CES 2017

Post details about exhibitions or conferences that may be of interest to other members. This will help gather support for the industry.
dhirota
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Re: CES 2017

Post by dhirota »

DAY 2, CES 2017 Exhibition, Open 9am to 6pm

Thad,

There are so many booths and so many people standing in line, that I normally listen and speak with them for a few minutes, give them a card and leave, assuming that I will return to check out the good ones. I went back today, and the booth was empty for the 6 camera guys and the neighbors said that they thought the group had left. Maybe they figured that enough people had shown interest and did not want to deal with any more since many of these people are currently not selling a finished product.

I spent the morning on Level 2, but too many booths that I was not interested to pursue. Left for TECH EAST at the lVCC, where the mixed reality, AR, VR, UAV groups took up most of LEVEL 1.

You can see how crowded LEVEL 1 was with the DJI booth difficult to move around.
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The FLIR booth was interesting because of the large LV map that they had and the new FLIR One products announced.

The ODG booth was too crowded to stand in line. Most of the other AR/VR booths were the same; and the one's with short lines were not worth spending additional time.

In the same area was a bunch of Shenzhen vendors, one of interest was a spherical video group with a single lens for US$209, 4 lens 4K system similar to the iSTAR, for US$1500, and a beta 4 lens 8K system, price not established. The major problem, you had to post process the video from the 4 lenses, so I forgot about these guys.

The valuable aspect of speaking with some of the Shenzhen people is to see where things are headed. Pollution is not good in China and Corruption is going to affect technology and pricing sooner than most people in the world think it will happen. Many of the people at CES from China are using a Huawei phone which they claim is the best in the world. I have not seen it in the US.
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Re: CES 2017

Post by Jason Warren »

An excellent thread Dennis, thank you for posting... ;)
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dhirota
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Re: CES 2017

Post by dhirota »

DAY 3, CES 2017 Exhibition, Open 9am to 6pm

This was my last day of walking, talking, and listening to try and figure out where the technology of value to me and our company will be in the next 2 to 5 years. Yesterday, my iphone said that I walked for 10km and today it was 8km, spending 2hours in the 3D printing section on Sands Level 2 at the Markforged booth speaking with Greg Mark, CEO of Markforged about the future of the company and the industry for much of the time. The future looks bright for the company with the new announcement of 3D printing with metals for US$99K on a desktop. Much of the future of many locations will be the productivity of building items quickly, cost effectively, and uniquely to be leveraged in thousands if not millions of places to build the future society.

I spent much of the rest of the morning touring the large part of Level 2 displaying new items in homes and offices.
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Many items featuring IoT(Internet of Things) connectivity and sensing, with long lines to view them, so I decided I would quickly pass through the area and be tracking the IoT and sensing for the future. We are upgrading our office lighting to energy efficient LEDs to reduce ballast heat and power.

I decided it was worth while to try cover as much of the Sands Hall G, Level 1 as possible to finish today. Since many of the companies were headquartered in Shenzhen, China, it felt like you were visiting a exhibition in China. Many are selling their products in China or creating prototypes for sale in the West. English is OK, but Cantonese or Mandarin is better. Just a lot of walking and viewing of quality of small items, add on's to PC and Apple. Many VR viewers (US$150 to $200) still under development, prototypes and 4 and 6 camera VR video systems still needing major help, but in prototype form.

I think that of the several hundred booths from Shenzhen, I would guess that 50% or more will not survive to a production product because of my conversations with many of the booth people. As discussed in the posting yesterday, many will not have the financing to environmentally clean their production, participate in the corruption of paying off regulatory officials, deal with the increasing inflation surrounding them occurring in China. As one person said today, they cannot provide gift boxes or packing boxes at no additional cost. We will see if they contact me in the next 6 months, since I gave out several hundred business cards and they all want to deal with someone in Hawaii.

FIA Formula E Visa Vegas eRace was interesting as a production and as VR viewer.
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The last day of the exhibition is tomorrow, Sunday, January 8, but I am leaving back to Hawaii from LV at 6am PST. I may not have the time to add anything else to these postings unless people might have questions that I can respond with short answers.

CES2017 has given me a few data points on the big future technology map which we are going to pursue. This will be similar to many on the LSF, but probably dramatically different from the majority.
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Dennis Hirota, PhD, PE, LPLS
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dhirota
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Re: CES 2017

Post by dhirota »

I left the Venetian Hotel at 4amPST to the LAS airport, left LAS at 6am, arrived in SFO late because of rain. Managed to board my 8:40am PST flight to HNL and arrived home at 12:14pmHST. Now at the office in HNL to clear one week's worth of mail and messages.

I decided to give a quick overview of my impression of CES2017, so I would have something documented before I forgot everything since I did not have time to document in detail much of anything. There were too many categories of subjects that one needed to investigate; too many people competing for the information and interfering with your ability to move from place to place; too many companies still trying to figure out what their potential world of customers needed; too short a time to spend the required time to ask the right questions to conclusively eliminate the poor items; and too many people wanting to be in LV during last week to make the cost of everything from hotels, food, taxis, and anything else totally stupid. I paid US$2,000 for 4 nights including US$500 total for resort fees and taxes. Others paid a lot more. Others paid less, but had to fight the traffic for 30 to 60 minutes each way.

I was interested in 3D printing, robotics, Mixed Reality (AR/VR) and Chinese technology without attending any more Chinese exhibitions (one in a life time may be enough). I tried to view the major displays, but there were too many people and the lines were taking too much time for a single attendee to see the detail of everything. I figured that by skipping the major ones, the reporting agencies will be covering those and not the smaller, less significant which I needed to accomplish.

The really large exhibit areas like TV, audio, home items, potable electronics, health, sports had too much area to cover and too many people on the floor to make it worth while. Looking at the innovation awards was worth while, but too many people there also.

3D PRINTING I covered completely discovering that one could produce large parts with a plastic, PEEK, which is used in aircraft and cars to print high temperature parts, but is expensive. My Markforged friends said that since they can now print metals, I would not need PEEK. Many people from last year printing orange owls or wooden rabbits were not there. Many suppliers of plastic 3D printing materials were there, but the real emphasis of printing structurally useful parts economically has gained significant ground.

ROBOTICS was not covered well by me, since much on display included children's toys and specific applications; not really what consumer's will check out in detail except for Christmas. I probably missed some great booths, but not enough time.

MIXED REALITY, AR, VR was covered by me about the same as last year. Too long lines, still US$1,000 to $3,000 a pair for the good stuff and the US$300 to $500 needed detailed evaluation and time, which I did not have especially in the Shenzhen booths, where you could get an ugly pair for almost free or US$150. Next year should be better in the Shenzhen area assuming they will survive. The FIA Formula One eRACE was great, although I did not spend more that 10 minutes watching it. When you have money, many things are possible. Until SPAR2017, I think I will just track Windows 10 Preview since I have it running already.

CHINESE TECHNOLOGY overall seems to be improving. The significant thing that I learned this year, is that you have to ask the significant questions about components and circuitry and whether the vendor is willing to show you what is inside the case. Many of the best companies have people born in Hongkong, Taiwan or China; educated in American Universities, and have returned to the East with friends from the USA to create companies; and now want to sell products in the West. I have to wait and see if they will let me beta test their products.

I have about 10kg of brochures picked up during almost 30km of walking that I need to check out in detail, including all the free CES2017 publications picked up every day. If there are questions, I will try to respond.
Dennis Hirota, PhD, PE, LPLS
www.samhirota.com
[email protected]
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