With each passing day we witness technological innovations that revolutionise the way we interact with the world around us. The internet has been a boon to these innovators who leverage this mode to their advantage and develop products that offer a great value to the consumers. Internet also helps these innovators to collate the necessary resources for the purpose of the development of their products and the latest in line has been crowd funding that has been allowing innovators to get the required funding and focus better on the product development.
Another innovative product that has received a highly positive response from the ‘crowd’ is the Touchjet WAVE; a highly innovative idea that uses simple technology. The brilliance of this product is not the technology it uses but rather how it uses the technology. The product has been listed on indiegogo.com, a crowd funding website and within a day it has been able to generate over US$ 131,000, against a target of US$ 100,000 with still 29 days to go! So what makes this product so special and what value does it deliver that it has received funding from over 700 people in 1 day? Let’s find out.
A small device that the company has named WAVE can be clipped on the top of the television. It has an infrared sensor and an HDMI output that needs to be plugged into the HDMI port of the television. The infrared sensor senses the movements of the hands or a stylus that is supplied with WAVE and sends the signal to the Light Processing Unit or the LPU of the device. The data received from the infrared sensor is translated to the taps and gestures that can be understood by the Android operating system.
The device runs on Android 4.4 Kitkat and effectively converts your flat panel television into a giant touch screen. You can operate your television using your hand gestures or a stylus. Likewise, you can also connect your mobile phone wirelessly to the device and control your television from your smartphone. The smartphone can also be connected to the device to browse the internet and t download data and apps or to stream the internet live.
Since WAVE functions on Android, users can download and install over 1.3 million Android apps that are available on the play store. The device also has WIFI connectivity enabled for directly accessing the internet.
On the technical front, the device has a 2.0 GHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 1GB DDR3 RAM, 8GB Flash drive, built-in optical touch sensor, WIFI and Bluetooth. It has an HDMI Output, an Audio Line out, 1 Micro USB OTG and 2 USB 2.0 ports.
Since the device runs on Android and not on any proprietary operating system, it has large number of applications. The device can be attached to a flat screen monitor and can be used for presentations, app developments, using Android apps or even for playing games.
