LEIF
We’ve seen our share of electric skateboards such as the ZBoard, but what about an electric snowboard made for all seasons? Crazy as it might sound, that’s exactly what Aaron Aders and his cohorts at LEIF Technologies have created. The LEIF looks just like a long board on the surface, but underneath, there are two 2,000-watt electric motors. This concrete shredding machine is capable of reaching 20 miles-per-hour.
Don’t just write it off as another electric skateboard though; LEIF Technologies has been hard at work for years trying to replicate the feeling of snowboarding. As such, you can weave back and forth just by leaning with your weight. But in order stop you’ll have to turn the board to its side just like catching the edges of a slope with the sides of a snowboard.
The LEIF is also equipped with 18 battery cells, which Aaron claims are the same type found in Tesla’s electric cars. With all this power in tow, riders can expect to get an eight-mile ride in between charges. The LEIF is currently up for pre-order for $1,099 on Indiegogo.
CubeSensors
These little cubes aren’t just stylish shelf decorations. They’ll also help you monitor your home and office environment. Each CubeSensor is equipped with sensor to detect changes in temperature, humidity, air pressure, air quality, noise levels, light, and more. The individual sensors then push all the information they’ve collected to a Raspberry Pi-powered control unit and then to a smartphone app. Currently one of the primary uses of CubeSensors is to help you better understand why you didn’t get a good night’s sleep. In the future, the company hopes to expand the use of CubeSensors into an everyday, always-on environmental tracker.
TellSpec
TellSpec brings the future of calorie counting into the present with a device that lets you zap your food and instantaneously learn how many calories it has. In essence TellSpec is a portable spectrometer, which analyzes what molecules a particular object is made of. The device can identify exactly what ingredients are in the food you’re eating. Currently the device is a little bit bigger than an electric pencil sharpener, but in the future the company hopes to shrink the portable spectrometer into something a little more pocket-sized.
UpRight
Like a little nagging version of mom or dad, this device will scold you for slouching. Designed to promote proper sitting posture, UpRight is a wearable device that you stick onto your back. Whenever you start slumping you start slumping over in your chair, it will vibrate to remind you to sit up straight.
The wearable sticks can be attached to the small of your back with a piece of hypoallergenic tape and you can still bend down to reach your toes or any other regular movements. UpRight has already been funded with a successful Indiegogo campaign and is due to ship out to early backers by March. A retail launch will come soon after and the device is expected to cost $129.
Hemingwrite
Rumors of the death of the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. The Hemingwrite is a new electronic twist on the old tried and true writing tool that replaces paper with a six-inch e-ink screen. Adam Leeb and Patrick Paul came up with the Hemingwrite as a distraction-free writing environment devoid of web browsers, social media and videogames.
The Hemingwrite has been designed with the single purpose of text entry. Following this principle, you can’t delete or go back and change a single word in your documents. While this might seem like a limitation, it’s actually a feature designed to make you focus on the creative process. That said, all of your typed documents can be saved to the cloud through Evernote and Google docs, after which you can go in and revise them.
The Hemingwrite comes with enough storage to save over a million pages (enough for a manuscript or two) over the span of its six-plus week battery life. This typewriter has also been designed to take the punishment of a writer thanks to its die-cast aluminum case plus a mechanical keyboard.
Dovetailed
3D printing has now gone well beyond making plastic toys to creating food. In the last few years, we’ve seen new printers that fabricate chocolate deserts and even pizza. Now Dovetailed is out to add fruit to the list of 3D-printed delicacies. Using a molecular gastronomy technique called spherification, Dovetailed’s 3D printer can turn droplets of fruit juice into personalized fruits. The samples at Engadget Expand included a honeydew berry made with actual honey and a strawberry cream treat formed into one compact morsel.
BloomSky
This personal weather station was one of the bigger highlights of the show. The grapefruit-sized device is equipped with sensors that track temperature, barometric pressure, rain, humidity, and ultraviolet light levels. The BloomSky pushes all of this information up to the cloud with a constant stream of updates. You and everyone on the worldwide web (if they sign up for an account) can get live weather weather updates with the smartphone app. Each BloomSky also links up with other units on the web to create a cloud network of hyper-local weather stations.
BloomSky’s Marketing Manager Samuel Chow explained that TV weather reports often come from radar dishes miles away from the neighborhood they’re actually serving. With the BloomSky you can get a live weather report right from your backyard. There’s also a sky-watching camera that lets you and any curious weather watchers see how it looks outside without stepping out the door.
DIWire Bender
It’s been a while since we checked in with Pensa’s DIWire Bender and its latest and final iteration has shaped up to be a very nice device. Pensa has added a new aluminum top plate, giving the machine a completely metal body. Otherwise, you’re looking at a mechanically identical device that converts computer line drawings into intricately twisted wires. Now you can also start ordering your own DIWire Bender from Pensa for $3,200 with units shipping out early next year.
Check out even more images of Engadget Expand on our Flickr Photostream Album.
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Images © Kevin Lee for Inhabitat
