Awesome Stuff: A Post-Holiday Grab Bag
from the belated-stocking-stuffers dept
This week, instead of a closer look at one product, we're rounding up a bunch of interesting Kickstarter campaigns that aim to ship in 2016. So, if you didn't get everything you wanted this Christmas — or if you are planning really far ahead for the next — take a look.
From The Simple-But-Cool Department: The Arcade Switch
Light switches are boring, and that's... probably fine, actually. But just in case it's not, the Arcade Switch is a pretty great way to give them some flare. These classic-arcade-button light switch covers have a customizable color selection (with new glow-in-the-dark options coming if they hit some stretch goals) and start at only $4. Unfortunately, they only work with flat "rocker" switches, but if you've already got those then installation looks pretty easy.
This campaign is nearly over! If you're reading this after the weekend, you're too late.
From The Science-Is-Beautiful Department: μPeek
The μPeek is an impressive little microscope the size of a credit card. It performs great for something so portable — it even crams motorized auto-focus into the tiny package, and achieves up to 350x magnification. Of course, it needs to be controlled by Bluetooth from an Android or iOS phone, and while this makes some sense considering it's all about portability, I'd really like to see more such products include simple desktop software as well, or at least an API that allows others to build apps on any platform.
From The Slow-And-Steady Department: Enlaps
While the μPeek is enabling microscopic photography, Enlaps is enabling time-lapse photography. The Enlaps Tikee is a self-contained, ultra-efficient time-lapse photography device that is designed to shoot practically forever with no memory or power limitations. It has a big battery and is self-charged by a solar panel, and ample internal storage that is regularly offloaded to the cloud via a wireless connection. All of this is managed by software that maximizes efficiency to get the longest standalone shoot possible, adjusting the schedule of uploads according to the recharge rate from the solar panel. Even without any solar charging whatsoever, it can take photos at ten-minute intervals for a week on one full charge. Of course, as you might expect, all this doesn't come cheap.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: awesome stuff
