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The week’s top hardware news.

January 27th, 2016.

Products

Like FitBit for Food

This product is for those cooks who can take advice in their own kitchen. It’s the “world’s first smart cooking pan,” the $200 SmartyPans. What can it do? It measures weight, temperature and ingredients, integrates with nutrition and fitness apps and guides you through the cooking process.

+ an IoT end-to-end platform that looks promising

Concrete with a Copper Twist

Our design treat of the week is a bluetooth speaker by Hult Design. Pavilion features a high density concrete base, a copper spiral bass port and an oak top with touch control. This mix of materials not only looks awesomely industrial-cool, but prevents sound distortions and boosts the bass frequencies.

Pavillion bluetooth speaker
<em>Pavillion bluetooth speaker<em>

iPhone Repurposing

Olmose knows we can’t get ourselves to throw away that cracked iPhone, and it’s giving us a good reason to keep it. They’ve created a smart security system that relays on our out-of-use smartphone to make recordings and send notifications to our in-use one. 

+ a home battery to go with it

Intelligent Stroller

Would you trust your baby with a self-propelled stroller? With the Smartbe, they’ve taken every comfort and security feature of a high-end baby stroller, and made it electrical. Looks like a rocket on wheels for infants, selling for $3199 on Indiegogo.

Smartbe intelligent stroller
<em>Smartbe intelligent stroller<em>

Industry

GoPro Teams Up with Periscope

Things were looking bad for GoPro last week, but now they’re hoping to attract the livestreaming crowd by joining forces with Periscope. GoPro cameras are popular picks both for extreme sports and drone footage, so we might enjoy a more exciting Twitter feed thanks to this hookup.

Blue Origin Lands a Rocket. Again

Space is getting really busy with rockets flying to and fro both from Space X and Blue Origin. The latter established a new record last week, managing to successfully launch and land the same rocket that was used in November. “You can’t get [to space] by throwing the hardware away,” said Bezos (most probably in Elon Musk’s direction).

+ meanwhile, Elon Musk misses a landing, but gets the Hyperloop going

The Sequel: 3D Printed Guns

The controversy around 3D printed weapons fired up again, due to a tabloid rumor that bad boy Cody Wilson from Defense Distributed was ready to release the plans for a 3D printable AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. While the debate is stirring, TechCrunch argues that Wilson’s files are not of an actual gun anyway. Awkwarrd. 

+ new perspectives on 3D printing for the masses

VR Film Made from Within


Oculus amazes again, this time with a program that enables animators to move around illustrations as they’re being drawn.