LAS VEGAS—The CES news is heavy on two kinds of companies: Huge players, many with elephantine TVs (curved and 4K this year), and cool Kickstarter success stories such as Pebble Watch. But off in the corners of the show you can find startups with working prototypes and intriguing ideas, which are getting ready to launch crowd-funding campaigns in the coming weeks and months.
1. Solar Cool Tech. This is a solar-powered beach cooler, which sounds mundane but is actually a big deal. The PV panels on the lid are efficient enough and the algorithms for managing the load are smart enough to keep the contents of the box cold indefinitely as long as you've got the unit sitting in full sunlight. There are rechargeable batteries to help you make it through the night, or to provide an electrical head start before you head out to the beach.
Frozen margaritas are a pillar of American civilization and worthy of their own technological breakthrough. But the really critical contents of a cooler like this would be vaccines and other medical supplies headed to disaster areas or to the developing world. The founder, Ryan McGann, plans to build about 1000 units in the first year and 5000 in the second, and to scale up from there.
Crowd-funding launch: January 7 on Kickstarter.
2. TouchJet. We've all seen small projectors that will throw an image up on the wall for watching movies. TouchJet goes further by turning walls and tabletops into interactive environments: touchscreens, in other words. That basic concept is seen in retail environments and children's museums, but we had yet to see a pocket-size device that will do everything from the simple—project an image for Skype conversations—to the sophisticated—allowing for collaborative, multitouch environments on a kitchen table or classroom wall. The company envisions a $500 retail price, and it drew lots of interest in a CES launch competition held today.
Crowd-funding launch: February 2014 on Indiegogo.
3. FINsix.This super-small, ultra-light power adapter just can't fail (oops, sorry, did I just jinx it?). Maybe I like it so much because I'm walking around CES burdened by electronics hardware, and FINsix is about one-fourth the size and one-sixth the weight of the adapters I'm carrying now. In the long run, the fancy physics may help FINsix venture into industrial applications, but the company will win its first fans in the consumer market, starting with tech journalists.
Crowd-funding launch: CEO Vanessa Green says that a campaign is likely this spring, and we guess it'll be on Kickstarter. To date, the company has a couple of thousand preorders through informal channels, and shipments should begin in the summer. The price is in the $90 range.
