802.11ax is Wi-Fi built for tomorrow’s hyper-connected home

Before the current Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac, wireless broadband was never quite robust enough. There was always too many devices vying for limited, inefficiently distributed bandwidth. This latest 802.11ac standard has proven to be faster and more reliable, but with the current, ever-increasing proliferation of Wi-Fi devices — PC, smartphones, tablets, webcams, printers, wearables, refrigerators, and more — it won’t be long until we’re playing catchup again.

According to estimates by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the number of internet-connected gadgets for an average family of four is now at 10 per household. That number is estimated to reach about 50 wirelessly connected devices per average household by 2022, with all 50 competing for the same bandwidth, over the same connection.

The number of internet-connected gadgets for an average family of four is now at 10 per household.

“The Wi-Fi device and traffic explosion, higher density Wi-Fi deployments, growing use of outdoor Wi-Fi, and the need to support a great variety of different device types,” according to Andrew Zignani, Senior Analyst at ABI Research, “will require more efficient Wi-Fi implementations that can help to deliver richer experiences for enterprise and consumer applications that are hungry for bandwidth.”

The good news in all this is that the people who tend to Wi-Fi standards haven’t been idle. The 6th generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ax, has been certified, and new products based on the standard are underway. Broadcom, a maker of circuit boards and other gizmos that drive today’s information technology, for example, has just announced Max Wifi, the first 802.11ax chips designed for use in routers for homes and businesses, as well as wireless gadgets, such as smartphones and tablets.

The need for massive increases in bandwidth and throughput is upon us. The question is, is 802.11ax enough, or is it too little too late?

How will 802.11ax manage your home network?

While 802.11ax does provide impressive bandwidth, which we’ll get to in a moment, incredible isn’t enough for this brave new world of multiple Wi-Fi devices per individual. Balancing that bandwidth between devices is equally, if not more, important.

The 802.11ax standard brings with it many new features, including a few responsible for a much-needed increase in the standard’s quality of service (QoS) – the term used by the industry when discussing how Wi-Fi resources are used.

• Uplink and Downlink Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA): (OFDMA) significantly enhances capacity and efficiency by maintaining the integrity of the wireless network, allowing several devices to exchange data simultaneously by deploying sophisticated uplink and downlink scheduling. In other words, it helps maintain multiple data streams.
• Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO): Helps increase channel capacity when multiple devices are connected, thereby improving per-user throughput in dense user environments.
• Target Wake Time (TWT): This one helps improve battery life on smartphones and other mobile devices by improving wake and sleep efficiency (maintaining Wi-Fi connections when a mobile gadget is inactive currently sucks up a lot of battery life.)
• Spatial Reuse: Allows access points (routers) to make more intelligent decisions on when to transmit data.
• Bluetooth 5.0: The mobile device portion of the 802.11ax (more on that coming up) contains the latest version of Bluetooth, using Bluetooth Mesh to increase connectivity range.

How fast is 802.11ax?

Like the current standard, the new one allows multiple streams. Yet the new standard dramatically increases the maximum throughput of each stream. In addition, it operates more efficiently in the 5GHz band, where there’s a lot more room for high-bandwidth data channels.

The throughput claims are as high as eight times the current standard, but for this discussion we’ll assume the more conservative four-times estimate. The current standard delivers 866 Megabits per second (Mbps); four times that is 3.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps). Both the current and new standard support four concurrent channels. That comes out to about 3.5Gbps for 802.11ac, and 14Gbps for 802.11ax.

That may sound like a lot, but if you think about 50 devices in your household or business, with several of them streaming video, gaming, uploading large photos, and so on, you can see how it might be used up. If you already have several computers, smartphones, tablets, and TVs vying for bandwidth now, then you already know how their competition for resources can ruin your internet experience. Does 14Gbps still sound like overkill?

When can you get yours?

Soon. Broadcom is already selling its Max Wifi chips, one for home routers, one for enterprise access points, and one for mobile devices. And several companies, including Asus (the computer and components maker), D-Link (router and switch maker), Netgear (router and switch maker), Microsoft, and several others are building access points around the Max WiFi chips. Current estimates are that we’ll start seeing 802.11ax hardware by the end of 2017.

Deploying it in either your home or office will require new hardware.

“D-LINK is working aggressively with Broadcom to bring the advances of 802.11ax technology to our customers,” the CEO of D-Link, Anny Wei, told Digital Trends. “With the 6th generation of Wi-Fi, users can expect to connect more devices with better reliability and faster speeds.”

Keep in mind that your current PCs, smartphones, mobile devices, and every other Wi-Fi device you own, including your router, does not currently support 802.11ax, nor will you, in most cases, be able to upgrade them to do so. Deploying it in either your home or office will require new hardware, even, in most cases, new smartphones. You won’t see benefit from 802.11ax unless both your devices and your router support the standard.

“802.11ax advancements promise to expand the Wi-Fi market particularly in segments where there are higher user densities such as the home, enterprise and public venues,” Christian Kim, Senior Analyst IoT, Connectivity, and Telecom Electronics at IHS Markit, told us. “We estimate that the total 802.11ax enabled device shipments will increase from 116 thousand units in 2019 to 58 million units in 2021.”

When that happens, upgrading should be cheaper, and by then you’ll probably need a new phone.

802.11ax is Wi-Fi built for tomorrow’s hyper-connected home

Before the current Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac, wireless broadband was never quite robust enough. There was always too many devices vying for limited, inefficiently distributed bandwidth. This latest 802.11ac standard has proven to be faster and more reliable, but with the current, ever-increasing proliferation of Wi-Fi devices — PC, smartphones, tablets, webcams, printers, wearables, refrigerators, and more — it won’t be long until we’re playing catchup again.

According to estimates by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the number of internet-connected gadgets for an average family of four is now at 10 per household. That number is estimated to reach about 50 wirelessly connected devices per average household by 2022, with all 50 competing for the same bandwidth, over the same connection.

The number of internet-connected gadgets for an average family of four is now at 10 per household.

“The Wi-Fi device and traffic explosion, higher density Wi-Fi deployments, growing use of outdoor Wi-Fi, and the need to support a great variety of different device types,” according to Andrew Zignani, Senior Analyst at ABI Research, “will require more efficient Wi-Fi implementations that can help to deliver richer experiences for enterprise and consumer applications that are hungry for bandwidth.”

The good news in all this is that the people who tend to Wi-Fi standards haven’t been idle. The 6th generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ax, has been certified, and new products based on the standard are underway. Broadcom, a maker of circuit boards and other gizmos that drive today’s information technology, for example, has just announced Max Wifi, the first 802.11ax chips designed for use in routers for homes and businesses, as well as wireless gadgets, such as smartphones and tablets.

The need for massive increases in bandwidth and throughput is upon us. The question is, is 802.11ax enough, or is it too little too late?

How will 802.11ax manage your home network?

While 802.11ax does provide impressive bandwidth, which we’ll get to in a moment, incredible isn’t enough for this brave new world of multiple Wi-Fi devices per individual. Balancing that bandwidth between devices is equally, if not more, important.

The 802.11ax standard brings with it many new features, including a few responsible for a much-needed increase in the standard’s quality of service (QoS) – the term used by the industry when discussing how Wi-Fi resources are used.

• Uplink and Downlink Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA): (OFDMA) significantly enhances capacity and efficiency by maintaining the integrity of the wireless network, allowing several devices to exchange data simultaneously by deploying sophisticated uplink and downlink scheduling. In other words, it helps maintain multiple data streams.
• Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO): Helps increase channel capacity when multiple devices are connected, thereby improving per-user throughput in dense user environments.
• Target Wake Time (TWT): This one helps improve battery life on smartphones and other mobile devices by improving wake and sleep efficiency (maintaining Wi-Fi connections when a mobile gadget is inactive currently sucks up a lot of battery life.)
• Spatial Reuse: Allows access points (routers) to make more intelligent decisions on when to transmit data.
• Bluetooth 5.0: The mobile device portion of the 802.11ax (more on that coming up) contains the latest version of Bluetooth, using Bluetooth Mesh to increase connectivity range.

How fast is 802.11ax?

Like the current standard, the new one allows multiple streams. Yet the new standard dramatically increases the maximum throughput of each stream. In addition, it operates more efficiently in the 5GHz band, where there’s a lot more room for high-bandwidth data channels.

The throughput claims are as high as eight times the current standard, but for this discussion we’ll assume the more conservative four-times estimate. The current standard delivers 866 Megabits per second (Mbps); four times that is 3.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps). Both the current and new standard support four concurrent channels. That comes out to about 3.5Gbps for 802.11ac, and 14Gbps for 802.11ax.

That may sound like a lot, but if you think about 50 devices in your household or business, with several of them streaming video, gaming, uploading large photos, and so on, you can see how it might be used up. If you already have several computers, smartphones, tablets, and TVs vying for bandwidth now, then you already know how their competition for resources can ruin your internet experience. Does 14Gbps still sound like overkill?

When can you get yours?

Soon. Broadcom is already selling its Max Wifi chips, one for home routers, one for enterprise access points, and one for mobile devices. And several companies, including Asus (the computer and components maker), D-Link (router and switch maker), Netgear (router and switch maker), Microsoft, and several others are building access points around the Max WiFi chips. Current estimates are that we’ll start seeing 802.11ax hardware by the end of 2017.

Deploying it in either your home or office will require new hardware.

“D-LINK is working aggressively with Broadcom to bring the advances of 802.11ax technology to our customers,” the CEO of D-Link, Anny Wei, told Digital Trends. “With the 6th generation of Wi-Fi, users can expect to connect more devices with better reliability and faster speeds.”

Keep in mind that your current PCs, smartphones, mobile devices, and every other Wi-Fi device you own, including your router, does not currently support 802.11ax, nor will you, in most cases, be able to upgrade them to do so. Deploying it in either your home or office will require new hardware, even, in most cases, new smartphones. You won’t see benefit from 802.11ax unless both your devices and your router support the standard.

“802.11ax advancements promise to expand the Wi-Fi market particularly in segments where there are higher user densities such as the home, enterprise and public venues,” Christian Kim, Senior Analyst IoT, Connectivity, and Telecom Electronics at IHS Markit, told us. “We estimate that the total 802.11ax enabled device shipments will increase from 116 thousand units in 2019 to 58 million units in 2021.”

When that happens, upgrading should be cheaper, and by then you’ll probably need a new phone.

Designers create the thinnest, strongest leather in the world

Why it matters to you

This leather is both incredibly lightweight and surprisingly strong and it could have all sorts of applications.

Whether it’s NASA’s futuristic chainmail or shape-shifting textiles that change form on demand, we are massive geeks when it comes to cutting-edge materials science. That said, the traditionalist in us (chalk it up to watching too many James Bond movies as a kid) also has a fondness for classic materials like nicely tanned leather when it comes to shoes or satchels. Imagine our delight, then, to hear about Dyneema Bonded Leather, a new material that combines both cutting edge and classic — by using a unique bonded blend of components to create what its makers claim is the thinnest, strongest leather ever developed.

Created as a collaboration between Netherlands-based company Ecco Leather and DSM Dyneema, the paper-thin Dyneema Bonded Leather is infused with a tear-resistant fiber that is 15 times stronger than steel, yet light enough to float on water. The resulting material has the feeling of a fabric, but the grain and texture of leather.

“The development sequence involves pre-tanning, bonding, and a careful series of interim and final-tanning stages,” designer Sruli Recht, whose innovative transparent leather material we have covered before, told Digital Trends. “The first challenge was to develop a way of effectively bonding Dyneema composite fabric along the full surface of thinly skived high-grade bovine hide. The bonding process needed to maintain enough adhesion-integrity to withstand a battalion of secondary and final tanning processes. Achieving this bond, Ecco Leather was then able to refine the material by deploying milling, tumbling, toggling and finishing stages designed to bring out the leather’s natural qualities.”

Early on, Recht said the team tested the new bonded leather material by making an enormous duffel bag from it, which would usually weigh around 5 to 6 kilograms. Instead, it weighed 200 grams — a weight Recht describes as “inconceivable” under normal circumstances. “[This material could be used for] anything from motorcycle gear to furnishings,” he continued. “Think of anything that requires the haptics and durability of leather, but the lightness that you can’t get. It’s a payload to lift-off ratio basically. The lighter you get with leather, the strength just drops fast. This solves that problem.”

The first ‘Destiny 2’ expansion will reintroduce players to Osiris

If you’ve already finished Destiny 2’s campaign and are grinding through the endgame, here’s some news you might be interested in. The first expansion for developer Bungie’s shared-world shooter is dubbed “Curse of Osiris,” named for the infamous multiplayer mode from its prequel. This time ’round, it’s a campaign expansion according to Polygon, and it takes place on Mercury where you’ll “journey through time and space” to learn Osiris’ (a legendary warlock) secrets and reunite him with Ikora Rey — the warlock vanguard who gives you class-specific gear.

It’ll also contain new maps for the adversarial Crucible mode and new adventures (ambient challenges and activities) in addition to shiny loot. The add-on pack might release this December and Bungie promises further details later today.

Curse of Osiris is not a leak. It’s real! 🙂

— Eric Osborne (@UrkMcGurk) September 8, 2017

Via: Polygon

Source: Eric Osbourne (Twitter)

The UN wants all drones registered in a global database

The United Nations’ aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), plans to support a single worldwide drone registry. This singular ledger would be easier for law enforcement to sift through than each country’s individual UAV ledger.

That might irk US hobbyists, who fought and defeated the FAA in court when it passed a law to force drone owners to sign up for an American registry. The contentious case ended in a decision that classified non-commercial drones as model aircraft, which don’t need to be nationally registered. Whether the US drone community cooperates with ICAO’s registry is another question.

Conceivably, the UN agency could run the database itself, though no department has been officially tasked to do it. But the registry is likely a precursor to the global regulations on drone flying and tracking that ICAO has been asked to help create, according to Reuters. They could pattern their rules after any of three likely examples: The US FAA’s regulations for commercial UAVs, China’s registration rules or the anticipated set coming out of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

But the skies only keep getting busier. In the aftermath of hurricane Harvey and the impending Irma, a record number of drones operated by state and local agencies have been speedily greenlit to fly by the FAA, which is finding new ways to parse out legitimate UAV activity from illegal flights.

Source: Reuters

Here’s a full-length look at SpaceX’s spacesuit

Elon Musk dropped a carefully cropped look at the SpaceX suit for astronauts on his Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and came back with a more revealing picture today. Modeled in front of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, it gives a better idea of what we might be able to expect. It’s far sleeker than what we’ve seen in use from NASA until now, and as Musk noted previously, it apparently actually works.

The flexible, padded joint areas look like they’ll give wearers a good range of motion, while the boots are relatively lightweight. That’s not surprising since, as TechCrunch notes, these are for use while inside the Dragon capsule or transferring to other vehicles where the environment is pressurized, not a long walk in the cold vacuum of space. There’s no word on when we’ll get our next pre-Mars trip fashion show, so enjoy this pic for now.

Astronaut spacesuit next to Crew Dragon

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Sep 8, 2017 at 1:04pm PDT

Source: Elon Musk (Instagram)

Apple Donates $5 Million to Hand in Hand for Hurricane Relief Efforts, Will Accept iTunes Donations This Weekend

Apple today donated $5 million to the Hand in Hand: A Benefit for Hurricane Relief Fund to support those who have been affected by both Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma.

Hand in Hand is planning to host a live telethon on Tuesday, September 12 to raise additional money for hurricane relief efforts. Proceeds from the upcoming telethon will benefit the Rebuild Texas Fund, Feeding Texas, Save the Children, United Way, Habitat for Humanity, and DirectRelief.

Celebrities and performers like George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Stephen Colbert, Julia Roberts, Robert De Niro, Ellen DeGeneres, Drake, Jamie Foxx, Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey, and more are set to make appearances during the telethon.

In addition to donating $5 million, Apple is also planning to allow Apple customers to donate to Hand in Hand through the App Store and iTunes as if often does in similar disaster situations.

“On behalf of everyone at Apple, our hearts go out to the millions of people whose lives have been disrupted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and the many more still bracing for Irma’s impact,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. “We applaud Hand in Hand for bringing together people from all over the country to help one another at a time when so many desperately need it. In addition to Apple’s direct contribution to the relief and recovery efforts, we’re making it easy for anyone in the US to make their own donations to Hand in Hand through the App Store and iTunes.”

Apple last week donated $2 million to the Red Cross to benefit those affected by Hurricane Harvey, and raised an additional $1 million through employee and iTunes donations.

Hurricane Harvey caused widespread flooding and destruction in Texas and Louisiana last week, while Hurricane Irma, now a category 4 storm, is forecasted to make landfall in Florida this weekend. Irma hit Puerto Rico and several Caribbean islands over the course of the week, with St. Martin, St. Barts, Anguilla, Barbuda, and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands seeing some of the worst devastation.
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Momentum 720p Wi-Fi Camera review

As we head into the end of 2017, it’s easier than ever to throw together a connected home setup. Whether you’re looking to swap out your entire lighting system with smart bulbs or install a new thermostat or appliance, it’s fairly simple. This goes double for those who are looking to get their feet wet; you can set up a Wi-Fi camera, for instance, in no time at all.

We were sent a review unit of the Momentum 720p Wi-Fi camera which we tried in different locations at home and at the office. Retailing for about $40-45, it’s available at Target, Walmart, and other online outlets. Here are our thoughts after a few weeks of using it.

Setup is rather easy in that you simply plug the camera into a wall outlet via its included USB cord and install the app. At six feet the cable is plenty long enough to reach from most outlets for placement in inconspicuous spots.

As for the app and its setup, that was also fairly simply in at least two of the instances we tried. Once plugged in and powered on, you’ll pair the camera to your phone. You will need a 2.4GHz or 5GHz router (802.11bg/n) on your home or office system for Wi-Fi connectivity. We did run into a few snags trying to factory reset the camera and connect to other networks. It seemed to take a few tries to get things right; pulling up the live feed proved tricky at times.

Features of the Momentum 720p Wi-Fi camera include two-way communication between the phone and camera, support for microSD storage cards up to 128GB, sound and motion detection, and trigger alerts. For under fifty bucks the list of options and details is pretty sizable.

We found the 110 degree viewing angle to be adequate, giving us quite a bit to look at on our phone’s display. Quality was sharp and consistent, but it did depend on your network settings. In cases where our router was being taxed with Netflix streaming, online gaming, and other heavier demands we found the Momentum to stutter and lag.

Our initial setup gave us our best impressions of the camera. Once we moved it from the office to home and started to use other networks, the experience suffered. Specifically, we never really got the camera to give us a true live stream; things were lagging and communicating with people on the other end wasn’t always pleasurable.

The motion detection and sound detection have variable sensitivity settings. This was frustrating to figure out, especially with push notifications showing up at a seemingly endless clip. A door shutting in another room would trigger the camera and it would start to record. Someone coughing down the hall, a car honking outside, or sound from a TV would be all it took. On the other end, you could dial it down to where you had to put too much effort into making noise in order to get it to trigger.

As a camera to keep an eye on the office over the weekend, the Momentum works quite well. We don’t expect the doors to be opened, but the times when cleaning staff comes in, we like to know they’re sticking to the job and not poking about. This works great for that sort of setup. Or, maybe you want to peek at what’s going on downstairs while working in the office. The Momentum fits that bill.

As a camera that sits in the kitchen and lets you keep an eye on the comings and goings of your pets, well, that’s a different story. Your mileage may vary, but we never really loved how things worked. We were getting notifications from the dogs running through the room some 30 seconds earlier. We would have trouble getting the live stream to pull up. It got pretty aggravating at points.

It takes more time that we like to configure recording alerts and notifications. This proved to be a real nuisance when we wanted to just hop in and see the live feed. See, the camera was trying to capture these little videos every time the motion and sound settings fired. So, rather than giving us a quick glimpse, we had the camera recording video that we could watch on a short delay. So much for telling an intruder to get out of the house. By the time we could see what was happening real time, they would have been out of sight. Perhaps you’ll have an easier time setting things up.

The night vision was a nice touch, but the camera isn’t designed to work outside in different elements. Setting it by a window works, but motion detection triggered for us every time a headlight passed by in the distance. Or, if someone flips on a light inside and it reflects off the glass. We envision this working better if you wanted to put the camera up in a hallway so you can capture your teen sneaking out of their room. Good luck getting a timely alert or being able to catch them in the act.

If it sounds like we’re hating on the camera, we really don’t meant to come off harsh. As indicated above, the first time we set it up we loved it and found it to be ideal for the needs. We had a good spot for placement, lighting was ideal, and we didn’t expect to need live stream very much. If someone came into the office and took something that didn’t belong to them, we would have solid, HD proof.

If you’re considering picking one of these up, be sure to keep an eye on your return policy. Moreover, make sure you’re able to test all of the features out that you want. Is this a camera you expect to move around? Try that a few times in the early days. Forty five dollars isn’t a crazy amount to spend, but it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.

‘Futurama’ returns for a one-off, 42-minute podcast episode

Apparently, the folks over at Nerdist “spend every waking hour of every day wishing that Futurama was still on TV.” We’re big fans of the show, for sure, but we still spend a few hours during our days thinking of other things, like anime parodies and South Park, for instance. The Nerdist crew, however, has taken their rabid fandom to a whole new level. On September 14th, the team will debut a brand new Futurama episode as a radio play on the Nerdist podcast. The new one-shot will run long at 42 minutes and will feature the original cast in a story written by original Futurama writers.

The podcast is sponsored by TinyCo’s Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow, which already includes in-game content from the new storyline. The game is already a brand-new Futurama episode in itself, so finding even more bonus stuff from the upcoming story could be a ton of fun, as well. The new radio play will reunite Fry, Bender, Leela, Professor Farnsworth, Zoidberg, Amy and Hermes as they try to stop Klaxxon, a being made up of soundwaves from, wait for it, podcasts from the 21st century. The Planet Express team meets the evil creature on a routine mission to the deleted file planet, Junkleon 7.

“Last year I cornered two fine gentlemen–Matt Groening & David X. Cohen–and pitched the idea of doing a new Futurama episode as a podcast/radio play because it’s one of my favorite things and I need more of it,” said Nerdist‘s Chris Hardwick in a statement. “Today I am drooling with unfiltered joy to say that a) it’s actually happening, b) I got to voice the villain (Klaxxon), and c) I’m a freaking head in a jar in Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow, a game I’ve been feverishly playing since it came out. Galaxies of thanks to Matt, David and TinyCo for acquiescing to the maniacal ravings of a well-meaning fanboy.”

Source: Nerdist

‘My Golden Ticket’ takes you through Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

Why it matters to you

Wonderbly’s data-infused books could potentially change the way children consume literature.

Google-backed personalized publishing startup Wonderbly has officially taken the wraps off its new book. In collaboration with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate, My Golden Ticket takes children through Willy Wonka’s world-famous Chocolate Factory.

The journey initially started when Wonderbly CEO Asi Sharabi was underwhelmed with a personalized book his daughter received. He decided to set out on a quest with a few friends — who are now co-founders — to create a personalized book that was better than what has been around for the past 40 years. That is when Lost By Name was born.

Now known as Wonderbly, the London-based startup combines storytelling and technology to create a unique journey for children to embark on. When purchasing a book, the story will change based on the child’s name. You can also add a personal message such as your own dedication, and choose from three different adventures.

Its first title — Lost My Name — placed the letters of each child’s name in a specific algorithm to produce a distinct adventure, while The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home utilized Bing maps to create an experience around the solar system.

“The thing we learned is the idea of not just making a child feel extraordinary and special, but this idea that we can inspire [and] help them to realize that any story they imagine can be their story,” Sharabi told Digital Trends. ThroughWonderbly, more than 2.7 million children have experienced the data-infused literature published by the company.

In honor of the upcoming Roald Dahl Day on Wednesday, the team worked closely with the Roald Dahl Literary Estate to create a Wonka-filled adventure where everyone wins a Golden Ticket. Many of the elements are based on the original story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — incorporating vivid and colorful visuals. The book’s illustrator, Adam Hancher, was inspired by candy advertisements of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s which were then applied to the artwork.

As far as personalization goes, it plays into various parts of the adventure such as your Wonka-fied family tree, a custom candy bar, and various rooms to visit. The book stays true to Roald Dahl’s original vision, with some never-before-seen factory rooms taken from Dahl’s original notes while others are from the original book and two major motion pictures.

Any child — or even adult — who has always been mesmerized and slightly jealous of Charlie’s experience through the Chocolate Factory, can now experience it for themselves. Not only is your tour guide an Oompa Loompa who leads you to all the different candy rooms and destinations. No child’s adventure is the same when compared to a friend’s or sibling’s version.

My Golden Ticket is available exclusively through Wonderbly’s website. The personalized journey will run you $29 for a softcover version and $36 for a hardback.