Part Two: What happened at CES? The weird and the wonderful
By Fay Capstick
Last week we started our look at what was wooing the crowds at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year. This week we will conclude our look at the weird and wonderful gadgets that will be brightening up our winter.
Something for the astronomy gadget geek
Astronomy has always been a hobby that can suck up all your spare money while also freezing you. At CES Celestron launched their Origin Intelligent Home Observatory. Celestron has been around making quality telescopes and accessories for decades. The Origin is their first smart telescope. The benefits of this are a telescope that will do it all for you, literally - alignment, focusing tracking and object identification. This isn’t new in itself, as computer-controlled home telescopes have been around for decades. However, this straight-out-the-box offering will beam your sky images directly to your smartphone or TV in real time. This means you can do your star gazing from your sofa. Celestron says that you can even schedule it to capture images while you sleep. There are obvious advantages to this for the novice, and you won’t need to build up a collection of expensive eyepieces, as you won’t be looking through it, only at the screen of your choosing. However, we feel that it is taking a little of the magic out of the experience of the galaxy coming directly into your retina on a cold winter night. Plus it has a $3,999 price tag attached.
You can learn more here: https://www.celestron.com/blogs/press-releases/celestron-introduces-world-s-first-intelligent-home-observatory
Stats galore for your pooches
We are now all on board with measuring our health stats via our watches, but what if you could do the same for your dog? The Invoxia Minitailz Smart dog collar is available to meet this need. It can track your pet’s heart stats, looking for atrial fibrillation, along with behaviour and spot changes that mean you might want to contact your vet. GPS means you can keep tabs on Fido when he is running around the park too.
https://petcare.invoxia.com/en-US
And while he is running around, if you are worried about Fido’s weight, you might be interested in the Ilume Dog Wellbeing Smart Suite. This will work out how much running he’s done and how much he should be eating. The food bowl will ensure they only get the correct amount of food each day. However, as all pet owners know, your dogs will likely eat each other's food, so this is very hard to monitor if you have more than one pet. Plus, with a price of $300, good old-fashioned measuring of food portions might be a cheaper and easier option.
Not to leave our feline friends out, Flappie has launched an AI-powered catflap. This will see if your cats are trying to bring you a ‘gift’ and not let them in through the catflap until they have dropped their victim. This will be great for those of us who don’t want to find alive or dead small creatures in the kitchen. Flappie also promises to send you exciting analyses and videos from your catflap.
Missing your Blackberry keyboard?
Clicks have come up with a keyboard to attach to your iPhone (sadly, only iPhone 14 Pro and above). It is super cute and gives you all your screen back to use. You can order one now, as they are shipping soon. The little QWERTY keyboard is quite adorable and retro. This is one that I’d be ordering if it fitted my iPhone. If you want to get yours: https://www.clicks.tech/product/clicks-for-iphone
Want to make your TV disappear?
No, not behind a sliding door, but something much cooler. LG showed a 77-inch TV that looks like a sheet of glass. The view behind the screen turns off when you raise a black film. This is great fun, and it resembles that sci-fi favourite of translucent viewscreens. No price has been given. A translucent TV might not be great for those with kids or pets. We shall see how popular an innovation this proves to be.
Robot gardener
This could be useful for those of us who never seem to find the time to tend our gardens properly. The Yarbo yard robot will do all the boring chores for you. It has three attachments, working as a leaf blower, snow blower, or lawn mover. It will use AI to get around and is kinda like an outdoor Roomba (hopefully, it will be better than the early Roomba I had which endlessly went in a small circle, which could be good for making crop circles in your garden). It sounds like it will work best on larger, simple gardens. I’m not convinced what it will make of small British gardens that tend to be crowded with obstacles. Plus, who doesn’t like leaf-blowing themselves?
Final thoughts
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