HardwareCon, March 2017 – HardwareCon, the 2-day conference devoted to helping hardware startup founders & CEOs take their startup to the next level takes place this Friday and Saturday March 24th-25th at the Zero Net Energy Center in San Leandro, CA. In it’s third year, the show boasts a packed agenda filled with keynotes from Mark Hindsbo the CMO of ANSYS, who will be presenting their new innovative simulation tool for digitizing hardware prototyping and a fireside chat with Euan Thomson the Head of Johnson & Johnson’s medical device team who will discuss how large corporations and startups can work together to advance innovation.
Hardware entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to meet & learn from industry veterans and have their toughest business & engineering questions answered during one of their many breakout sessions. Some panels will focus on how to optimize your manufacturing for scale, how to create a defensible hardware product using software & data and online and brick & mortar retail strategies for consumer product businesses. Attendees will also have the opportunity to learn from our panel of thought leaders around the world about what is happening in their local hardware communities including the the surge of interest in hardware from their local governments and investors.
“We’re pleased to be able to include more international entrepreneurs and companies in this year’s HardwareCon event,” said Greg Fisher, co-founder of HardwareCon. “Our Hardware Massive partners are bringing in attendees, startups and experts from their 26 chapters around the globe and this brings even more insights and opportunities to our participants.”
HardwareCon will also be featuring a wide array of local & international hardware startups on Hardware Blvd. On the final day of the conference 5 hardware startups will compete to win the 24k grand prize package. These startups went through qualifying rounds at Hardware Massive’s chapter’s around the world and we’re carefully selected by the conference delegation. The 5 finalists are:
AXIS – AXIS Gear is the first ever retrofit smart device to motorize and automate your existing window shades.
MendUX – keeping cognitively impaired seniors safe from wandering while maintaining elder care facilities bottom line through prevention
BBQbot – Good barbecue is amazing to eat, but very difficult to make. BBQbot allows anyone to easily make competition quality barbecue by converting their cheap barbecue grill into a smart, automated, professional quality barbecue smoker.
Lumos – The world’s safest commute backpack
PhysioCue – Consumer digital health and therapy device company that empowers people with high blood pressure conditions to live healthier, happier and longer lives. PhysioCue has developed a completely new approach for hypertension management that combines the latest bio-sensor (PPG & ECG) technology.
Bright Blue Innovations’ coverage of the 2017 Winter NAMM Show included interviews and product announcements that were aired on Comcast, AT&T & Ustream by it video production partner Roadway.Media in February 2017 on Bright Blue Innovation.
Bright Blue Innovation with host Lidia Paulinska, continues their coverage of the Winter 2017 NAMM show in Anaheim, CA. With the assistance of M&E Tech’s Music Editor Peter Chatterjee, the show interviewed several executives and industry leaders in the music industry. This included executives from Gibson, Cakewalk, PRS Guitars, Roland, OWC, Sennheiser, and Neumann. The interviews also included musicians Dr Epiphone, Andy Summers, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis who received recognition from Roland.
In the era of electronic presentations and global collaboration via video conferencing the office environment has been changing rapidly and need more better suitable tools. Not that long ago the laser pointer was broadly used by the presenters but had some flows. The main one was – it could not be seen by other parties in shared video calls or on conference room flat screen monitors. Now this problem is solved. Logitech has introduced a new presenter tool named Spotlight that has advanced pointer system that’s better than a laser. Spotlight not only is better by putting the highlighting function into the image created by the computer before it gets to the display, but also more stylish and more functional.
Magnify Capability in New Logitech Spotlight Presenter
Stylish – three buttons and one large one in the 3 different colors bodies – gold, black and silver. Functional – It has a long range of 30 meters (100 feet) so a presenter can walk freely in the room while giving a presentation. It has 3D cursor to play videos and open links. It manages time by giving vibration alerts. It charges fast! Only 1 minute for 3 hours of presentation. When is fully charged a battery last up to 3 months.
The functions are programmable and can be customized to a user needs.
The details: it supports slides and presentations integrated with AV, slides can be send forward and back and control with the gestures; a volume can be raise on embedded media. Spotlight runs on both Windows and Mac for programs including Powerpoint, PDF, Google Slide and more. It operates by the Bluetooth connectivity or 2.4GHz USB wireless connection. A presentation is enable by a software that is new on the market. The software has three modes if item focus on the screen. Spotlight – circular highlight on the screen while the rest of a picture dims; Magnifier – that changes the spotlight to magnifier to show the details of the image; and the third mode that changes the circle area of the magnifier to an outline circle.
Bright Blue Innovation’s coverage from the CES 2017 tradeshow on for Television and Smart Home products was Broadcast on Comcast & Ustream in February 2017 by its media partner Roadway Media.
Bright Blue Innovation Host Lidia Paulinska shows highlights from the CES 2017 focusing on the smart home technology. Products shown are from the areas of Smart Living, Security, Appliances, and TV& Audio. Companies featured include: LG, Lenovo, Singled, CoWay, Hisense, Polaroid, Casio, Voxx, and Klipsch.
Bright Blue Innovatio’s coverage from the CES 2017 tradeshow on for Lifestyle products &Mobile Accessories was Broadcast on Comcast & Ustream in February 2017 by its media partner Roadway Media.
The Bright Blue Innovation Host Lidia Paulinska shows highlights from the CES 2017 focusing on the connected lifestyle. Products shown are from the areas of BabyTech, Mobile Electronics, Wearables, and Mobile Accessories. Companies featured include: Moshi, Zagg, SanDisk, BGZ, STM, PI Labs, Casio, Polaroid, and MyCharge.
January 2017 – How was the world of technology in 2016? – talk with the experts from San Francisco Bay area: Kevin Krewell, Principal Analyst of Tirias Research, Rodney Thayer, Cybersecurity Consultant and Pallab Chatterjee, Editor in Chief Media & Entertainment Technologies.
Autonomous vehicles made a lot of progress this year, more than anticipated – stated Kevin Krewell. The amount of effort and engineering going into driverless cars was remarkable. Typically, cars are a slow moving industry, taking 5+ years to qualify an equipment part going into a vehicle. But now things have changed and car manufactures are being blamed for not moving fast enough. Companies, such as, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Intel, NXP and others have been investing heavily to bring autonomous vehicles to the market in the next few years. Elon Musk and Tesla have done the most to promote this change. Musk broke the barrier by having pre-installed software built into the Tesla vehicles, like he knew it was going to get better over time. Car manufacturers are not just making cars any more, but rather building a software platform – Rodney Thayer.
“All our knowledge begins with the senses”- declared 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant.
The challenge with autonomous cars is that they are cameras based – added Pallab Chatterjee. Radar, lidar, sonar or real cameras are like senses of a vehicle. They are figuring things out but they create a huge amount of data. The flood of data is here and more is coming. By 2020, the average internet user will create 1.5GB of traffic per day, smart hospital – 3.000 GB per day, autonomous vehicle – 4.000 GB each per day, airplane – 40.000 GB per day and smart factory – 1.000.000 per day.
The biggest surprise that came up in 2016?
That VR came back again was a surprise to Pallab Chatterjee. It is like 3D, every 10-15 years people forget that it is not technology, it is what content is available and how the companies plan to monetize it. That was one of the problems with 3D. It was rushed to the market because the technology was available but people said – there was nothing to watch because the content was made in a rush and it was of poor quality and stories. We see that scenario right now. The only good content for VR is in games on very expensive platforms but it is not mass market. The VR devices for mass market are not professionally created and a content is poor and people get dizzy and nauseous.
For Kevin Krewell, the biggest surprise in 2016 was how many big money acquisitions were taking place. It is not that big companies are buying small companies but big companies are buying big companies. Intel buying Altera last year was a starting point. NXP bought Freescale and now Qualcomm is buying NXP that just bought Freescale, and Samsung buying Harman Group.
The overriding challenge in 2016 was security and privacy. A number of high level intrusions and data breaches took place, and as the year ends, more will come to light. The risks are at all levels, individuals, companies, organizations, even standard internet providers and countries – the cybersecurity threats are guiding the way business was done in 2016 and the new ways it will be done in 2017 according to Rodney.
Here is the full episode that was aired at Bay area Comcast tv in December:
