksys Smart Wi-Fi: Remotely manage, monitor and control your Wi-Fi network from anywhere using a phone app

The EA8300 has the usual amount of network and peripheral ports.

Linksys

Linksys says the new EA8300 is easy to use and can be quickly set up in just a few minutes. It’s available this spring with a suggested retail cost of $200 in the US (converting roughly to £165 or AU$275).

Click here to find out what else is happening at CES 2017.

Jan

LG ProBeam HF80J Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Though television screens are getting larger and cheaper if you want a huge screen on the cheap a projector is still the way to go. Over the years LG has released a number of projectors including the oddball $9K Hecto in 2013 which also seems to inform the company’s latest product.

Like the Hecto the LG ProBeam HF80J is a laser projector but it’s no longer trying to be a TV without a box. This is a projector aimed at people who want a portable projector at home with a dedicated screen, a sheet hung in the backyard.

The projector is able to output a picture up to 2,000 lumens in brightness which LG says is the first laser projector to do this.

The projector is designed to be the compact and light weight of 2.1 kilograms (4.6 pounds). For image adjustment it comes with a “unique” four corner keystone and vertical auto keystone.

The Probeam offers Bluetooth streaming in addition to Miracast for mobile phone mirroring. The projector also has a full complement of smart TV features with the company’s webOS on board, which should make internet streaming easy.

The projector is expected to be available in the US in Feb/March 2017 with pricing to be announced.

Jan

Withings Home Plus Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Withings’ Home Plus camera works with Apple’s HomeKit platform.

Sarah Tew/CNET

I reviewed the Withings Home back in 2015 (video below). At $200, £150 or AU$275, this do-it-yourself security camera had a lot of competitive features — 1080p high-definition video resolution, live streaming, motion detection capabilities. It even had additional sensors for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air.

But the Home didn’t offer an Android app or a web interface when I tested it. You also couldn’t save recorded video clips.