Tater Tot Designs is a creative design and engineering firm based in Portland that’s betting big on the Internet of Things revolution, and has built a team of EE, mechanical and software engineers, UI and UX designers to create a line of…
Over the last couple of years I’ve done a ton of home automation hacking, as well as a lot of reading and tracking of emerging products in the IoT and home automation space. In the process, I’ve been able to identify some…
On the weekend of 8/23, I took my dad to the 3D Printer World Expo. I should explain: My name is Ari Porad, I am 12 years old and I live in Seattle. I am also very into 3D printing, so I…
The React Sidekick is a sort of portable panic button, currently available for pre-order on Kickstarter. It’s a simple concept — tap the nondescript, coin-sized button and it activates your smartphone and calls out for help. The device uses a Bluetooth LE…
The following is a guest post by Jonathan Frankel of Nucleus. Nucleus is a wireless, Internet-connected intercom that lets you audio- or video- chat with any other Nucleus in the world – whether it’s in the next room or next country. I…
Last year we covered a drawing robot arm by NarwhalEdu, and they’re back with a new robot that dances to music. Today, NarwhalEdu is launching a second class that uses a Khan-Academy-meets-robots approach to teaching engineering at the high school level and…
David Hunt and his co-founders at Spor are pursuing a big vision. They’re changing how devices are powered. I recently had an opportunity to chat with David about the company as well as the successes and challenges they’ve met along the way.…
ANTVR KIT just launched on Kickstarter with a gamer-centric take on virtual reality headsets. Besides a headset with 1.3 megapixel display per eye and a 100° diagonal field of view, ANTVR creates an enhanced experience for VR gaming by including a multi-function…
Nazar Bilous is the co-founder Smart Atoms__, hardware startup that built LaMetric, and has founded several companies before, including digital agency Lemberg Solutions, Recordense. Hardware is hard (no pun intended), especially building and delivering exactly what you’ve promised in your crowdfunding campaign.…
The following is a guest post by Sean “xobs” Cross, one of the two co-creators of the Novena open source laptop. ------------------------------- Many products are hammered into existence by a cadre of project managers, focus groups and user studies. This process is…
Practically any hardware product concept these days will have a smart phone component. Not just to tap the computing power and connectivity, but because better overall user experiences can be provided. Arduino is the rapid prototyping platform of choice for many hardware…
We just got our Piper, a home security device that combines an IP camera and various sensors into an attractive form factor and provides smartphone-based controls and an easy-to-use rules engine with push, SMS and phone call notifications. We covered Piper previously…
Today, Marc Barros (who has written extensively on the topic of hardware startups) is launching Moment on Kickstarter, a high-quality lens accessory that works with most smartphones and includes an innovative adapter design that allows it to be used with or without…
We have another fantastic lineup for the next Hack Things meetup on Monday, Dec 16, 2013. This is one to really get pumped up about. Amulyte: First up will be Jaclyn Konzelmann, co-founder of Amulyte, which was part of YCombinator’s summer 2013…
Claus Moberg is the CEO of SnowShoe and has been the driving force behind the company since its inception in 2010 as the winner of a University of Wisconsin-Madison business plan competition. Claus invented the SnowShoe Stamp to address a key bottleneck…
File this under “technology you thought was science fiction”. TellSpec (4 days left on IndieGogo) is a pocketable food spectrometer that you can aim at your food and perform on-the-spot analysis to obtain information such as whether the food you’re about to…
Cortado just launched — it’s a nicely-designed, very small-footprint arduino board (an inch and a half or so in length) designed for wireless applications. The whole idea behind it is giving the user the ability to turn just about anything into a…
In software the key to innovation is rapid iteration. That’s much more challenging with hardware, and working remotely with a Chinese manufacturer has been excruciating at times. You discuss a change, then wait days or weeks to see the results. Skype and…
Here’s a run-down of the latest batch of HAXLR8R companies that made their debut last week. We’ve already written about Roadie Tuner, currently live on Kickstarter, but there are a ton of other great companies spanning wearables, gaming, entertainment and medical devices.…
I’m in China visiting our factory as we begin production of Poppy, our inexpensive and battery-free gadget that turns your iPhone into a 3D video recording and playback device. We have been working on this for almost a year now, and raised…
