There is a lot going on with crowd-funding these days. Over the past year or so, it has become huge. One might venture to say that it is a significant source of innovation in science, technology and art. Obviously there will be projects that cannot be crowd-funded; it is difficult to imagine a successfully crowd-funded Mars mission or cancer cure. But the space of feasible new projects is vast, and what follow are a few of my favorite crowd-funded projects.
But first, there is a recent noteworthy development from the SEC: previously allowed only to hand out rewards, crowd-funding campaigns will soon be able to award equity too. Equity had thus far been only for accredited investors, people with buckets of spare money in their garages and garden sheds. The possibility of investing in a successful venture rather than simply receiving a toy and a good feeling might make the already-fascinating crowd-funding scene a much more interesting place. It could play an important role in economic recovery.
OCULUS RIFT
The Oculus Rift is a virtual-reality headset representing an enormous improvement in performance-to-price ratio. The head tracking is smooth and the graphics are good. This is one of the first crowd-funded projects I heard about, and the first one I contributed to. For $300, I got a headset with a very entertaining demo, and if I get up the energy I will do something myself with science education.
By getting in early and having a huge success, the Oculus Rift set a precedent for big splashy projects, and probably helped Kickstarter as much as Kickstarter helped Oculus.
CastAR from TECHNICAL ILLUSIONS
CastAR is another virtual reality gadget, this time a pair of glasses that project an image onto a retroreflective surface in front of the user. One big innovation here is that the virtual reality can be mixed with actual reality, for instance using game pieces or other objects. Also, because the user is looking at things some distance away, eye strain is reduced. The head-tracking on CastAR follows both rotation and translation where the Oculus Rift only follows rotation.
BLEDUINO
This is a Bluetooth-enabled Arduino board. Arduino is a cheap easy-to-use controller board for hobbyist projects and art installations. With Bluetooth, whatever you're building can connect to a phone or tablet.
ESPRUINO
The Espruino is another Arduino-based controller board. What's unique is that it is designed to operate with a language called JavaScript, which has been used in web browsers for a long time but has slowly been gaining momentum as a hardware control language.
CHINEASY
This is an instructional program to teach yourself Mandarin. There are flashcards and animations to learn the written characters, and audio materials to learn the spoken language.
STAR TREK: RENEGADES
If you miss the pre-J-J-Abrams Star Trek franchise, this is for you. This movie brings back Walter Koenig (Chekhov from the original series) with several actors from Star Trek: Voyager. It is set ten years after Voyager's return to human space, and politics and hilarity ensue.
PEBBLE SMARTWATCH
Another big success story, the Pebble can now be purchased for $150 at Best Buy. It connects to your phone and can run Android apps on a very small screen. It has a magnetometer (compass), a three-axixs accelerometer, Bluetooth, ambient light sensors, a 144x168-pixel screen, and a week of battery life between charges. It connects via Bluetooth to your phone so the phone can stay in your pocket most of the time.
My long list below includes some projects that were already funded and have gained significant fame, like the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, or the Pebble smartwatch now available at Best Buy.
The shortened URL for this post is http://goo.gl/ehfBQb.
But first, there is a recent noteworthy development from the SEC: previously allowed only to hand out rewards, crowd-funding campaigns will soon be able to award equity too. Equity had thus far been only for accredited investors, people with buckets of spare money in their garages and garden sheds. The possibility of investing in a successful venture rather than simply receiving a toy and a good feeling might make the already-fascinating crowd-funding scene a much more interesting place. It could play an important role in economic recovery.
OCULUS RIFT
The Oculus Rift is a virtual-reality headset representing an enormous improvement in performance-to-price ratio. The head tracking is smooth and the graphics are good. This is one of the first crowd-funded projects I heard about, and the first one I contributed to. For $300, I got a headset with a very entertaining demo, and if I get up the energy I will do something myself with science education.
By getting in early and having a huge success, the Oculus Rift set a precedent for big splashy projects, and probably helped Kickstarter as much as Kickstarter helped Oculus.
CastAR from TECHNICAL ILLUSIONS
CastAR is another virtual reality gadget, this time a pair of glasses that project an image onto a retroreflective surface in front of the user. One big innovation here is that the virtual reality can be mixed with actual reality, for instance using game pieces or other objects. Also, because the user is looking at things some distance away, eye strain is reduced. The head-tracking on CastAR follows both rotation and translation where the Oculus Rift only follows rotation.
BLEDUINO
This is a Bluetooth-enabled Arduino board. Arduino is a cheap easy-to-use controller board for hobbyist projects and art installations. With Bluetooth, whatever you're building can connect to a phone or tablet.
ESPRUINO
The Espruino is another Arduino-based controller board. What's unique is that it is designed to operate with a language called JavaScript, which has been used in web browsers for a long time but has slowly been gaining momentum as a hardware control language.
CHINEASY
This is an instructional program to teach yourself Mandarin. There are flashcards and animations to learn the written characters, and audio materials to learn the spoken language.
STAR TREK: RENEGADES
If you miss the pre-J-J-Abrams Star Trek franchise, this is for you. This movie brings back Walter Koenig (Chekhov from the original series) with several actors from Star Trek: Voyager. It is set ten years after Voyager's return to human space, and politics and hilarity ensue.
PEBBLE SMARTWATCH
Another big success story, the Pebble can now be purchased for $150 at Best Buy. It connects to your phone and can run Android apps on a very small screen. It has a magnetometer (compass), a three-axixs accelerometer, Bluetooth, ambient light sensors, a 144x168-pixel screen, and a week of battery life between charges. It connects via Bluetooth to your phone so the phone can stay in your pocket most of the time.
My long list below includes some projects that were already funded and have gained significant fame, like the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, or the Pebble smartwatch now available at Best Buy.
Random projects
- Chineasy: The easiest way to learn Chinese by ShaoLan Hsueh — Kickstarter
- EMOTIV INSIGHT: Optimize your brain fitness & performance by Tan Le — Kickstarter
- Animating VASIMR®: The Future of Spaceflight by Ad Astra Rocket Company — Kickstarter
- 15mm Norse Irish 842 AD-1300 AD | Indiegogo
- Why Am I So Fat? Fundraiser | Indiegogo
- SIGMO - talk and understand in more than 25 languages!! | Indiegogo
- Star Trek: Renegades | Indiegogo
- Sprayable Energy | Indiegogo
- THE GOLEM OF HAVANA, a new musical | Indiegogo
- The Study of Happiness | Indiegogo
- Stompy: The Giant, Rideable Walking Robot by Project Hexapod — Kickstarter
- LUNARSAIL: An Open-Source Cubesat & Solar Sail Lunar Orbiter by Matthew Travis — Kickstarter
- Kapture: the audio-recording wristband by Kapture — Kickstarter
- GearTag - Keep track of your gear by GearTag — Kickstarter
- Pixy (CMUcam5): a fast, easy-to-use vision sensor by Charmed Labs and Carnegie Mellon — Kickstarter
- The New Ideological Footprint Project by James Addoms — Kickstarter
- FABULAS - Inspiring the World by Steve Brodie — Kickstarter
Phone and tablet
- Micro Phone Lens: Cell Phone Based Microscope by Thomas Larson — Kickstarter
- ENFOJER - Portable Smartphone Photographic Enlarger | Indiegogo
- Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android by Pebble Technology — Kickstarter
- SHADOW | Community of Dreamers by hunter lee soik — Kickstarter
- Hexoskin: wearable body metrics | Indiegogo
- iSketchnote: from pen and paper to your iPad! by ISKN Team — Kickstarter
- ChargerGenie | Indiegogo
Electronics and computers
- Shrunk down an Arduino to the size of a finger-tip! by Open Source RF — Kickstarter
- Lima: the brain of your devices by The CGC team — Kickstarter
- Flutter: $20 Wireless Arduino with half mile (1km) range. by Flutter Wireless — Kickstarter
- Red Pitaya: Open instruments for everyone by Red Pitaya — Kickstarter
- The Parallella Computer | Adapteva
- Piksi : The RTK GPS Receiver by Swift Navigation Inc. — Kickstarter
- BLEduino: Bluetooth 4.0 (BLE) made easy (Arduino Compatible) by Kytelabs — Kickstarter
- Rocket Droid Pc - The Worlds most powerful Android HDMI TV Dongle! | Indiegogo
- Espruino: JavaScript for Things by Gordon Williams — Kickstarter
- RGB-123 Led Matrices by Ryan O'Hara — Kickstarter
- Precision Gyroscope by Manuka Makers — Kickstarter
- Auranova: The Only Bluetooth Necklace Headset for Women | Indiegogo
- Massive Log Data Aggregation, Processing and Visualization by Israel Ekpo — Kickstarter
- GNUstep Project by Gregory Casamento — Kickstarter
- NoFlo Development Environment by The Grid — Kickstarter
- ZENO R25 - First Affordable Advanced Social Robot by RoboKind — Kickstarter
Robots and Flying Things
- Hex: A copter that anyone can fly! by Benjamin Black — Kickstarter
- Space Elevator Science - Climb to the Sky - A Tethered Tower by Michael Laine — Kickstarter
- Spiri, a programmable flying robot by Patrick Edwards-Daugherty — Kickstarter
- Sky Drone FPV | Indiegogo
Gaming
- Play AR by mark skwarek — Kickstarter
- Haptix: Multitouch Reinvented by Haptix Touch — Kickstarter
- Robot Turtles: The Board Game for Little Programmers by Dan Shapiro — Kickstarter
- castAR: the most versatile AR & VR system by Technical Illusions - Kickstarter
- Oculus Rift: Step Into the Game by Oculus - Kickstarter
Maker stuff
- MakerSwarm- An Authoring Tool for the Internet of Everything by MAYA Design Inc. — Kickstarter
- FORM 1: An affordable, professional 3D printer by Formlabs — Kickstarter
- The Buccaneer® - The 3D Printer that Everyone can use! by Pirate3D Inc — Kickstarter
- Fuel3D: A handheld 3D scanner for less than $1000 by Fuel3D Inc. — Kickstarter
- The 3D Scan-to-Print Web App by Volumental — Kickstarter
- The Microfactory: A machine shop in a box by Mebotics LLC — Kickstarter
- 3Doodler: The World's First 3D Printing Pen by WobbleWorks LLC. — Kickstarter
- 3Doodler — pre-order yours here
- Zim, the first dual head WiFi 3D printer fully plug & play by Zeepro — Kickstarter
- FABtotum Personal Fabricator | Indiegogo
The shortened URL for this post is http://goo.gl/ehfBQb.
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