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CrowdGadget: Top 5 start-up gadgets
From heads-up display car assistants to smart mugs, BRYAN TURNER wraps the coolest gadgets to back on several start-up platforms.
CrowdGadget is a wrap of the latest crowd-funded gadgets and tech concepts that have caught our attention. We have rounded up five technologies which have the potential to disrupt their respective industries, by presenting ideas which are either affordable or innovative, or both.
1. EyeDrive: Holographic car assistant
The latest luxury vehicles from marques like BMW and Volvo offer options for holographic-style heads-up displays, but what about the car you already have? Mostly, it’s either too dated, or not expensive enough.That’s where EyeDrive comes in. The aftermarket device sits in the middle of a car dashboard, and projects a display on the windscreen.
Because it appears in the driver’s field of view, it increases safety by keeping one’s eyes on the road, as well as offering convenient voice control, and adding reverse camera functionality.
For safety reasons, the device doesn’t have buttons. Instead, it makes use of gesture controls, reducing the precision of operating physical buttons and reducing the distance from the steering wheel to controls, when compared to regular dashboard buttons. But it must feel great to control the display like a Jedi.
For voice control, the system uses the connected smartphone’s voice assistant: Google Assistant if it’s connected to Android, and Siri if it’s connected to iPhone. This allows one’s hands to remain on the steering wheel when controlling the system.
The backup camera sticks to the back of one’s car and provides a reverse camera for cars that don’t have the module fitted. This increases safety, especially in bigger cars with less reverse visibility. It adheres to the car with a sticker and lasts for 500 hours before requiring the removable battery to be changed.
The project is available for backing on IndieGoGo here.
Click here to read about a smartwatch that charges off body heat, a robotic arm that can do almost anything, a smart mug that tells you if your water is safe to drink, and a South African solar powered computer.
