Awesome Tech

DigiDNA’s free software lets you wirelessly backup your iOS device to a Mac or Windows computer without using iTunes. If you want more features such as individual app, file and media backups, check out its big brother, iMazing.

The perfect upgrade to your surround sound game. The eight speaker system includes five bookshelf speakers, a powered subwoofer, and two horizontal and vertical-firing speakers to envelop you in sound when paired with a Dolby Atmos-compatible receiver.

A slick new take on vintage Nixie tubes. The open-source Lixie display uses LED edge-lit acrylic sheets to display different digits. Unlike Nixies they can be any color, and don’t require high voltage to operate. Designer Connor Nishijima explains how it works.

These days, your office can go anywhere your travels take you. But you need to be properly equipped to if you want to be your most efficient away from home. Our pals at Everyday Carry have got you covered with 10 essential gear picks for road warriors.

Sequent claims that its eponymous product will be the first kinetic smartwatch – able to continuously recharge itself by turning your movement into electrical energy. It has the usual smartwatch features, such as a fitness app, GPS and notifications.

Ten Fold Engineering is working on pre-built structures that unfold within minutes on site, without the need for a foundation or even laborers. Their buildings are based on large levers that fold down to small volumes and unfold in a variety of ways.

A nifty noisemaker for electronic musicians, the softPop’s analog brain makes a virtually endless variety of sounds. Its semi-modular design means you can modify sounds not only with its sliders, but via a patch bay. It can also process external sounds through its filters.

Inspired by Jeroen Domburg’s tiny Game Boy-style retro console, Vincent Buso made an even smaller video game system. The Keymu has a clamshell design similar to the Game Boy SP. It’s powered by Intel’s Edison computer and runs emulators on Debian.

A precise and comfortable stylus for tablets and other touchscreen devices. It’s got a retractable, replaceable 4mm rubber conductive tip, a nicely weighted and balanced barrel, and a knurled grip. Save 40% in The Awesomer Shop.

Dani Clode’s concept for a motorized prosthetic thumb that’s controlled via pressure sensors on the user’s feet. Like the MetaLimbs, Dani hopes that we will one day consider advanced prosthetics for able-bodied people in the same way we treat eyeglasses and jewelry.

The Czur ET16 overhead scanner uses a 16MP Sony image sensor to scan one page per 1.5s. It has the usual scanner features such as OCR for extracting text, and can correct distortions from curved pages. The downside? Users say its manual and software could use some work.

TheSorryGirls show us how to make affordable and easily removable skins for your laptop, smartphone and more. The project involves printing a high resolution image on printable vinyl and sealing it with protective film.

Matt Gilbert’s Crane Lamp lets you drastically change its height and shape just by pushing or pulling its body. With its exposed scissor structure, it revels in its mechanical form and encourages you to use it and inspect how it works.

A free application for the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift that lets you build 3D models using a newbie-friendly interface made of six basic commands and a drag-and-drop mechanic. You can share your creations as 3D files or as animated gifs.

A 1967 film from the now defunct Philco-Ford Corporation envisions a distant future in which people live in modular hexagonal homes with computers in every room, flat-screen TVs, and smarthome tech. While some of the predictions were solid, others just seem silly in hindsight.

YouTube for podcasts. Anchor lets you make and publish podcasts right from your iOS or Android device. You can broadcast anything that your device can hear, including music from Spotify and Apple Music, and even call-ins from your listeners.

Most desktop 3D printers have difficulty handling individual layers thinner than 50 microns, so it’s pretty mindblowing to think that engineers have managed to 3D print a castle on the tip of a pencil, with a resolution of 0.1 micron, using multiphoton lithography.

To show off his trip to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Piet Rullens Jr. fit a Raspberry Pi 3 and a screen behind a poster inspired by the series’ animated newspaper Daily Prophet, then programmed it so that the video plays when someone approaches the poster.

Add macro, wide angle, and fisheye capabilities to almost any smartphone camera with this bargain-priced 3-in-1 lens kit in The Awesomer Shop. The lenses attach and detach easily using strong magnetic rings which adhere around your phone’s camera lens.

Three sets of educational children’s toys designed to teach basic electronics. Dough Universe comes with colorful conductive dough and circuits that let kids learn about and play with light, sound and motion. The sets are also available separately.

Korean company Airo is working on a lifelike decorative robot fish called Miro. It can swim on its own and avoid obstacles, and can be customized with skins. It can also be remote controlled and equipped with a camera. It lasts up to 10 hours per charge.

Using projection mapping and a mix of tracking systems, creative studio THÉORIZ shows off a slick prototype which projects 3D images that dynamically adapt to movements, creating a sort of Holodeck version 1.0. Everything you see was captured live, with no post-production.

If you’ve ever had to deal with a clogged drain or dryer vent, you know it’s tricky to figure out where the problem is. This nifty gadget has a tiny camera and LED lighting on its tip, so you can snake your way up to 10 feet into pipes, conduit, vents, and more to see what’s up.