List of Dodgy Crowd Source Funded Projects

[rollatorwieltje]

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/starsailor-live-brings-the-skies-into-your-bedroom-technology

Another darkness projector. Granted, most of the other demonstrations are in a dark room, which may be plausible, but still they show this:



 

[FrankBuss]

Why do people buy an overpriced projector, which looks tiny and probably doesn't have much light output? Didn't read all of it, did they post some hard facts, like lumens light output? Looks like all 3D rendered, no prototype. And the sleep monitoring is useless, you can do this with your smartphone.

[gildasd]

A small projector is useful for professional illustrators.
Once the client decides on a rough, it's scanned and projected on the final paper/cloth at the right format, allowing to start painting right away.
Traditionally this was done with a grid yadidada etc. For an A3 portrait, this would save me around 8 hours...

But we are talking of a world market of a couple thousand units worldwide. A market that is cornered by cheap second hand units...

[janoc]

But we are talking of a world market of a couple thousand units worldwide. A market that is cornered by cheap second hand units...

Plus there are tons of small projectors available, for years now.

[gildasd]

But we are talking of a world market of a couple thousand units worldwide. A market that is cornered by cheap second hand units...

Plus there are tons of small projectors available, for years now.

The small protectors are typically a bit lacking in Lumens... and are typically in the same price range...

[janoc]

The small protectors are typically a bit lacking in Lumens... and are typically in the same price range...

Yes, around 100lm is common. On the other hand you don't need 1000lm+ to power a drawing table type of application, 100lm from close range is plenty even in daylight for that.

However, I thought the idea was to get a small projector? If you want more than about 200 lumens, it will need substantially more cooling even with LED light. That is not possible to cram into a very small package without going with a high speed fan that sounds like a jet taking off. Also the lifetime of such projector will be short.

[nwvlab]

Hi there!

I'm following this https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brentmorgan/superscreen/ since few days ago, and there are a lot of things that just smell fishy.

1) The prototype they are using in their videos strangely resembles a Samsung tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab2 9.7").
2) There is no video showing the prototype and another cell phone (except Samsung) working TOGETHER. When they show the screen, to actually hightlight the responsiveness, they do not show any cell phone: this is very suspicious.
3) They are very detailed in describing the well known technology, but they cover themsevles under the intellecual property protection fog, when they explain how they manage to transmit a 2560x1600 video - at 60fps I guess (by the way, that would be an impressive amount of raw data to be transmitted, 5.9Gbps. You might argue that they encode the screen image, before actually transmitting it. Right, such realtime encoding would still be very hardware-demanding, plus your cell phone would still have to play the video you're remotely watching or play the 3D game! And I don't believe they "copy" the application to the tablet so that all the video data is generated locally, they also stated that they cannot work in standalone mode).
4) They slowly extended their early bid slots from 1000 to 8000 (for instance, some days ago, there were 7500 early bid slots. Now 8000). Update! at the moment of writing, they increased the limit to 9000!
5) The creators aren't answering to questions since a huge amount of time.

I would bet this will end like Zano or the Coolest Cooler.

Cheers!

[Kilrah]

I'm not believing it either, since the whole appeal (and which they show when only the tablet is visible, the content is obviously showing a properly laid-out tablet UI) would be for apps to be scaled to the proper resolution, i.e. having them rendered in a virtual screen that is transmitted - but AFAIK neither Android nor iOS provides such a facility, so it would be dead in the water at the OS level.

And it's also directly incompatible with what they say (and show when both phone and tablet are visible) in the video that "superscreen will display exactly what you see on your smartphone" - Can't simultaneously be displaying both "exactly the same in sync" and "an adapted UI" which they both show 

If what they plan to do is display "exactly the same" then they didn't invent anything, Samsung's Side Sync feature has provided that for a few years between a Samsung phone and either a PC or Samsung tablet. This could be why they used Samsung devices for the demo 
Now this requires deep OS integration though so good luck making it compatible with all devices.

[FrankBuss]

I'm not believing it either, since the whole appeal (and which they show when only the tablet is visible, the content is obviously showing a properly laid-out tablet UI) would be for apps to be scaled to the proper resolution, i.e. having them rendered in a virtual screen that is transmitted - but AFAIK neither Android nor iOS provides such a facility, so it would be dead in the water at the OS level.

iOS has a feature to transmit the actual display, too, for example the program Reflector 2 uses it, which I used to record the iPhone display in one of my copter videos, starting at 1:11:



The resolution with newer iOS devices is insane anyway, so would be not too bad if stretched. But I don't know if it can transmit back touch events, too.

[nwvlab]

I'm not believing it either, since the whole appeal (and which they show when only the tablet is visible, the content is obviously showing a properly laid-out tablet UI) would be for apps to be scaled to the proper resolution, i.e. having them rendered in a virtual screen that is transmitted - but AFAIK neither Android nor iOS provides such a facility, so it would be dead in the water at the OS level.

iOS has a feature to transmit the actual display, too, for example the program Reflector 2 uses it, which I used to record the iPhone display in one of my copter videos, starting at 1:11:



The resolution with newer iOS devices is insane anyway, so would be not too bad if stretched. But I don't know if it can transmit back touch events, too.

How fast is it? I mean, is there any noticeable lag? And what about the image quality?

Anyway, I have also reported this project directly to Samsung (if they actually give a shit about people using their stuff and claiming it's their invention).

[Kilrah]

Yes both iOS and android have screencast option, but it's display only, no control.
I don't know of generic remote input methods that don't require root/jailbreak, Samsung's feature is the only example I know of but limited to their devices.

By the way I only found out about that SideSync feature today while looking around that kind of stuff... even when I've been using every Samsung phone since the S3. It's something that I'll be using every day now, but somehow it's always been completely absent from their marketing... 

[PlainName]

Yes both iOS and android have screencast option, but it's display only, no control.

My car 'radio' has this (for Android) but it's control too. Can't for the life of me think what it's called now

The car setup uses only USB, but wireless option works with more reputable kit. It's a real thing and could be that these people are just nicking the made-for-car facility and using it with any old bigger screen.

Edit: http://www.mirrorlink.com/ is the place. Control for Android, just mirror for iOS.

[Kilrah]

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/airvolt-charging-smartphones-from-radio-waves-charger--3/x/2125718#/

 

The broken wording, wrong units, "development of technology" planned for after the campaign, and obviously the fact that said technology will never be able to be "developed" to achieve the advertised functionality...  

[McBryce]

His choice of words reveal his total lack of physics/electronics knowledge, but hey, with $6K he's going to buy equipment and outsource the engineering to a team that have just 12 weeks to complete the development, so economics, payscales and project management don't seem to be his area of expertise either.

McBryce.

[Howardlong]

Almost identitcal to the TCharger scam.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tcharger-the-next-generation-wireless-charger-smartphone-future/x/12944414#/comments

[Kilrah]

Wow that's disturbingly similar   

[Cyberdragon]

Was this already posted here? https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/home-quantum-energy-generator#/ I wonder why he no longer works for Honda?

Not sure about this one, but their photobucket got disabled https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/robinone-makes-motor-oil-last-longer-car-motorcycle#/

[frozenfrogz]

Paqsule the desinfection bag is/was on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and I call BS.

Typical UV-C applications feature at least 70 to 100W of fluorescent lamps for surface sanitation. Also, ozone generators for air cleaning are quite controversial from a health related point of view.

I could not find any tech specs on the campaign site.
Most likely it is just a bag with purple interior lighting and some funny smell generator xD

[Cyberdragon]

Paqsule the desinfection bag is/was on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and I call BS.

Typical UV-C applications feature at least 70 to 100W of fluorescent lamps for surface sanitation. Also, ozone generators for air cleaning are quite controversial from a health related point of view.

I could not find any tech specs on the campaign site.
Most likely it is just a bag with purple interior lighting and some funny smell generator xD

I'm pretty sure it's all real, it would be relatively simple to implement all of those features. Whether it would actually work as advertised is unknown, but it seems like wank.

[frozenfrogz]

Whether it would actually work as advertised is unknown, but it seems like wank.

If it actually incorporates a potent "UV-C photon gun" you could at least dispose vampires you hunted down with a pitch fork in the bag.

Reminds me of the craptacular "Orb"

[IanMacdonald]

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tribotex-more-hp-mpg-and-reverse-engine-wear-car-engineering#/

Another oil additive that's likely just automotive snake oil. Even claims to repair worn engines.

1580% funded on April 7, 2017. 

[Cyberdragon]

If it doesn't use those weak UV LEDs (which it might) it would use mini UV tubes like in real portable sterilizers and on the bottom of robot cleaners. In which case, your bag would be somewhat fragile with glass bulbs inside.

EDIT: That channel seems interesting, I must watch more.

[frozenfrogz]

EDIT: That channel seems interesting, I must watch more.

Detective Hacc is indeed among the underated youtubers. He seems like a fun guy and I enjoy watching his stuff

[Cyberdragon]

 

[mikerj]

Not sure about this one, but their photobucket got disabled https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/robinone-makes-motor-oil-last-longer-car-motorcycle#/

Photobucket have very recently stopped any users linking their pics in 3rd party sites unless they pay $400 per year for the privilege.  I doubt Photobucket will be around much longer.

robinOne is the biggest pile of excrement I've seen since someone decided that solar powered roads would be a great idea. 

Motor oil has to be changed because suspended particles, dust and water get into the oil over time.

100% incorrect.  The oil filter is there to deal with particulate contamination, and water will evaporate provided the oil is operating at a suitable temperature.

Motor oil needs to be changed because of a large number of changes that can not be reversed by passing it through a simple filter, e.g. viscosity degradation due to shearing of long chain polymers, evaporation of the more volatile fractions/additives, oxidation, hydrolysis etc...