Our dentists constantly remind us to replace our toothbrushes every 90 days so theyre most effective at battling plaque, but how often do we really remember to do that? To make it easier, Brush Buddies has created the 90 Day Brush featuring a timer and built-in LCD display that reminds users exactly when its time to get a new one. And at just six bucks, its as cheap as other disposable brushes.
To maximize the brushs displays usefulness, in addition to counting down the days until its time for a new one it also provides useful oral hygiene tips and reminders.
And once the 90-day timer has expired, the display will switch to daily messages like Ewww this brush is gross that attempt to shame you into finally tossing it out and buying a new one.
Theres no word on whether or not the brush can be recycled, which is a little unfortunate, especially on Earth Day. But if you dont feel guilty about just tossing it along with the embedded electronics and batteries that make it work, six bucks for a toothbrush that can genuinely improve your oral hygiene routine is a steal.
Given the sheer amount of torque and power needed to propel a car that weighs thousands of pounds, youd think that parts made from plastic would disintegrate in minutes. But researchers have developed a plastic gear reinforced with carbon fiber thats strong enough to actually be used as a replacement for metal parts in a vehicle.
When a gear is spinning against another gear, the vast majority of the forces are exerted where the teeth actually connect to the gears core. So researchers at Japans Gifu University and a company called Central Fine Tool added a thin layer of carbon fiber running through each tooth that adequately reinforces and strengthens the part.
Because carbon fiber is used sparingly in the part, the new gears are easier and cheaper to produce than their metal counterparts. And because theyre not made from metal, theyre considerably lighter which in turn makes the vehicle lighter and improves its fuel efficiency.
Its creators are hoping to commercialize their product by 2017 as they continue to improve and strengthen its design. But you probably wont find it under the hood of your new car for a few years after that given the amount of testing automobile manufacturers, and safety regulators, will require before approving them for the road.
Conventional digital prophet wisdom says that in the near future, everything you own and a bunch of stuff you dont will have a chip, rendering it smart. But this paper proposes an alternate version of the Internet of Things one where stuff is dumb, and repurposed Android phones (and a bunch of clever code) make your home smart.
In an academic paper, a team from Carnegie Mellon Universitys Human-Computer Interaction Institute put forward the idea of what they call Zensors: internet-connected cameras that monitor their surroundings, analyse the goings-on, and send you data and alerts based on pre-set questions.
For example: a camera monitoring a restaurant can be programmed to monitor the number of empty drinks at the bar, and send an alert if that number gets too high. Simultaneously, it will keep an eye on checks sitting on the table, bread baskets needing refills basically, anything the camera can physically see. All the user has to do is circle an area to be monitored the bar and ask a natural-language question, like how many empty drinks are there.
The cameras can either be old Android phones, or internet-connected cameras, which makes the sensors easy to deploy. Handling the interpretation of questions, and turning a camera feed into data, is the hard part. To manage that, Zensors proposes a computer/human hybrid system.
Initially, questions and analysis is handled by crowd-sourced workers (think Amazons Mechanical Turks). But as humans answer questions and interpret camera feeds, machines are watching and learning, constantly comparing their answers to those of humans. When the machines reach a suitable level of understanding, the human steps out of the loop, and it becomes a fully automated system.
In a way, Zensors seems like the culmination of dozens of almost-there smart technologies from the last few years: the natural-language intelligence of Google Now and Amazon Echo; the if-this-then-that programming mentality that reduces actions into a series of events, notifications and triggers; Mechanical Turks harnessing of human intelligence into a machine-like format.
At the moment, Zensors is in a beta-testing phase, so the closest youll come is probably the YouTube video above. But if the Zensors project can turn into reality (and thats a pretty hefty if), it provides an interesting and very different approach to the impending Internet Of Things dystopia. Rather than having smart wine glasses talking to the smart countertop to alert the waitresses smartwatch, the system relies on a one very smart sensor to monitor a bunch of dumb things.
3-D printers are great, as long as all you want to do is print Action Man out of one material, in one color. Multi-color machines exist, but theyre a far cry from the cheap, simple desktop manufacturing revolution weve been promised. I just got a peek at a nondescript box that could change all that.
3-D printing in color is a finicky business. The conventional solution is to use multiple extruder heads: one for each color of filament you want to print. While that works kinda it has drawbacks, including a decreased build volume (so you can only make smaller things), poor resolution, and unused heads drip-drip-dripping unwanted plastic over your finished build. Plus, it means buying a dedicated, standalone printer, something that costs thousands of dollars.
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The approach of Mosaic Manufacuring is different. It uses a standalone box, called the Palette, which feeds a mulicolored filament to any single-color 3-D printer. Basically, you put the shoebox-sized Palette between almost any 3-D printer and four spools of filament. Then Palette chops and changes the color, so the printer has the right color material coming out of the printer head at any given moment.
This gets rid of most of the problems associated with regular 3-D printers. Theres no dripping, no decrease in build size the only drawback is a slight over-usage of materials every time the printer needs to change colors.
Even better, the Palette can accomodate different types of material, not just different colors. If you want to reinforce part of your model with carbon fiber, or wood, or even a conductive material, you can. The team showed me a prototype quadrotor body, built on a 3-D printer, with the power connections built right in no need for wires to carry power from the battery to the motors.
The multi-colored examples were just as impressive, ranging from the frivolous a custom business-card-holder, anyone? to a multi-colored childs cast, designed to be more appealing to kids.
The Palette is currently up for pre-order on Kickstarter, with the base model running $849 at the moment. As ever, theres a level of caution to be taken with Kickstarter; but in this instance, the technology and manufacturing process are already perfected, so with any luck, scaling up production should be painless.
Although it might seem like a fairly niche product, the Palette represents a major leap forwards for cheap, consumer printing. Theres a limited number of things that people really want to print out of one single color of plastic, but as soon as you add multiple colors, and multiple materials into the mix, the possibilities explode.
Theres no shortage of fancy lamps on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, but the Lunaluxx looks like it truly brings something unique and innovative to the table, or your desk, or your bedside table. It uses a small floating disk that glows brilliantly when hit with an invisible blue LED from underneath.
It sounds like witchcraft, but the Lunaluxx works using good old science that just seems like magic. That floating disc, held in place by a pair of strong but distanced magnets, contains phosphor that glows with a warm bright white light when hit from below with a blue LED.
Turning the Lunaluxx on and off is as easy as removing or inserting that floating disc, although youll definitely want to ensure it doesnt get misplaced or your lamp will suddenly be nothing more than a piece of modern art.
The creators of the Lunaluxx have turned to Kickstarter to help realize their dream, and are trying to raise just shy of $70,000. If youd like to contribute to their cause, and pre-order a Lunaluxx lamp for yourself, a donation of around $130 will get you on the waiting list with a delivery of January of 2016. A long time away, but at least the lamps creators are being honest with how long they feel it will realistically take to put it into production, and you dont see that often on crowdfunding sites.
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Well that's nice.Yeesh. I'm planning on getting a new android phone soon but I think I'll just get a Galaxy S4.
I'm a big fan of LEDs because they are such a great lighting choice and they are in fact cheaper in the long run compared to many of the alternatives, especially the good old fashioned incandescent.
