Consumer Electronic Show

2017-01-18 | By David Sandys

Every year hundreds of thousands of tech enthusiast invade Las Vegas the first week of January to see a glimpse into the future of electronics. While there are lots of Consumer Electronic Show (CES) summaries here at DigiKey we wanted to give you a little bit of a different take. We are not going to focus on what the consumer industry leaders like Sony and LG showed, instead, we are going to share just a few highlights that we think will be a little more interesting to Maker Professionals.

Why Should Maker Professionals Care About CES?

CES isn’t just for the big guys. Before the exhibit floor even opened we were lucky enough to attend an event hosted by Kickstarter, Dragon Innovations and Bolt. That’s right, if you are looking to bring technology to market funding is a critical step and these three companies are the best out there. The ability to talk to these leaders and gain from not only their expertise but the knowledge of other Maker Professionals who have made the journey from Maker to Market is worth the trip itself…. And the that was before the show started.

Eureka Park – The Ultimate Maker Professional Event

You might think your little boat will get lost in the sea of ocean liners but this is where things get very interesting. At CES every year, there is a dedicated space in the Sands Convention Center called Eureka Park. Without seeing it live in person it is difficult to understand what this area is like but here is a quick description. Picture a row with 10 foot by 10 foot booths on both sides. Now expand it so that there are about 40 of them in that row (80 total with 40 on each side). Now do your best copy and paste and replicate that about 30 times. That’s right there are hundreds and hundreds of start-ups/Maker Professionals in rows talking about their products. Kickstarter alone had over 250 successful campaign creators exhibiting this year. And there are no… I repeat no booths larger than 10 feet by 10 feet. Countries like France, Israel and Korea have their own sections with dozens of Maker Professionals showing their products and technologies. All of them discussing partnerships, funding elements, distribution agreements, sales opportunities…

The Proof is in the Pudding

Here are just a couple of examples of the types and diversity of companies that exhibit in the Eureka Park area. Jooki (see here) is Bluetooth speaker that is controlled by NFC tags embedded in small characters turning it into a child’s jukebox. Basically any audio file (think book/story) or music playlist can be programmed to figurines. The child places the figurine on Jooki and the book, story or playlist starts to play. They are in control of their entertainment without having to know how to navigate playlists, audiobooks or music software. Another interesting product is from a company called Shapelog (www.shapelog.com). It turns out that each individual’s workout is as unique as a fingerprint. With Shapelog’s technology, a gym owner can retrofit their equipment to enable automatic workout tracking and enable their customers to have a dynamic personalized experience. This is just two of the hundreds of companies in Eureka Park.

Okay I Get It but What About the Technology

This is the other advantage for Maker Professionals when attending CES. You can see all the latest technology from both within and outside of the component world. DigiKey suppliers like Microchip, NXP and Linear Technology were all demonstrating their latest solutions and you get to see what trends are enabling innovation first hand. The big takeaway this year was Alexa, Amazon’s voice enabled assistant. Alexa is getting incorporated into everything from cars to washing machines so you better get used to saying “Alexa…”. Also, there were test tracks outside highlighting the latest innovations in autonomous vehicles. The technology used to make that happen including GPS, machine vision, sensors and a plethora of other components is going to permeate through the Maker Professional world to create all types of robotic interactive designs. The disappointment was the limited number of augmented reality (AR) solutions. Virtual Reality (VR) was very pervasive but to me the future is in augmented reality. Spend a few minutes playing Pokémon Go or watch a couple of the Microsoft Hololens intro videos and you can see where this melting of real and virtual world is headed. As a side note, one of the most interesting demonstrations is 3M’s immersion cooling with Novec engineered fluids. That’s right, you can actually run entire systems completely immersed in liquid. The solution they were showing had ten Nvidia 980 Titan video cards. You could see the liquid bubbling/boiling from the heat of the components but then being cooled by the condenser. Components can be hot swapped as well.

So Are You Saying CES Has Elements of a Maker Faire

No way. A Maker Faire helps flame the passion around creation and from a technology standpoint it tries to introduce electronics to the next generation of innovators. The Faires are all about inspiration. At CES, at least in Eureka Park, it is about what Maker Professionals have done with that inspiration. It is a place where entrepreneurs can be proud and show off their creations and at DigiKey, we are proud to be a part of helping all of their solutions come to life.

See you next year at Eureka Park!!!

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