Gadget Show Live 2012
Apr. 17th, 2012 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slycatOn Saturday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
andysquirrel and I headed up to the Birmingham NEC to check out Gadget Show Live. I hadn't been to one before but it looked neat from what I saw from the previous year's event featured in the show so I thought I'd get tickets to go along to this year's one. I even got the "premium" tickets which allegedly gives you the best seats in the theatre for the stage show which takes place at the event.
Anyway, the bulk of Gadget Show Live was made up of exhibition stands from all sorts of tech companies. I've been to other such exhibitions before like Eurogamer Expo and Empire Big Screen but I found the stuff on display was much more varied and interesting than both of those. The exhibition area was split into lots of smaller groups of stuff like consumer electronics, computer games, outdoor activity tech, in car tech, music hardware, in home tech (including some of the most amusing infomercial style exhibitors trying to sell their crap) and future technology.
As one would expect from such an exhibition, there were plenty of freebies to be had but it seemed the theme of the event was rubber wrist bands, something I don't really care for however there was also lots of stuff to buy which I hadn't been prepared for (with hindsight it's obvious). The only thing I picked up was a copy of CPU Wars, possible one of the most geekiest versions of Top Trumps available. I loved the way they packaged it in a static proof bag :D
I had decided to take my new camcorder to the exhibition and ended up almost constantly filming. I ended up recording a lot of nothing but there were some rather neat bits such as:
This was while I was exploring a computing history exhibit which had examples of computing from the 60's to the 90's. I had never used a Commodore PET but it seemed to use BASIC I was familiar with on the Spectrum. Sadly I missed the opportunity to do something funny like "Look Around You" as I didn't even know if the code worked that way at the time :P
This is a video of the brainwave controlled animatronic cat ears whicharakinuk asked me to keep an eye out for. I had seen them before but was great to see them operate in person. I was a bit shy when asking the lady to control the ears on camera so forgot to ask about UK availability. Fortunately, I managed to track her down on Twitter (she had a very unique name so was easy to Google) but regrettably she advised there's no set date at the moment but you can register your interest (as well as suggest alternative ear types) at http://neurosky.com/necomimi/.
This is a video filmed in during the stage show and is of the very impressive robot flying herring gull known as the SmartBird by Festo. It's amazing to watch it fly so easily, certainly an impressive technological feat! For more info, I recommend watching this promo video about it. However it seems that the bird didn't fly perfectly every time as I found out from this clip from another one of the live shows.
During the stage show, there were various parts where the audience could participate or members of the audience were called out to do something to win gadgets. In this clip, a professional RC helicopter pilot did a very impressive routine with an LED illuminated stunt helicopter. What happened after this was that the 3 people from the audience had a go at landing a model helicopter but all 3 were smashed to bits!
Anyway, that's all for now, I filmed a lot more stuff (2 and a half hours to be precise) but much of it wasn't very usable. I may put up some more clips if I can get some more decent bits out of the raw footage. With regards to the event, I really enjoyed myself and will most likely be looking to attend again next year :)
andysquirrel and I headed up to the Birmingham NEC to check out Gadget Show Live. I hadn't been to one before but it looked neat from what I saw from the previous year's event featured in the show so I thought I'd get tickets to go along to this year's one. I even got the "premium" tickets which allegedly gives you the best seats in the theatre for the stage show which takes place at the event.Anyway, the bulk of Gadget Show Live was made up of exhibition stands from all sorts of tech companies. I've been to other such exhibitions before like Eurogamer Expo and Empire Big Screen but I found the stuff on display was much more varied and interesting than both of those. The exhibition area was split into lots of smaller groups of stuff like consumer electronics, computer games, outdoor activity tech, in car tech, music hardware, in home tech (including some of the most amusing infomercial style exhibitors trying to sell their crap) and future technology.
As one would expect from such an exhibition, there were plenty of freebies to be had but it seemed the theme of the event was rubber wrist bands, something I don't really care for however there was also lots of stuff to buy which I hadn't been prepared for (with hindsight it's obvious). The only thing I picked up was a copy of CPU Wars, possible one of the most geekiest versions of Top Trumps available. I loved the way they packaged it in a static proof bag :D
I had decided to take my new camcorder to the exhibition and ended up almost constantly filming. I ended up recording a lot of nothing but there were some rather neat bits such as:
This was while I was exploring a computing history exhibit which had examples of computing from the 60's to the 90's. I had never used a Commodore PET but it seemed to use BASIC I was familiar with on the Spectrum. Sadly I missed the opportunity to do something funny like "Look Around You" as I didn't even know if the code worked that way at the time :P
This is a video of the brainwave controlled animatronic cat ears which
arakinuk asked me to keep an eye out for. I had seen them before but was great to see them operate in person. I was a bit shy when asking the lady to control the ears on camera so forgot to ask about UK availability. Fortunately, I managed to track her down on Twitter (she had a very unique name so was easy to Google) but regrettably she advised there's no set date at the moment but you can register your interest (as well as suggest alternative ear types) at http://neurosky.com/necomimi/.This is a video filmed in during the stage show and is of the very impressive robot flying herring gull known as the SmartBird by Festo. It's amazing to watch it fly so easily, certainly an impressive technological feat! For more info, I recommend watching this promo video about it. However it seems that the bird didn't fly perfectly every time as I found out from this clip from another one of the live shows.
During the stage show, there were various parts where the audience could participate or members of the audience were called out to do something to win gadgets. In this clip, a professional RC helicopter pilot did a very impressive routine with an LED illuminated stunt helicopter. What happened after this was that the 3 people from the audience had a go at landing a model helicopter but all 3 were smashed to bits!
Anyway, that's all for now, I filmed a lot more stuff (2 and a half hours to be precise) but much of it wasn't very usable. I may put up some more clips if I can get some more decent bits out of the raw footage. With regards to the event, I really enjoyed myself and will most likely be looking to attend again next year :)
