The crew consisting of Eli and Joe, your humble author of this extravaganza, took to CES this year for a variety of reasons.
On the work side and the "What is Antlion up to" we were talking with a lot of distribution partners in new territories. That's right, all goes well we'll see some new countries and shops where you can buy yourself a brand new bona fide, verified, unparallelified ModMic!
We also used it as an excuse to hang out with some of our good friends, meet some new ones, and generally touch base with a lot of cool folks. Folks like the keyboard maker Input Club, the reps from Dreamhack, Team Complexity, and so many more.
But who cares what we did, right? You want to know what we saw? Well, there's basically 3 things at CES this year.
Drones
CES had big drones, it had small drones, it had the FAA answering questions about drone laws. You want selfie drones? I saw a dozen. You want cheap drones you can crash and not care about? You want expensive drones that look like they could be armed with missiles? And so on, and so on... but there was only ONE drone stand that actually made is stop in awe.
Star Wars multi-player battle drones! Shaped like... well, star wars stuff with a laser and detectors and real sounds = win. Like, super win.
At 200 USD they're not exactly crash it and throw it away cheap, but that's also within nearly anyone's budget if they can't live without it.
Its blurry because that thing was flying FAST.
Get one: https://us.propelsw.com/
Smart-whatever (Cars, doors, a talking fridge... yeah you heard that right)
Internet of Things GALORE. It feels like we're also driving towards this future where everything has an app that is controlling it. Both Samsung and LG are banking on the fact that the center of most households is the kitchen, and as such it should be our fridge that acts as the hub of all devices. It also lets you see inside the fridge without opening the door. Now if it would only put away the groceries for me...
And yes, the irony of a show dominated by the term "Smart" and the term "Drone" is really starting to sink in.
VR/AR
Oh man, I can not count the number of knock-off VR helmets we saw. Everyone was into the hardware of VR or AR, but so much of it was clearly never going to make it off the ground.
One thing was clear: We're driving towards wireless VR at a speed faster than I expected, and that is pretty cool. The day we can have VR without wires or external sensors at an affordable price is the day VR becomes a household item.
Conclusion?
The problem with working at a show like CES is two-fold. First, its too big to really see everything, and second, Eli and I were way too busy to really enjoy it in depth. These were our takeaways though, more drones, more VR, more internet of things. Nothing shocking there, but maybe that is a good thing. Maybe we need to take a few years and let these huge ideas catch up to reality before we take the next step into the wild world of new technology.... Naaah. Bring on the Mechwarrior robots and full dive VR!