Tech East and More of Day 1 at CES

I wrapped up at Tech West (previous posts here and here), and in the afternoon I ventured over to Tech East at the Las Vegas Convention Center where many of the larger tech firms have their exhibits.

A big theme this year was obviously the Internet of Things (IoT) — connected everything, with a focus on connected home devices. There seems to be a lot of innovation here, and many companies seem to be pushing their products closer to the point at which the benefits of some of these devices justify the (falling) costs, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

Zigbee had a big home automation demo, showing everything from connected lights, speakers, flood monitors, motion sensors, and more:

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New connected lights from Sylvania, which appeared to be competitive with the Hue and Lifx at a much lower price point:

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More home automation from Wemo:

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Not sure who would use this, but there was Droplet, a Roomba-like robotic sprinkler system. Kind of amusing. Who knows, maybe it works:
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There were a few exhibits showing sleek connected car interfaces, and all digital dashboards:

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Of course there were drones, and luckily for everyone at CES, they were all in drone cages:

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I was very impressed with a company that created electronic waterproofing technology. They showed a working circuit board powering a TV above (not shown) and iPhone submerged in water:
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They also had a fully functioning TV, operating in a tank of water:

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Water-free solar panel cleaning robots:

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I was excited to see Nikon’s setup, as I was hoping they’d announce an update to the D7100 camera, but no such update yet. Only a new entry level SLR, the D5500, which does look nice.

2015-01-06 15.52.49I did get to play with a bunch of beautiful lenses. I loved the 300mm f2.8:
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Too bad it’s $6,000.

They had a guy telling stories about amazing photos he took on an African Safari — I was blown away by some of the shots he had taken:

There was a “mirror” that shows you an image of yourself wearing virtual clothes:

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Towards the end I made it over the to bigger exhibits, which were impressive, but nothing too surprising.

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Just when I thought 4K TVs were only getting started, there were 4K Ultra TVs, 4K 3D TVs that didn’t require any glasses (they made me dizzy), and a whole new line of 8K TVs. They looked beautiful, but with all the competing technologies, it just made me think I don’t want to upgrade my TV for a very long time.

Curved TVs were a big craze. Nearly all of Samsung’s TVs were curved:

2015-01-06 16.25.17 2015-01-06 16.24.58They just made me think of this from Vizio:

Curved TV seating chart

Monster:

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And finally Sony:

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That was it for day 1. My iPhone step counter says I walked 11 miles.