Author Archives: Sarang Sheth

DaVinci Resolve’s latest Micro Control Panel turns your Apple iPad Pro into a full-fledged studio

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Just in time for Apple’s May 7th event, Blackmagic announced the Micro Control Panel, a tiny, keyboard-sized controller that takes your iPad color grading to a whole new level. Dock your latest iPad Pro in the Micro Control Panel, fire up the DaVinci Resolve app, and this tiny rig rivals most color-grading setups. Designed for professional as well as novice videographers and unveiled at NAB 2024 this year, the new portable control panel features a mounting slot for an Apple iPad Pro, an internal battery, supports both Bluetooth and USB-C connections, and boasts an affordable $495 price tag.

Designer: Blackmagic

Standing out for its portability, the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel is roughly the size of a keyboard. Don’t be fooled by its size, though. This panel packs a punch with high-quality trackballs and machined knobs for precise control over color correction. Whether you’re adjusting shadows, highlights, or saturation, the tactile feedback provided by these controls allows for nuanced fine-tuning.

Beyond color correction, the panel offers a range of transport and grading controls conveniently positioned around the edges. With these buttons at your fingertips, you can navigate your project timeline, set stills, and execute other commands with ease, significantly speeding up your workflow. Notably, some of these controls were previously exclusive to the larger DaVinci Resolve Mini and Advanced panels.

For existing DaVinci Resolve users, the Micro Color Panel offers a familiar feel. The trackballs boast a similar professional design, and the shift keys mimic the layout of higher-end panels. This ensures a smooth transition for experienced colorists while offering a user-friendly introduction for beginners.

An exciting feature for creators on the go is the integrated battery and Bluetooth connectivity. Ditch the cables and achieve wireless control over your color grading suite. This makes the Micro Color Panel ideal for location shoots or editing suites with limited space. But don’t worry, traditionalists can still connect via USB-C if desired.

The biggest perk might be the price tag. At $495, the DaVinci Resolve Micro Color Panel is significantly more affordable than its larger counterparts. This opens the door for a wider range of editors and colorists to experience the power of dedicated control panels and take their creative output to the next level.

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The Playdate Handheld Gaming Console gets a Nintendo Switch-style dock… but better

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Remember the Playdate console from 2019? If you don’t, here’s a refresher – the Playdate made the rounds on the internet at a time when gaming was becoming quite the craze. Google had just announced Stadia, Apple had recently unveiled their subscription-based games service, and among all that news, the Playdate emerged as this bastion of retro handheld gaming. It came with a quirky, bold design courtesy of Teenage Engineering, and sported a unique hand-cranked control that promised to add a new dimension to your gaming experience. With a retro black and white screen and the promise of immersing you in nostalgia, the Playdate garnered quite a bit of a fan following, but that doesn’t seem to be all on the horizon. The console’s maker, Panic, has just announced a new docking station for the console. Quite similar to Nintendo’s dock, this one lets you attach the gaming device to the dock for charging… but that’s not all. The Stereo Dock, as it’s named, also serves as a Bluetooth speaker, as well as a stand for the Playdate’s stylus, a new input device for the gaming console!

Designer: Panic

With a design that mirrors the Playdate console’s aesthetic perfectly, the Stereo Dock is a quirky retro-punk box that sits on your desk with speaker grilles on either side, a stylus popping out the top, and a very old-school kickstand at the bottom that lets you prop the dock up at an angle. Along with the Playdate console, it almost looks like a tiny retro television with buttons on the bottom and an antenna on the top!

The Playdate console snaps right onto the front of the dock and begins charging wirelessly. The dock doesn’t just serve as a speaker for the console, but also as a general stereo speaker that you can connect to your phone or any other device for audio playback. The Playdate DOES have a touchscreen interface, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if the stylus in the Stereo Dock would work along with the console. If it relies on regular capacitive touch input then the stylus would just as easily work with your smartphone or touchscreen tablet too, which would surely be interesting.

There’s no official launch date for the Stereo Dock, although Panic has had its share of minor delays. Project Lead Greg Maletic said “We apologize to everyone with a Playdate who has been waiting patiently for the Stereo Dock; it’s been a trickier project than we anticipated and we had a few false starts. We thought we’d save some time on that project by having our factory do the software for the Stereo Dock, but we’ve learned that you don’t always necessarily want that in some cases. The Stereo Dock is very much alive, we have the physical prototypes to prove it! We expect to have a formal update on when you can buy one later this year.”

It isn’t easy being a fledgling gaming company dealing with product success – folks who remember Cyberpunk 2077 know how small companies can sometimes get crushed by the burden of expectations, although Panic certainly delivered on its promise by launching the Playdate in 2022 after a few road bumps that also included needing to change battery suppliers due to a serious battery issue. Hopefully, the Stereo Dock will be out sometime later this year, although it’s currently missing an official price tag.

The post The Playdate Handheld Gaming Console gets a Nintendo Switch-style dock… but better first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Tiny $10 Titanium Pocket Knife has the most unique design we’ve ever seen

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Shaped like a comma, the Tops Home Store Titanium Knife is an unusual little EDC that’s full of surprises. Measuring a mere 1.65 inches long when closed, this ridiculously compact number is affordable, durable, capable, and just so unique-looking that it’s sure to grab the top spot in your EDC collection.

Designer: Tops Home Store

Click Here to Buy Now

The knife’s handle is hollow and features an open filigree-style design that lets you see right through it. Crafted from titanium, this unique design choice allows the EDC to be lightweight yet grippy, as your hands interpret the cutouts as a friction texture of sorts. When closed, you can see the blade right through the handle, which makes for an interesting visual effect giving the feeling of depth. Open it out, however, and you’ve got a tiny handle with an even tinier blade… but that doesn’t mean the Tops Home Store Titanium Knife isn’t a functional behemoth.

Even for its size, the Tops Home Store Titanium Knife is deadly sharp. The blade itself is 0.83 inches in length, but sports a neat drop-point design that makes the knife perfect for crafts, unboxing, DIY work, and even cutting ropes/cords. While the handle’s made from Titanium, the blade comes crafted from 5Cr13MoV Steel, known for its resilience, ability to hold a sharp edge, and anti-corrosion properties.

However, the most incredible part of the knife is its unique ball-bearing locking mechanism and guide. Given its size and compactness, the knife’s design relies on some rather clever detailing to help the blade open and close securely. A pair of ball bearings and guides help the knife open exactly as much as it should, while even locking in its open position. A tiny cutout in the blade lets you easily open the knife with your fingernails, and closing the knife is as simple as pressing down on the blade’s spine to disengage the snap and have it fold back into the handle.

The small EDC knife comes with its own small price tag. The sub $10 tag makes the Tops Home Store Titanium Knife quite a no-brainer, along with the fact that it’s small enough to fit on your keychain. Each knife comes with its own keychain ring that lets you secure the EDC to your keys, so the knife’s on you no matter where you go!

Click Here to Buy Now

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This Smart Light is what you get if a Disco Ball and Smart Bulb had a baby

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If the 20th century had the lava lamp, the 21st century has the GLORB. It’s dynamic, portable, customizable, smart, heck, it’s even waterproof.

A geodesic sphere, where each individual facet is a dedicated LED panel. The GLORB isn’t your average smart home lighting solution. Forget the moon lamps of 2020, the sunset lights of 2021, and those atrocious astronaut-shaped projector lamps that still pass off as ambient lights. The GLORB might just be the most beautifully dynamic ambient smart light ever made.

Designer: Alexander Osika

Click Here to Buy Now: $129 $199 (35% off). Hurry, only 3/630 left! Raised over $381,000.

On the inside, the GLORB’s like any other smart bulb. It changes colors, connects to the internet, is audio-responsive, and has the ability to animate light patterns… But zoom out and you’ll see what makes the GLORB so alluring. Made up of 80 different triangular panels that light up in various colors, the GLORB looks like a disco ball, but instead of working on reflecting light, the GLORB itself comes to life by lighting up in uniquely different ways.

The app works by combining a palette and an animation. Save the combination as a favorite. Favorites can be placed into playlists that you can name for any specific occasion or mood.

The multiple panels allow the GLORB to come to life by breathing light and color. Roughly the size of a football, the faceted light can either be hung from the ceiling or used as a tabletop ambient light. It comes with its own stand, runs on 5V of power (which means you can operate it via a power bank too), and can be controlled by an app, through your smart home network, or even with music. The GLORB boasts compatibility with Alexa, Philips Hue, Homey, and Home Assistant, with future support for Google Home, Apple Home Kit, and even Matter.

You can stream your music directly to the GLORB.

The GLORB makes for a perfect ambient light during movie night, a house party, a backdrop for your vlog or podcast, or even to pair along with your RGB gaming gear. The 80 individual LED panels pulsate light, changing colors or breathing an individual hue to make it look like the lamp is living. Through the app, you can select from a variety of animations and adjust the brightness or pulsating speed. The app also lets you pair multiple GLORBs together so they shine in synchronicity, and an audio-responsive mode allows the GLORB to even respond to music, quite literally mimicking the dynamic appeal of a disco ball.

Each GLORB comes made from a mix of plant-based polymers as well as recyclable plastic. The GLORB comes paired with a dedicated faceted stand that also doubles up as a ceiling mount, letting you either keep the orb on a tabletop surface or hanging as an ambient pendant light. The light works without the stand too, running directly on a power supply or a power bank, and it’s water-resistant too, which means you could take it outdoors to upgrade your camping experience, place it in your garden for an ambient evening, or strategically arrange them around your swimming pool for the most incredible night-time pool party ever. The GLORB is both WiFi and Bluetooth compatible, and will get better with time through free OTA updates.

Click Here to Buy Now: $129 $199 (35% off). Hurry, only 3/630 left! Raised over $381,000.

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7 Rendering Tricks to make your KeyShot Renders look Completely Photorealistic

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Render by Ali Rouzbeh

These small tips will take your renders from average to awesome.

If you’re on this website reading this article, there’s a fair chance that you’re an Industrial Designer who 3D models and renders for a living, and if that’s true there’s an even fairer chance that you’ve heard of KeyShot. Touted by 88% of designers as the best software for realistic renders, KeyShot is known for two things, being intuitive and easy to use, and being great at creating good renders with low effort. However, just like how a great camera doesn’t make you a great photographer, a great software doesn’t automatically make your renders incredible. If you’ve used KeyShot for work, personal projects, or the occasional design competition, here are a few lesser-known tips that should completely revolutionize your rendering game. Use these tricks to upgrade your skill set, bookmark the article for later, and give KeyShot 2024 a download so you can put your new rendering skills to the test!

Click Here to Get Free KeyShot Pro + Keyshot Web

1. Perfection lies in imperfection

Render by Jay Bhosale

That might sound like a paradox, but look around you – nothing is perfect. Your phone has fingerprint marks on it, your table’s got a few scratches, the glass you’re drinking water from isn’t 100% geometrically perfect – its surface has marginal imperfections that cause light to reflect/refract in unique ways. If you want to look real, you have to embrace reality… and in reality, nothing’s perfect. Sure, your product render against a white background can be as perfect as possible, but if you’re looking for a photorealistic scenario render, obsess over the imperfections. Add dust and fingerprints to flat glossy surfaces, use bump maps pretty much anywhere you can, create scratches as a layer/label in your material, remove 100% sharp edges (everything is marginally rounded off), and most importantly, push objects out of alignment in your scene. No real-world scenario has stuff aligned perfectly. These settings alone should take you halfway to photorealism, because humans perceive imperfections as a part of reality.

2. Bokehs are everywhere

Render by Mads Hindhede Svanegaard

Your eyes are telescopic. They can’t focus on everything at the same time – you look at one thing and everything else blurs out. The blur is the key here, and it’s why portrait-mode photos on smartphones look great too. Seldom do you see photos of ANYTHING where every single item is in focus, and similarly, your renders need to ‘focus’ on that too. Go to the Camera tab on the top right and scroll down to the part that says Depth of Field. Activate it, adjust your focus distance, use the target button to click on the object you want to focus on, and set your F-stop to an appropriate number to ensure everything else is properly blurred. It’s easy to overdo the blurring, so once you find the right F-stop, raise it a little higher to err on the side of caution (don’t over-blur stuff, it’ll look fake). Remember, blurring takes a significant chunk of your rendering time, so if you DO use this tip, double or triple your rendering time per image. The results will come out fantastic.

3. Adjust your Image Settings

Render by Andrei Garbu

If you’ve ever used a camera, chances are you didn’t just point at a photo and hit the shutter button. You probably adjusted the exposure, aperture, ISO, and maybe played around with the white balance too. Think of the camera in KeyShot as a camera in real life – all it really does is capture the angle and focus… but there are still settings you need to tweak. Here, the Image Settings are your friend. Click on the Image tab on the top right corner and switch from Basic to Photographic. Now you can play with the exposure, contrast, white balance, highlights, shadows, midtones, and other parameters. You can even increase or decrease your image’s saturation to get you that perfect balance of colors, darkness, and light. Select ‘Linear’ in the Response Curve setting, enable the Curve editing feature below, and tinker away! It’s the secret sauce your renders need!

4. Beginners render, legends ‘Denoise’

Render by Sam Gwilt

Sometimes your renders just look grainy because you didn’t give them enough time to render out perfectly. Makes sense, you’re probably on a strict deadline and you don’t have 10-20 minutes to spare per render. Luckily, KeyShot’s Denoise feature in the Image Settings works like magic. They just blur out the grains in your renders, letting you ‘cheat’ your way through a quick render. Enable Denoise and watch as all the grains disappear miraculously. Set your Denoise level to around 0.6 for a balanced effect – setting it too high will give you weirdly blurry/smudgy renders, and setting it too low will give you grainy images. The Denoise feature works VERY well when you’re using the Depth of Field setting too, allowing you to easily cut down your rendering time without cutting down on quality.

5. Caustics are a headache, but they’re worth it

Render by Tommy Cheong

If there’s any transparent object in your render, chances are that it won’t just absorb or block light, it’ll bend light too. If you’ve ever looked at a reflection of a glass of water on a table, or those bright lines at the bottom of a swimming pool, those are caustics. They’re caused by light being manipulated by transparent/translucent objects. Caustics in KeyShot remain disabled by default, but that’s only because they’re kind of an absolute headache. They require a truckload of CPU/GPU power, take a LOT of time to perfect, and even more time to render. But if you nail your caustics, you’re guaranteed to get a few ‘wow’s from people who see your renders. The Caustics setting can be found in the Lighting tab in the top right corner. Enable it and also enable Global Illumination. Increase your ray bounces as well as your global illumination bounces, and if you’re using glass or plastic as a material, go to the material settings and increase the sample size. The problem here is that there will be a difference between what KeyShot shows you in the preview window, and what it actually renders, so the only way to really tell if you’ve done a good job is by rendering images, reviewing them, and then tweaking the settings. Rendering caustics also takes a LOT of time, and here Denoise won’t help you. You just need to trust the process and let KeyShot do its job simulating the bouncing of light to create those caustic refractions. Like I told you, it’s a bit of a headache, but the rewards pay off well.

6. If you’re thinking fabrics, think RealCloth™

Render by Hossein Alfideh Fard

Perhaps one of KeyShot’s most underrated materials, RealCloth adds unbelievably photorealistic cloth effects to any fabric in your scene. Whether it’s a tablecloth, the upholstery of a sofa, or even the strap of a camera, RealCloth’s one job is to mimic the woven effect of any kind of cloth. It adds depth, weave-patterns, and even lets you bake in imperfections like flyaway fibers and threads. If you’re simulating photorealism, chances are one of the objects in your scene has a fabric texture (it could be something as small as a cloth tag on a product). If it does, tap into the power of RealCloth to get that absolutely perfect cloth effect. Don’t rely on fabric bump maps online, trust me they won’t give you the precise control or sheer jaw-dropping dynamism that RealCloth will.

7. Shadows are just as important as lights

Render by Will Gibbons

When you’re setting your scene, don’t focus all your energy on getting the right highlights. Focus also on getting great shadows. This means ditching the HDRI lighting settings and actually adding physical lights to your scene. Photorealism requires work, and those drag-and-drop environments won’t help you achieve it. Sure, you can use the environments to create realistic reflections, like a sky reflecting off a windshield of a car… but there’s NO way that environment will create the dramatic shadows you need. For those, you’ll require area lights, point lights, and/or spotlights. You’ll have to add these lights to your project by assigning them as materials to random spheres and planes within your scene. Unlike the HDRI environments, these lights will create actual shadows that are crisp at some edges, blurry at others, and more importantly, shadows that overlap, warp, and interact with each other. Take your smartphone flash and hold it against your hand. Move the flash closer and see the shadow grow bigger, move it farther and see the shadow get smaller – the shadow’s shape and behavior are determined by physical lights in your scene, not by the environment lights. So add physical lights to your scene and keep those shadows in mind because while the eyes don’t ever focus on shadows, they do register them. A render without accurate shadows will just look… off.

Click Here to Get Free KeyShot Pro + Keyshot Web

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Ultra-Light Tactical Titanium Pocket Knife Tips Scales at Just 1.3 Ounces

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There are multiple schools of thought when it comes to pocket knives – you’ve got one school that says pocket knives (or any EDC) should be highly rugged, durable, and scary-looking so as to fend off enemies. Another says that pocket knives should serve as multitools that have a myriad of functions to help you overcome any situation. The third school of thought, and the one that I subscribe to personally, is that a pocket knife should be useful when you need it, and invisible when you don’t. The SerpBlade falls squarely into the third school of thought while teasing the first two ever so slightly. At 37 grams or 1.3 ounces, the SerpBlade is lighter than an empty AirPods case (that’s for you metric-hating folks!), but it packs a scalpel blade at one end, and a tungsten steel glass breaker at the other end. It’s also made of titanium and carbon fiber, two of the most durable and resilient materials known to mankind. Whether it’s opening boxes or defending yourself from life-threatening situations, the SerpBlade comes in very handy, and when you’re done, its lightweight compact design disappears into your pocket like thin air.

Designer: TrekGear

Click Here to Buy Now: $59 $79 (25% off) Hurry! Only 9 days left.

The beauty of the SerpBlade lies in its sheer simplicity. Come and think about it, all of the pocket knife’s features can be broken down into four distinct parts – its blade, its glass-breaker, its materials, and the overall design.

The SerpBlade strangely enough doesn’t come with a blade built-in. Instead, it relies on any standard scalpel-style surgical blade that snaps right into the knife’s blade holder. Made from surgical steel, these blades are ridiculously sharp (ask any doctor or surgeon), and can handle everything from cardboard and paper to even cutting through wood. Readily available pretty much everywhere, the surgical scalpel blades come in a variety of profiles, so you can choose a shape that suits your needs best. A drop-point or clip-point is usually the crowd favorite, but a nice tanto-style blade really gives the SerpBlade a wicked demeanor. The fact that the SerpBlade ditches a built-in blade for a removable one gives you two significant advantages – for starters, you don’t need to worry about ever having to sharpen your blade again. If a blade grows dull or even breaks, simply ditch it for a new one. It’s simple, fast, and frankly, sustainable because you aren’t throwing out an entire knife just because the blade is damaged or dull. The second major advantage is that the SerpBlade, as a result, is TSA-friendly, as now you can simply ditch the blade and carry the EDC with you while traveling anywhere.

Flip the knife over and you’ve got a tungsten-steel glass-breaker on the reverse end. A great addition to the SerpBlade (I don’t know why more EDC knives don’t have glass breakers in them), this little feature comes in extremely handy when you need to make a quick getaway. The glass-breaking tip can easily shatter through hard laminated glass panels like the ones found in cars, giving you the ability to easily escape in the case of an emergency. The sharp surgical blade CAN cut through seatbelts too, although a serrated knife or a seatbelt cutter would be much more suited to the specific task at hand.

The materials play a crucial role in the SerpBlade’s appeal, given that they allow the knife to be durable, maneuverable, and so easy-breezy to use that you’ll find yourself reaching for the SerpBlade over other EDC knives. The pocket knife comes with a titanium armature that’s sandwiched between a two-piece carbon fiber handle. Sure, this makes the knife lightweight, it also makes the knife incredibly durable (you’re sure to use it for a lifetime if not more), but the combination of titanium and carbon fiber allows the SerpBlade to also be fire-resistant, waterproof, and corrosion-proof. Titanium doesn’t rust or oxidize the way steel does, and both titanium and carbon fiber can resist high temperatures while also being relatively inert to chemicals. In short, your lightweight knife is also 10-20x more durable than an all-steel knife or a steel knife with wooden handles.

On the design front, the SerpBlade is as slim and slender as they come. At 81mm in length (just over 3 inches), the SerpBlade is the perfect blend between compact and ergonomic. A deep pocket clip allows you to securely carry your SerpBlade in your pocket, and a lanyard hole (that’s now been added to the final design) lets you attach your SerpBlade to a carabiner or paracord too. It was built to be your trusty sidekick for trekking, camping, hunting, gardening, wilderness survival, emergency use, and even something as benign as opening boxes and envelopes or papercraft.

The knife features a single-handed flip-to-open mechanism that deploys in under a second, letting you go from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye. A roller bearing mechanism makes the flip-out buttery smooth, while a liner lock holds the blade in place while you’re using the knife, ensuring it doesn’t shut on you mid-job. The titanium arm that holds the surgical scalpel blade lets you change blades in a jiffy too. All you need to do is slide out the old blade and add a new one and you’re good to go. Change blades whenever an old one goes dull or breaks, or even if you’re in the mood for something different!

The SerpBlade comes in a single color, although each carbon fiber handle has a unique flake pattern that differs from knife to knife. The EDC starts at a discounted $59, which includes the pocket knife itself, along with ten No.23 surgical blades included. The Serpblade ships globally for free starting July 2024.

Click Here to Buy Now: $59 $79 (25% off) Hurry! Only 9 days left.

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Golf-inspired luxury mechanical watch boasts a shapeshifting face that changes every day

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I assume that there’s a significant overlap between the watchlover demographic and the golf-playing demographic. Both of them are indicators of high-society, and people who love golf or watches don’t hesitate to flaunt their interests. Designed for specifically that intent, the Byrne Gyro Dial Golf timepiece combines the love for time and turf into one gorgeous mechanical design. The watch comes with a grassy dial, featuring a 3D watch face that tells the time while also highlighting its mechanical prowess. The dial boasts an open-worked rotor at the center, with four mechanical number cubes on the top, bottom, left, and right. As the day passes, the cubes rotate to ‘refresh’ the watch face, alternating between Roman and conventional numbers, and even replacing them with golf balls or golf clubs. Every day, the watch changes its face, giving you something new to look forward to each day, and something to brag about when you’re showing your timepiece off to your friends on the green…

Designer: Byrne

Byrne’s Gyro collection is known for its dynamic displays. Unlike conventional watches with static dials, the Gyro Dial features four rotating cubes that change faces every 24 hours, revealing new designs. The Golf edition takes this a step further by incorporating miniature golf-themed engravings on these cubes.

Imagine glancing at your wrist and seeing classic Roman numerals one day, then playful golf clubs (driver, iron, sand wedge, putter) the next. The watch even features miniature, intricately detailed golf balls with realistic dimples. For traditionalists, sporty Arabic numerals are also included in the rotation.

This unique display isn’t just about aesthetics. The rotating cubes are a feat of engineering. To accommodate the additional weight of the miniature sculptures, Byrne has refined their automatic Calibre 5555 movement. This Swiss-made marvel ensures smooth and precise daily rotations.

The Byrne Gyro Dial Golf is housed in a sleek, 41.7mm grade 5 titanium case with a green-tinted main plate that subtly references the golf course. The sapphire caseback offers a glimpse into the intricate workings of the movement, showcasing its open-worked rotor with elegant finishes.

A comfortable green rubber strap completes the sporty look. Limited to just 24 pieces, the Gyro Dial Golf has a starting price of CHF 25,000 (approx $27,500 USD).

The post Golf-inspired luxury mechanical watch boasts a shapeshifting face that changes every day first appeared on Yanko Design.

This next-gen Wi-Fi router with a Built-in VPN lets you access the internet without anyone stealing your data

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Sure, your phone and laptop have VPNs… but does your smart speaker? Your home camera? Smart doorbell? Baby monitor? It’s easy to think of yourself as protected when your primary device operates on a VPN, but the truth is that our houses are filled with IoT devices that remain vulnerable to brute force because of one weak point of entry – a basic router. The Rio Router aims to change that with a built-in VPN, device allowlisting protocols, guest network features, and the ability to set parental controls from the router itself. Whether it’s a government trying to snoop on you, someone trying to hack you, companies trying to sell your data, or your internet service provider secretly gathering info about you, the Rio Router cuts it all off right at the source. It encrypts information in a way that anonymizes your entire smart home, so you can browse the internet freely, and your smart home gadgets can access the internet without being vulnerable to data theft.

Designer: Rio Router

Click Here to Buy Now: $299 $549 ($250 off). Hurry, only 15/290 left! Raised over $136,000.

Most routers are designed to help you access the internet, but that access can sometimes be a double-edged sword, creating a path for bad-faith actors to access your IoT devices and even the data within them. A simple WiFi password can only do so much, right? That’s why the Rio Router uses a protocol that requires you to personally allowlist any device connecting to your network. Every IoT device gets approved by you, and if there’s any device you don’t approve of trying to connect to your network, it doesn’t get access to your network or to the devices on it. Think of it as a security guard that only allows you into a building if you have the right ID, and turns you away if you don’t.

Even for approved devices accessing the internet through the Rio Router, all data gets encrypted through the router’s built-in VPN. This offers two distinct benefits – for starters, it lets you access the internet and streaming services without any government or geolocation restrictions (yes, that means being able to use TikTok even if it gets banned), but it also encrypts all personal information so that your internet service provider doesn’t get unfettered access to your life… or even corporations like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon that feed off of information from smart home devices.

Obviously, that level of access does come with its downsides – you want your family to stay safe from potentially dangerous websites. The router allows you to set parental controls for specific devices, preventing your child’s laptop or tablet from being able to access harmful sites, and an integrated DNS and web filtering system provides all-around protection, preventing all devices from accessing malicious sites that could scam/phish you or corrupt your device with ransomware.

Following the security guard analogy from earlier, think of your internet connection as a building with multiple wings/departments. Different employees can only access the wings or departments they are authorized to, and a low-level employee can’t necessarily go snooping in the CEO’s office or through the confidential file room. Similarly, the Rio Router creates dedicated rooms for each category of devices. Your smart kitchen gadgets can’t access or communicate with your bedroom’s smart devices even if they’re on the same network. This technology, known as SecureRoom™, helps create dedicated chambers for different internet devices, so every gadget on the same network doesn’t necessarily have access to all the data on the network. The SecureRoom™ is a brilliant way of ensuring that your gadgets don’t have access to information they don’t have clearance for. Your living room smart speaker doesn’t necessarily know what’s happening in the kitchen, and the baby monitor in the bedroom isn’t vulnerable to being snooped on by your thermostat.

The SecureRoom™ system also allows you to create guest networks for when you have people visiting you at home. No more sharing passwords for the main WiFi network – guests get to access the internet through a SecureRoom™ guest network. Their data stays safe and so does yours – you can approve devices to the SecureRoom™ to ensure that nobody else is accessing the internet, and once your guests leave your house, they’re removed permanently from the network and can only access the internet once you grant them approval.

The Rio Router runs WiFi 6 for fast and reliable connections from every corner of your house and even comes with an iOS/Android app that lets you control the router, set protocols, create SecureRooms™, and grant/deny approvals to external devices. It gives you the liberating taste of what true internet freedom feels like, allowing you to rely on IoT devices without the fear of them spying on you, as well as preventing anyone from hacking into your network or even accessing data they’re not privy to. It also helps that you can now browse international titles on your streaming service so even if The Office leaves Netflix in the USA, it’s still available in some other country!

It’s 2024, and if your internet service provider is giving you a free router with your connection, you’d best not trust it with all your data. After all, if it’s free, you’re the product. The Rio Router starts at $299 and comes with a free app, and VPN service free for 12 months. You can use the Rio to set up as many as 4 different SSIDs (WiFi access points), 8 Rio mesh extenders, and up to 16 SecureRooms™ at a time.

Click Here to Buy Now: $299 $549 ($250 off). Hurry, only 15/290 left! Raised over $136,000.

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Polestar just beat Tesla by launching their very own Smartphone

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Unless China celebrates April Fool’s Day 18 days after the rest of the world, these images circulating on Polestar’s Weibo account hint that the company may be getting into the smartphone game.

Of all the EV companies to tease a smartphone, we probably expected Tesla to be the first. The internet was constantly filled with rumors teasing a Teslaphone (we even covered one of them), but turns out Polestar may have beaten them to the punch. The phone was spotted on the Google Play Console in February and was actually certified for sale in China last year, so this might not be a prank. The Polestar Phone is real, and this is what it looks like.

Designer: Polestar

The Polestar Phone sports an all-white and silver colorway, with clean lines, tight curves, and immaculate surfaces, just like its cars. Coincidentally enough, the clean design can’t entirely be attributed to Polestar – the phone is, in fact, a rebranded version of the Meizu 21 Pro, running a different OS and with Polestar’s branding on the back as well as the sides.

If we need to go off of the Meizu 21 Pro specs, the phone will run on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, and sport a 50 MP main camera, along with a 13 MP ultra-wide-angle shooter, and a telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and periscope lens. The front will sport an edge-to-edge 2k+ screen with a 21:9 ratio and super-thin 2.2mm bezels.

The phone will apparently run a version of Android called the PoleStarOS – this is where the automotive company expects its expertise to shine through. While nobody will specifically buy a Polestar phone, the OS will offer a compelling reason for Polestar EV owners to make the switch. The phone’s OS will boast tight integration with the Polestar EV ecosystem, demonstrating how the two tech devices can integrate into each other to create a well-rounded user experience for car owners.

Barring a few images and a teaser video, not much is known about the Polestar Phone. However, the device is being primed for an April 24th launch. Who knows, if this works out we might get a Tesla X Smartphone sometime soon?!

The post Polestar just beat Tesla by launching their very own Smartphone first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Lunar Lander-inspired Espresso Maker will Brew Coffee that’s out of this world!

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Imagine brewing your morning espresso in a machine that looks like it’s straight out of a mission control center. Made from sleek, space-grade aluminum and carbon fiber, the LanderShot Lunar Espresso Machine boasts a futuristic aesthetic that’s guaranteed to turn heads. But it’s not just about looks. Every detail, from the robust dials and gauges to the stainless steel plumbing, is meticulously designed for durability and precision.

Designer: Landershot

The LanderShot Lunar Espresso Module’s design is a breathtaking fusion of functionality and futuristic aesthetics. Machined from CNC-machined type III hard-coated 6061 aluminum and carbon fiber, it stands out with its robust and sleek chassis, ensuring durability while echoing the advanced engineering of spacecraft. Its premium components, including stainless steel plumbing and a reliable pump system, promise longevity and consistent performance, making every espresso shot a perfection of science in your cup.

Control is a central theme of the LanderShot experience. This machine offers an engaging, hands-on approach to coffee brewing, reminiscent of piloting a lunar mission. From the tactile feel of its dials and switches to the precision of its analog gauges, users can manipulate every aspect of their espresso—pressure, temperature, and brewing duration. This control doesn’t just alter the taste; it transforms the brewing process into a deeply personal ritual, reflecting the individual’s preferences and the intricate dance of espresso extraction.

The technical specifications of the LanderShot are as impressive as its design. It features a PID-controlled temperature system that guarantees the optimal heat for brewing, a critical factor in achieving the perfect espresso. The machine can heat water from 20°C to 100°C in just three minutes, with a pressure reserve of about 10 bar during extraction, and includes a heat exchanger dial that allows for fine-tuning the brewing temperature. At its core, an Arduino Nano Every board oversees the machine’s precise control and monitoring, highlighting the blend of traditional coffee-making and modern technological innovation.

Not only is the LanderShot Lunar Espresso Module visually out-of-this-world, it also serves as an elegant addition to any interior. Its unique appearance and state-of-the-art features make it not just a tool for making espresso but a conversation piece that sparks interest and admiration among coffee enthusiasts and tech aficionados alike. The $2,395 price point may be a deterrent for most, but then again, if having a great coffee palate, an appreciation for space travel, and tonnes of ancestral wealth are traits that describe you perfectly, this espresso machine might just be the right pick for you.

The post This Lunar Lander-inspired Espresso Maker will Brew Coffee that’s out of this world! first appeared on Yanko Design.