From beehive sensors to 360° home media projectors, here are five of the top 50 startups Pioneers Festival has selected this year
BroomX VR
© Sean Dreilinger/ durak.org
Immerse yourself! BroomX brings you VR experiences from all angles, allowing you to project onto 4 walls at once. Their latest player can display content in a 360-degree radius, so prepare yourself for a frameless experience that you control via smartphone from the comfort of your couch.
Neuron Soundware
© Giles Moss
Heavy machinery requires a heavy investment, with the consequences of breakdowns significant: highly-trained personnel is required for regular maintenance to prevent failures. Neuron Soundware has devised another solution though, monitoring and predicting potential mechanical malfunctions early with sound and vibration sensors. Data collected is fed to a learning A.I. that can predict potential outages with 99.95% accuracy, allowing manufactures to individually monitor their equipment.
Leaf
© b inxee
Growing sensitive plants indoors can be a tricky, labor-intensive undertaking, requiring constant vigilance. Enter Leaf: The Colorado-based startup has created a smart phone-controlled grow box, allowing you to cultivate your own batch of tomatoes, herbs or flowers easily, changing factors like humidity or temperature with an app. Leaf keeps you updated about vital factors like pH levels or light ratios, even enabling you to check on your crops via a live stream from inside the box.
Lampix
Lampix liberates you from the restrictions of your laptop screen: this lamp can turn any table into an interactive smart surface. Lampix can search, digitally tag and copy physical documents placed beneath it, display notifications from your smart phone or turn your work surface into a touch-controlled screen. Because of its open API (application programming interface), its makers hope for a variety of future apps to support their product. Applications are near limitless: Imagine interactive recipes and instructions projected onto your kitchen counter while you cook.
BeeAnd.me
© Jason Riedy
Bringing beekeeping to the next level, BeeAnd.me allows you to check up on your colony without putting on a protective suit every time by using a microprocessor placed inside the hive. The App keeps you posted about everything you need to know, ensuring the health of your colony while also collecting data for a crowdsourced project contributing to bee related research.