Now that I'm home and working for the computer firm here, I've been listening to NPR a lot, and they've been talking here and there about the CES this week. For the most part, it's a lot of stuff that I will never be able to afford so long as I have loans to pay off, but that doesn't mean they aren't pretty awesome. I'll preview a few of the ones I've seen featured.
The first was a new 3D printer from MakerBot. I've admired 3D printers since I first came across a massive one in a lab at my ex's university, and I've been pining for one since I found that MakerBot and a few others make a model usable in a home setting. Now they've released a larger model with a little more than 2,500 cubic inches of printing space, which can print one giant project or multiple little projects. In addition to this behemoth, which runs about $6000, MakerBot released a mid-sized model that runs around $3000 and has a 480 cubic inch printing space.
The second was a skateboard that seems like a good fit for balancing-inept people like me. The combination of a processor, a gyroscopic sensor, and a speed sensor detect a rider's lean; forward tells the motor to accelerate, and back tells it to decelerate. For a sum of $1300, the Onewheel can travel at a top speed of 12 mph for 4-6 miles, and it takes about 2 hours to recharge after the trip.
And the final one is something I could've used last night when I couldn't determine if that bright shiny thing was a star or a planet: a telescope. The COSMOS 90GT WiFi Telescope creates its own Internet connection, so all you have to do is find a celestial body on the app on your phone or tablet, and the telescope will find it for you. The app has a catalog of more than 120,000 objects, and the 90mm refractor gives the great views that Celestron has been known for for the past 50 years. And it's the cheapest gadget on this list at $400.
Alas, I still have… way too much in loans to even think about any of these, but one can dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment