Thursday, December 5, 2024

Innovation From Workplace to Garden

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Store up to 2TB in a flash drive

The world was surprised when thumb drives came with capacities greater than a gigabyte. What would you say now that Kingston has come out with terabyte-capacity USB flash drives?

Kingston’s DataTraveler Ultimate GT comes in 1TB and 2TB capacities, each priced at around a thousand dollars. If you need to backup large production files on the go or take along a 4K or 8K RAW video footage, it is definitely worth investing in.

USB 3.1 Gen 1 improves the performance by up to ten times while also providing better power management. This makes DataTraveler much faster than traditional external hard drives. A small footprint of 7.5×2.7×2.1cm3 and protective zinc alloy metal casing make the device handy and robust to carry along. Although made for USB Type-C ports, these flash drives also work with the USB 2.0 and 3.0 Type-A ports commonly found on PCs, tablets and other devices.

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The high-capacity flash drive is ideal to use with Android devices that support USB OTG (On-The-Go). So users can quickly access, edit and transfer files without any performance lag. Apart from regular versions available for sale, the company provides the option to customise drives for orders greater than 100 units. You can design the casing, logo and other aspects, or pre-store some content on the drives.

Product: Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT 2TB; Company: Kingston; Website; Country: United States of America

Measuring just 7.5×2.7×2.1cm3, this USB flash drive can store up to 2TB
Measuring just 7.5×2.7×2.1cm3, this USB flash drive can store up to 2TB

Unified threat management at work, at home

With an increase in the number of connected devices (the Internet of Things or IoT), users are under constant threat from cyber criminals even at home. From identity theft to break-ins, a lot of mishaps can arise out of loopholes in your home network’s cyber security.

Fortress Cyber Security offers a way out with its home-focused, enterprise-grade unified threat management (UTM) solution. This software stack and hardware solution allows users to deploy several enterprise security technologies at home. It monitors every connection on your home network, detects and prevents intrusions, and blocks bad connections, viruses and ransomware. Fortress maintains a blacklist of cyber security threats and bad actors (or bad apples) on the Internet. This information is distributed to every device on your network. What is interesting about Fortress’ claim is that even if a bad actor manages to get in, he cannot get out of your network.

The solution includes a touchscreen appliance, desktop computer portal and mobile app, so you can control the features through whichever medium you prefer, and from anywhere. You can watch and control how the system works, and make the best use of security features like browsing protection, parental controls, command and control blocking, unauthorised access blocking, unauthorised device blocking and network behaviour analysis.

Product: Fortress; Company: Fortress Cyber Security; Website; Country: United States of America

Fortress’ enterprise-grade cyber security for the IoT at home (Courtesy: Fortress Cyber Security)
Fortress’ enterprise-grade cyber security for the IoT at home (Courtesy: Fortress Cyber Security)

Connected whiteboard that saves your work

If you believe that jotting down ideas infuses much more creativity and focus than digitally representing them, Quirklogic’s Quilla is for you. Positioned as a replacement for whiteboards, Quilla is a combination of a 106cm (42-inch) E-Ink electronic paper display (EPD) and electronic ink technologies, which can be used like a whiteboard and marker! Despite its large size, the Wi-Fi connected device is lightweight enough to carry it around your office. Quilla is battery-powered, and despite the device being always-on, a single charge lasts up to 16 hours. There is hardly any glare and you can read content even in bright sunlight.

Quilla is very comfortable to use. Simply touch to erase, resize, copy or move content. Your page is not limited by the edges of the device. You can simply span and continue adding content. It is also possible to import images and PDFs to review and annotate. Content written on the board is immediately saved in the user’s library. This enables both personalisation and collaboration. You can access your content from anywhere and start off where you left. Likewise, you can connect multiple devices from different locations, to share work and collaborate in real time, from anywhere.

Product: Quilla; Company: Quirklogic; Website; Country: Canada

Quilla is like a whiteboard that enables real-time collaboration (Courtesy: Quirklogic)
Quilla is like a whiteboard that enables real-time collaboration (Courtesy: Quirklogic)

Laser distance measurer capable of problem solving

Designing a physical space is complex and tedious due to the measurements and calculations involved. You need to get all the dimensional parameters together, calculate the relative placement, find the right design, re-calculate and re-measure to map those design points to the actual physical space. If you have it wrong, it is back to the measurements again.

Plott has come out with a device that can simplify these tasks for you. Cubit is their first attempt at a tool that can think and solve problems. Equipped with dual lasers and a smart wheel, it aims to free users from the tedium of making complex measurements and the innumerable calculations needed for layout placement. So you can focus on the goal of the project and plan the journey accordingly. Cubit will do the rest!

Cubit can measure distances up to 30.5 metres (100 feet), with an accuracy of 2mm. The built-in wheel is used to measure short distances and irregular shapes. The app combines these measurements with photos of the physical space. You can virtually design your project with real-world scale and context, download and incorporate designs from the Web, and share your design with others to collaborate.

When you actually get down to implementing the design in the real world, Cubit guides you to your measurements using directional arrows. A bulls-eye maps the points you created digitally to the real physical space. So you just need to walk around with Cubit to figure out where you need to place stuff or perform construction tasks. No more complex calculations and errors! A feedback process correlates the completed place with the original, so you can see how it has changed.

Product: Cubit; Company: Plott; Website; Country: United States of America

Cubit looks like a simple tape measure but it’s a smart tool that bridges the gap between design and construction (Courtesy: Plott)
Cubit looks like a simple tape measure but it’s a smart tool that bridges the gap between design and construction (Courtesy: Plott)

A weeding robot from the maker of Roomba

Franklin Robotics is well-known as the maker of Roomba—the house cleaning robot. Now, they are all set to give you a garden cleaning solution too!

The new robot, called Tertill, automatically and constantly weeds your garden. There have been tech solutions for weeding before, but what makes Tertill special is that it works autonomously. It stays in your garden—rain or shine—and charges with solar power. It uses no chemicals, so it is easy to go the organic way with Tertill.

The robot keeps patrolling your garden looking for weeds. Its sensors help it to detect and steer away from plants. Small plants are considered as weeds and pulled out using string trimmers and weed whackers. To prevent Tertill from accidentally pulling out young saplings, you can fit these with plant collars till they grow to a particular height, when these are out of danger. Armed with special proprietary algorithms, Tertill patrols the garden in such a way that it can find and get rid of maximum weeds in an effective way.

Product: Tertill; Company: Franklin Robotics; Website; Country: United States of America

Tertill solar-powered robot to weed your garden
Tertill solar-powered robot to weed your garden

A smart indoor garden that’s sure to grow

Adding a green touch to your workplace improves not just the ambience but productivity too. Plants are wonderful to have at home as well. But, not everybody has a green thumb! The LeGrow Smart Garden ensures that you have a nice collection of indoor plants that grow well.

At the heart of LeGrow’s solution are the modular desk planters. You can click together the planters like Lego blocks and make an interesting indoor garden. The pot is designed with an internal water reservoir, which captures the excess water. This not only avoids spilling and leakage but also retains the moisture, so you do not have to water the plants frequently.

The LeGrow Shine plant growth lamp contains two light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that turn on or off to provide the right intensity and brightness of light for the plants to grow well. Apart from this, the ecosystem also includes LeGrow Spring air purifier and humidifier that provides the plants with ideal humidity conditions.

The solution comes with a handy power pot with four USB ports, which powers the humidifier, light source and two more of your devices. The Smart Garden is available in different configurations that include different number of modules such as planters, power pot, humidifier and lights. You can pick the option that fits your needs best. The company accepts orders through Kickstarter

Product: LeGrow Smart Garden; Company: Winmart Design; Website; Country: Singapore

A non-messy, sure-shot indoor garden for your home or workplace (Courtesy: Winmart Design)
A non-messy, sure-shot indoor garden for your home or workplace (Courtesy: Winmart Design)

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