Cambits is like the littleBits of cameras

---

Developed at Columbia University, this modular imaging system can transform into many different cameras.

---

From littleBits and Microduino to BLOCKS and Nascent Objects, the concept of building your own devices has become incredibly popular over the last couple of years. Hoping to jump on the DIY bandwagon is a group of Columbia University professors with their new modular system Cambits. 

Cambits is a reconfigurable platform comprised of colorful, 3D-printed blocks that enable its users to create a range of cameras with a variety of impressive computational capabilities. There are five types of plastic pieces, each with their own functionalities: sensors, light sources, actuators, lenses and optical attachments.

No different than many of the modular kits found throughout the Maker community, these blocks can easily be assembled to form different devices with all sorts of functionalities, such as high dynamic range imaging, capturing panoramic shots, refocusing, kaleidoscopic effects and microscopy, to name just a few. They are joined through magnets, and when brought together, are electrically connected by spring-loaded pins. Power is supplied through a host computer or mobile device, and travels between the via the pins. Data and control signals are transmitted the same way.

“We wanted to redefine what we mean by a camera,” explains computer science professor Shree Nayar. “Traditional cameras are really like black boxes that take one type of image. We wanted to rethink the instrument, to come up with a hardware and software system that is modular, reconfigurable, and able to capture all kinds of images. We see Cambits as a wonderful way to unleash the creativity in all of us.”

What’s more, Cambits is completely scalable so new blocks can be added to an existing set at anytime. Each block has its own ID and when combined, the host computer recognizes the current configuration and provides a menu of options for what the user might want to do. Housed inside every Cambit lies a circuit board made up of an MCU, an upstream interface and a downstream interface.

“There are so many exciting advances in computational photography these days,” Nayar adds. “We hope this reconfigurable system will open the door to new avenues of creativity, bringing new dimensions to an art form we all enjoy.”

 

 

This may be the most elegant e-bike ever

---

Faraday Cortland is the ultimate electric bike to power your commute in style.

---

Biking to work has its perks. It helps reduce gas emissions in the environment, sometimes it’s faster than public transportation and it’s cost effective. The only downside is arriving to the office dripping in sweat. A small San Francisco-based team has created a solution to your commute with a bike that lets you ride in style and with ease — sweat-free.

All familiar to the hills of San Francisco, Adam Vollmer and his team wanted to build a bike that is fast and easy to ride in dense urban areas without riders breaking a sweat. With that in mind, they created Faraday Cortland, an elegant electric bicycle that doesn’t sacrifice the looks, feel and experience of bike riding.

The Faraday Cortland builds on the team’s award-winning design of the classic Porteur. This step-through bike has a higher capacity battery for 25 miles of assisted riding, updated software and a more efficient motor. Despite it being an electric bike, the Cortland maintains the look of a classically designed bike and weighs only 40 pounds, making it easy to mount and dismount. Cortland has a built-in LED headlight and taillight, perfect for riding at night especially after a long day at work. This bike is great for leisure riding on the weekends and is family-friendly with its child-seat compatible rear rack and front rack for groceries.

Like its namesake Michael Faraday, inventor of the electric motor, the Faraday Cortland operates on a powerful 250W motor, with a 350W peak. With an ATxmega32A4U at its heart, this set of wheels runs on a custom 43V, 290Wh removable Panasonic lithium-ion battery pack and the handle bar has a display to show battery life. It boasts a maintenance free drive train, consisting of a Shimano Alfine internally eight-speed geared hub and Gates carbon fiber belt drive, eliminating the possibility of getting grease stains on your clothes. The Cortland is an elegant bike, but tough. The body is a durable steel frame and Tektro hydraulic disc brakes for a smooth ride and bamboo fenders to keep the rider dry.

The Faraday team is also offering add-ons such as an auxiliary battery pack to double the Cortland’s range to over 40 miles, a GPS tracking device and an app for ride track and route mapping.

Ready to conquer your commute sweat-free? Head over to the Faraday Cortland’s Kickstarter page, where Adam and his crew are well above their $100,000 goal. In making things even more simple, bikes will be delivered fully assembled, no bike mechanic needed. Shipments are slated for July 2016, just in time for summer.

Monument is a personal cloud device for your photos and videos

---

This solution uses AI to analyze and organize your pictures like Google Photos, but on your own storage device.

---

People nowadays are taking more photos than ever before, whether it’s on their smartphones, their digital cameras or even their GoPros. This results in thousands of pieces of images and clips that need to be stored and organized, which of course, requires a computer and tons of time. And while cloud services offer a partial solution, these tend to cost money and sometimes your privacy.

However, one Chicago-based startup has devised a solution capable of collecting and automatically managing your fondest memories. Currently live on Kickstarter, Monument is a personal cloud device that effortlessly syncs and arranges content from your phone and camera, alleviating the headache of doing it yourself.

Beyond just the storage gadget itself, Monument features an accompanying mobile app that is responsible for seamlessly relaying the images and footage in lightning speed. By default, syncing begins once your Monument is connected to your home’s wireless network; however, you can also enable your app’s settings for remote syncing. The system even supports SD cards for file transfers.

What’s really interesting, though, is Monument’s advanced AI algorithms which sort through your photos using date, time, location and faces, as well as by camera. And since everything is organized, the app offers a variety of ways to view your memories including a ‘time machine’ tool (like Timehop) that shows you what you were doing on that day up to 10 years ago and ‘world map,’ which displays all your pics on a globe. Plus, you can search through results using keywords, such as beach or outdoor.

Monument is expandable, too. You can add your own external USB drives, as well as connect a pair of disk drives for RAID-1 backup.

Interested? Head over to its crowdfunding campaign, where the Monument Labs team is currently seeking $60,000. Delivery is expected to get underway in September 2016.

T8 is the world’s first wearable instrument that records, performs and remixes music

---

Designed for musicians, DJs and live performers, Remidi’s wearable MIDI controller that turns your hand into a whole new type of instrument.

---

Tapping your fingers to the rhythm of your favorite songs on a desk, table or even your steering wheel can help pass time while at work, in class or stuck in traffic. But how much cooler would it be if you could turn your hand into an actual, fully-functional musical instrument? That was the idea behind Austin-based startup Remidi’s latest wearable device, T8.

T8 is a MIDI controller that allows you to command a wide range of digital music with your hands. The system consists of two parts: a sensor-laden glove and an embedded wristband that wirelessly sync to a laptop or mobile device running music creation software.

The bracelet includes a pair of select buttons (to hit play/pause, choose between modes, etc.) and a knob on top for scrolling through note or chord sets, samples and parameters. Housed inside the band is an accelerometer for detecting mid-air gestural controls and expressive pitch bends, as well as an ATmega32U4 and Bluetooth 4.0 module for communication with any laptop, PC, smartphone or tablet. There’s also an RGB LED and a 110mAh battery, which boasts a life of around five to 10 hours and can be recharged via microUSB in about a half an hour.

“The controller also has the ability to sense the physical movements of your wrist and arms. Rotate your wrist to distort your audible output using any effect, or move it up and down to cause a reverberation,” Remidi writes. “The circular dial, located on the top of the T8’s controller, allows you to program another complete set of notes, so with a twist of the dial, you can instantly flip to an entirely new note-set.”

The wristband magnetically links to a snug-fitting Spandex glove, which is home to eight pressure sensitive trigger zones — one in each of the fingers, another in the thumb and the rest in the palm area. These ‘skeleton’ sensors are made of human-friendly PET and TPU, along with proprietary smart textile components. According to its creators, “no other ‘musical glove’ can come close to the T8’s electronic sensitivity and physical durability.”

Users can configure each sensor to trigger samples, notes or presets when the sensor hits any surface, which enables you to control up to 16 different sounds with one hand. For instance, you can sound a kick drum with your thumb or use you palm to bring in a hi-hat and snare. Additionally, the pressure sensitivity of the sensors can be defined by the user and the T8 knows exactly when — and at what pressure — you’re pushing the palm of your hand against a surface as well as how soft or hard you’re putting two or more sensors together.

To get started, simply out your T8, sync it to your mobile device and begin jamming right there on the spot. Based on percussion algorithms, the T8 can sense when any one of the eight sensors makes contact with a desk, wall, subway seat, car window, yourself or another human, and triggers the corresponding, programmed sound to play. In fact, did you know it only takes one hand to record the instrumentals for 2Pac’s California Love?

Meanwhile, an accompanying app lets users customize functionality and configure the system; however, Remidi’s controller even integrates with third party music software and digital audio workstations, like Ableton Live, Animoog, GarageBand or any other program that supports MIDI.

Does this sound (no pun intended) like the MIDI controller for you? Then head over to T8’s Kickstarter campaign, where the Remidi crew is currently seeking $50,000. Delivery is slated for September 2016. Speaking of wearable instruments, you can get a little Fancy with DrumPants, too!

Freebird is a safe and multi-use 3D-printed drone

---

Hate shoveling snow and raking leaves? Let the Freebird Flight One do it for you instead.

---

We’ve all seen and heard of drones crashing into water, trees, people and more recently, the Empire State Building. If you’re spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on a drone, you would expect it to be worth your while but the viral videos show us otherwise. One drone that you’re unlikely to see as the subject of these crash compilation videos is the Freebird One — a completely 3D-printed quadcopter with advanced safety unlike any other UAV on the market.

Maker Roger Freeman, who like many first time drone owners, experienced the early demise of his new toy. Instead of buying a new part for his broken drone, Freeman tapped into his tinkering talents and 3D-printed a replacement part. Similar many Maker stories, Freeman thought to make something that already exists even better with more functions, stability, strength and safety. And so the Freebird Flight was conceived.

Freebird is being touted as the first fully 3D-printed, large-format carbon fiber UAV that is commercially available and consumer-friendly. Freebird has a unique patent-pending SurroundFrame that encloses the rotors and distributes the vehicles weight evenly to increase efficiency and safety. Its motor mounts also act as sturdy landing pads, allowing it to have extended flight time and absorb hard landings without the cost of damaging gear. The shield is weatherproof, protecting the motors from rain, snow and wind.

In addition to its thoughtful airframe design, safe operating practices were prioritized in the creation of Freebird. It has a virtual fence with a programmable radius and altitude limit to prevent runaway UAVs if the fence is breached. Plus, Freebird is configured to return to home base when it reaches low battery and loses signal from the controller/PC/phone/tablet. There is also a pause button to steady the vehicle while in the air.

If that doesn’t entice you yet, maybe this will. Freebird has capabilities beyond aerial video and photography. Airflow from its four motors runs as high as nine horsepower, turning it into an airborne leaf and snow blower. Freebird can clear a sizeable yard of leaves in a 25-30 minute run on a single battery. When it’s not doing yard work, its ample flat mounting space can attach additional electronic devices. Freeman is also developing a line of attachments to make Freebird more versatile in its applications.

At three feet in diameter, Freebird has a 20-pound payload capacity and can fly up to 70 miles per hour in horizontal speed and 3,000 feet per minute in max vertical speed. It has a 15-mile range with a GPS compass to prevent unexpected crashing.

Freebird boasts that it arms you with the best, and expanding, toolset to protect your investment and people and property around you. Ready for a failsafe drone? Check out the Freebird Flight website for more information.

Rook is the world’s first in-home drone that you can fly from anywhere

---

Check up on things inside your house while you’re away.

---

We’ve all been there: You leave your house, only to question 10 minutes later as to whether or not you turned off the stove or put on the alarm. What if, instead of calling a neighbor or going all the way back home, you could just pick up your smartphone and have a drone check for you? This is the idea behind Rook, an indoor quadcopter designed by a team of Northwestern engineering students who together make up the startup Eighty Nine Robotics.

Rook is a small, lightweight and remotely-controlled drone suitable for use inside your humble abode. It connects to your home’s Wi-Fi network and is flown with the help of your mobile device, with which you could keep an eye on on things, monitor pets, see where you left your wallet, and even offer an HGTV-like virtual tour of your living space. Meaning, you’ll never have to worry again if you closed the door behind you or unplugged the iron.

Rook is equipped with a mounted camera that provides live-streaming to your smartphone as it soars through the house. To control the drone, simply point and drag the direction you want to go on your screen. When done, fly your Rook back over to its charging dock, which can refuel the battery in an hour. At the moment, it can only last in the air for roughly five minutes, though that should be plenty of time to check up on things while you’re away.

Built with safety and indoor use in mind, Rook features soft blade guards, speed limits for novice pilots and flight stabilization software. Looking ahead, the Eighty Nine Robotics crew intends on enhancing its capabilities with voice-activated commands, timed flights, triggered routines via the cloud, as well as integration with your smart home equipment.

Intrigued? Fly on over to its Indiegogo campaign, where Eighty Nine Robotics is currently seeking $20,000. Delivery is expected to get underway in December 2016.

 

This electric go-kart will make you wish you were still a kid

---

The Arrow Smart Kart is like a Tesla for five to nine year olds.

---

Kids of yesterday, prepare to be envious. If you thought your Power Wheels were awesome, wait until you see this smart, electric go-kart from Silicon Valley-based startup Actev Motors.

The Arrow Smart Kart may look like an ordinary Formula1-inspired toy vehicle, but it’s anything but. This set of wheels is both GPS and Wi-Fi-enabled allowing for direct pairing with an accompanying smartphone app, with which parents can set a maximum speed and define a safe driving area. As a chid’s skills increase, so can the top speed (up to 12 mph).

The Arrow Smart Kart not only puts supervision at a parent’s fingertips, but features an emergency stop button as well as front and rear collision avoidance. What’s more, an adjustable inactivity timer helps keep tabs on the well-being of children that are out of sight, and the kart can be remotely disabled in the event of an emergency.

The Arrow Smart Kart is geared towards kids ages five to nine, although don’t be surprised to find some adults under the 200-pound weight limit trying to squeeze into its seat. Children can even personalize their driving experience by downloading synthesized engine sounds from an online library. The Arrow app lets kids monitor stats such as total driving time, total distance and maximum speed.

On a full charge, the car will run for anywhere from 30 minutes to a full hour, depending on where and how fast the kart is being driven. The Arrow Smart Kart is equipped with a pair of 250W motors powered by a 2,000 mAh lithium-ion battery pack. A double-capacity 4,000 mAh battery is also optional, which charges in as few as three hours with the quick charger.

In the coming months, a growing list of accessories will become available for the Arrow Smart Kart, including custom body kits, drifting wheel rings, a F1-like steering wheel, distance-sensing ‘smart cones,’ laser tag sensors and gaming apps, to name just a few.

Ready to make the neighborhood kids jealous? The Arrow Smart Kart is now available for pre-order and is priced at $599.95. Delivery is slated for Summer 2016.

Sensor-1 is a tiny powerful security system

---

This movement tracking sensor is a thief’s worst enemy.

---

Losing valuables or getting things stolen is a pain. Even though today’s smartphones and laptops come with GPS tracking apps, your lost device would still need to be online to pinpoint its exact location. What if you could just stop a thief in the moment and avoid the hassle of following their trail? The team at MetaSensor has taken a new approach to Bluetooth tracking to do just that.

Sensor-1 is a Bluetooth-powered motion sensor that can light up, sound an alarm and alert you the instant your belonging moves outside a certain pre-set radius. This quarter-sized gadget adheres to any item you want to protect, which means even your non-digital valuables can be protected, too. The idea came about when MetaSensor’s CEO Nick Warren’s family had their home burglarized, and few months later, a colleague’s laptop holding sensitive information was stolen.

The Sensor-1 contains an accelerometer, a gyroscopic stabilizer and a magnetometer that all together tracks the orientation and movement of the object you’re trying to guard. With the accompanying app, you can specify the movement sensitivity and proximity. The sensor will automatically be armed when you walk away, or you can be notified when you accidentally leave a belonging behind. It will also alert you when someone is attempting to remove the sensor. You can adjust the alarms settings such as having the sensor play a noise, flash light, and/or silently send an alert. Sensor-1 also logs motion events while you’re out of range.

This tiny, but very powerful security device is made of UV and impact resistant polycarbonate, and is waterproof. It’s Bluetooth Smart and iBeacon-compatible, and powered by a replaceable CR2032, giving it about a years of battery life. Sensor-1’s API is available for custom app development.

“Your Sensor-1 API key can be used to view and analyze the raw streaming data from Sensor-1 via the Aletha Web Platform, mobile app, and directly over Bluetooth,” MetaSensor explains. “Sensor-1 can communicate with Arduino (using a BLE shield), Raspberry Pi, Nordic dev kits, or any custom system capable of sending and receiving BLE communications.”

Interested? Head over to Sensor-1’s project page, where Warren and his team are currently seeking $10,000. You can get your own sensor for $79 and the first batch of units is slated for delivery by October 2016.

Carv is a wearable that helps you ski better

---

This Atmel-powered system analyzes motion and pressure data to give skiers real-time feedback on how to improve.

---

Throughout the world, approximately 120 million people will hit the slopes each year. This doesn’t include the countless others who are dying to learn how to ski either. Whether a novice or professional or somewhere in between, how cool would it be to have a coach that could be right there with you trail after trail? Well, UK-based startup MotionMetrics has come up with the perfect solution.

Meet Carv, a digital ski coach that combines a wearable device and a smartphone app with intuitive analysis algorithms to help you improve your technique. Inspired by Olympic technology, Carv gives you access to the feedback and knowledge that only elite skiers have had access to so far.

Carv itself is comprised of two parts. The first is a wearable that attaches to a ski boot, while the second is a ~1mm insert that’s actually placed inside the boot. All the data is then analyzed through an accompanying mobile app, which allows skiers to receive feedback on their performance either on-screen or in real-time, through earphones or heads-up displays. And for more sophisticated athletes, Carv can automatically synchronize video from your GoPro with the data, enabling instructors and coaches to scrutinize the footage alongside the overlaid information.

The solution employs a series of sensors, hidden under the boot liners. Each sensor unit packs 48 independent pressure sensors, meant to pick up even the most minute changes in the pressure distribution, along with an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer that provides Carv with information related to the motion and orientation of the skis. Communication is handled by Bluetooth Low Energy.

The sensor unit is powered and controlled by the boot-mounted Carv trackers, which serve as the brains of the system. These trackers are responsible for coordinating data collection, performing calculations for pressure and motion at high frequencies (220Hz), and overseeing wireless communication with the smartphone.

As high-tech of a platform Carv may be, you’ll barely notice that it’s even there. Inspired from current snow sports wear accessories such as customized insoles and boot warmers, the smart insert is super thin and can be slipped in without affecting the way you ski. What’s more, the Carv tracker can be quickly and easily clipped and unclipped whenever it needs to be charged (via USB).

“The idea for Carv began when I was looking at how recording and analysis of data can help people do things better during my PhD. It was an academic problem that got out of hand,” founder Jamie Grant explains. “Coming from a physics background, I was particularly interested in the telemetry side of things – looking at how you can measure movement. Then, whilst studying for a PhD in financial statistics, I worked on the data analysis side – what can you actually do with those measurements once you’ve recorded them? As a keen skier myself, I soon started applying this to my experience on the slopes.”

Grant and his team had a secured a place at HAX, an exclusive hardware accelerator in Shenzhen. With this mentorship, the MotionMetrics crew was not just able to bring their idea to life, but to further develop their unique pressure and motion sensing system that can now measure metrics like weight distribution. Ultimately, this development helps users spot common mistakes such as leaning too heavily on a turn, an action that can slow the skier down, or even worse, cause cranes.

Sound like the 24/7 coach you’ve been looking for? Race over to Carv’s Kickstrater campaign, where the team of PhD students from the University of Imperial College London is currently seeking $50,000. Delivery is expected to get underway in November 2016, just in time for next year’s snow season.

Set the mood with 512 LEDs in this smart lamp

---

Tittle Light is the ultimate home lighting décor.

---

As we make the move towards smarter homes, why not add a decorative, element to it? Tittle Light is a connected, color-changing LED lamp that can transform your home environment with custom 3D light animations.

Made up of 512 LED lights, Tittle is an interactive lamp that can illuminate into music visualizations, custom emoji messages and vibrant mood lights, and seeks to serve as a decorative centerpiece for your smart home. The team at Spin-R is the brains behind this connected lamp. Although the startup has focused solely on high-end watch-winding devices, CEO and co-founder Kinsen Au and his crew are dedicated to bringing entertaining consumer electronics and IoT concepts to reality.

Using Tittle’s accompanying mobile and web app, you can design your own engaging lighting effects in three dimensions, or watch the lights animate on its own as Tittle matches the lighting to the sound in your home. Tittle will move and pulse alongside the tunes you’re playing, making it the ultimate party favor. This high-end designed lamp boasts it has something for every moment. Tittle also has its practical use as a clock and timer.

Housed inside Tittle’s unique glass encasing are RGB LED lights in an 8” x 8” x 8” cube structure. It’s equipped with a built-in microphone to perform music visualization animations, 16MB flash memory and Wi-Fi to control all functions via its companion app. Tittle requires no assembly, and could be powered straight out of the box with its plug-and-play A/C adaptor.

After showcasing a prototype at CES 2016, Spin-R is seeking funds to bring Tittle to life. Intrigued? Head over to Au and his team’s project page, where you can get a Tittle Light at an early bird special price of $199. Delivery to initial backers is slated for September 2016.