Author Archives: Ida Torres

Attach this wiper to your motorcycle viper to have a safer ride in the rain

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I live in a city that has a steadily growing motorcycle population. We also get a lot of rainy seasons and storms visit our country on a regular basis. The combination of rain and driving a motorcycle is a pretty dangerous one. While there are water repellent sprays available but it won’t work when you’re driving at slower and regular speeds.

Designer: Boscard group

Bikerguard was invented by two Slovenian engineers and is something you can attack to motorcycle helmet visors to make sure you still have visibility even if it’s raining hard. It’s basically a detachable and remote-controlled wiper blade that will wipe off the rain water that can obstruct the view of the riders. It has a brushless motor that will reduce the need for manual wiping of your visor.

The bikerguard unit has a rugged and IPX-6 waterproof design and when fully charged, you get 5 to 15 hours of continuous use. You screw the mounting base through the top of your visor on first use but after that you can just attach and re-attach the wiper when you need it. The remote wireless controller can be attached to any motorcycle handlebar so you can easily turn the wiper on and off.

While of course you can just use the normal sprays and coatings that is readily available for most motorcycle riders, using “good old physics” or wipers are still the best way to go about riding in the rain. It costs around $330 and is available on the Bikerguard website.

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3D-printed chairs are made from 100% recycled plastic from donation program

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3D-printed furniture is still not as common as regular furniture but we’re seeing a lot of movement when it comes to designs and concepts. Aside from the fact that it’s easy to adapt this in actual production, it can also be sustainable and eventually impactful. Most of these 3D-printing concepts try to create something that’s recyclable or made from recycled materials therefore making it more sustainable than regular furniture.

Designer: Ethan Solodukhin

The Revo Chair Concept, with Revo meaning “revolutionary”, is a collection of 3D-printed furniture and is powered by the PlastiVista Atelier program. The program actually encourages homes, schools, and communities to donate their plastic waste and those that can be used for 3D printing converted into filament. The collection includes the Revo Chair and the Stoool (yes that’s not a typo). They are made from 100% recycled plastic.

The Revo Chair uses a single-piece design and it can serve as both an actual chair but when used with a different orientation, it can also serve as storage. The photos show it’s a box-like storage although it’s not really shown how it can be turned into that although the surfaces can be something you can place objects on. The Stoool meanwhile just serves as a seat with its compact surface, although you can probably also use it as a side table if you want to.

The renders of these chairs reminds me of those small, plastic phone holders that you can get for cheap. The question of course for these 3D-printed chairs would be if they are durable enough and comfortable enough for people to sit in for a long period of time.

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LEGO® Botanicals to release four new collections for your inner florist

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While it would be nice to always have fresh flowers adorn your homes, there are several reasons why not all of us can have that. It can either be too expensive to constantly have to replace them or if you’re like me, you have a black thumb and they may not last that long. An alternative to this would be to have artificial or plastic ones but wouldn’t it be more fun if you could “build” your own?

Designer: LEGO®

This is what LEGO® has discovered with the success of their hugely popular Botanicals collection. It’s not kids and geeks who have fun with all these builds but even those who believe plants and flowers are relaxing. It’s so popular that it now has its own logo and specific theme. For next year’s collection, they are adding four new sets: the LEGO® Botanicals Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet, the LEGO® Botanicals Mini Orchid, the LEGO® Botanicals Lucky Bamboo and LEGO® Botanicals Flower Arrangement. They will be available for pre-orders at the very start of 2025.

The LEGO® Botanicals Pretty Pink Flower Bouquet includes 15 flower stems and foliage including some of the most popular pink flowers like daisies, roses, cymbidium orchids, waterlily dahlia, etc. The stems are adjustable and this set can be combined with other bouquets. The LEGO® Botanicals Mini Orchid meanwhile features five orchid flowers that are in bloom and some that are still buds. it also has a terracotta flowerpot on a wood-effect plinth so you can display it beautifully.

The LEGO® Botanicals Lucky Bamboo is for those that find it relaxing to have a bamboo plant in the room but can’t keep an actual one. This includes three green bamboo stems, pebbles, a plant pot, and a wood-effect plinth. Lastly, the LEGO® Botanicals Flower Arrangement has several flowers in the set including camellia, peonies, hydrangeas, baby’s breath, ranunculus, bouvardia and lilies. This is the ultimate collection for those who want to explore their inner florist without wasting actual flowers.

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Handmade Samurai-inspired randoseru backpack looks pretty but heavy

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There is a certain fascination that people have with the Japanese art of the samurai, whether it’s through movies, books, anime, and even just the accessories in general. Combining it with other Japanese cultural things will appeal to a certain market, even if those things may just be decorative and not totally functional.

Designer: Noriki Okada

Randoseru are leather backpacks used by Japanese school children that are made to last for years. But this particular version of the backpack is probably not something you’d let your kid use or even you yourself would use. It is hand-crafted and intricately designed, inspired by the samurai tradition. The yellow, black, and red backpack would have looked right at home in the 11th century, if there were expensive, leather bags back then.

Leather craftsman Noriki Okada created this bag from scrap pieces from other bags and have some accents like small leather plates and brass rivets. There are even faces of oni demons on the sides to add to the samurai theme. The manufacturer, Murase Kabanko, says that they are recommending that you just use this for “decorative purposes” although you can of course use it if you don’t mind carrying something that looks heavy and ornate.

Each bag that they are selling is handmade so you would have to wait around 6 months for it to get to you. And of course it’s expensive given all that. If you have around $3,300 and are a collector of samurai inspired things, go for it.

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Food preservation unit concept should keep food fresh and lower energy consumption

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Most households cannot live without a refrigerator as most of their food is stored there. The problem of course is that it consumes a lot of electricity and even contributes to 30% of annual food waste since you sometimes forget you have this particular food stored there. There are product designers looking into creating food preservation units that will have less energy consumption and also reduce food waste.

Designer Name: Matéo Robin

Totem is one such food preservation unit that is able to integrate both modern and ancestral technologies. The inspiration actually comes from the Zeer pot which is what they used back in the day to keep food fresh by using evaporative cooling. This piece of furniture also uses that old school technology in certain parts due to its double clay walls. It is able to cut energy consumption in half, which is important for those who want lower electricity bills.

What’s also great about the Totem is that there are different compartments and segments to place different food. There’s a compartment for fruits and vegetables, for tubers, and for food that need ethylene like apples, bananas, and tomatoes. There’s the freezer compartment as well that has a vacuum between two walls to reduce heat loss. It also uses various materials and textures for those different storage zones.

The prototype of this food preservation unit looks like a typical kitchen cabinet that has different kinds of storage materials. The fact that this will potentially lower electricity bills is of course very attractive. Now as to whether food will actually still stay fresh and delicious, that is the question.

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AI-powered machine concept helps you sort and dispose of waste properly

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According to studies, almost 83% of our every day garbage is not sorted and recycled. That means a lot of it is just thrown into landfills and most of them just stay there rotting for years, maybe even decades. If we are able to properly sort them properly, even just a small percentage, and dispose of them in a more circular manner, including recycling and upcycling, then it will be better for our planet. The problem sometimes though is that people and even machines still don’t know how to sort and recycle properly.

Designer Name: Romain Pellat

With the advent of robotics and A.I, our garbage disposal should be better. This is what Binko aims to do. It is an AI-powered recycling robot that should help homes and offices to improve the way they do their waste disposal. It is able to auto-recognize the different kinds of garbage, sort them properly, and then crush them accordingly.

The concept device looks like a vendo machine but instead of it giving you your drink or snack of choice, you feed it your garbage. The machine and the accompanying app should be able to recognize more than 2.6 million waste items. Then it will compress or crush the garbage into small pieces and is able to hold an average of 8 times more resources. The system is able to sort it into one of the 7 transparent compartments that can be adapted according to location.

The app will be the first to launch and it can immediately help people into recognizing how to sort their garbage using the AI-powered photo recognition process. It also gives you a map of nearby recycling bins and even reminds you to take out your trash. That in itself is useful even as Binko will probably take more time to be created.

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Acoustic panels uses textile waste for sustainable production

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With the popularity of fast fashion, there is also a lot of textile waste that ends up in landfills and have not been recycled or upcycled. There are several groups that have been advocating for more eco-friendly fashion that includes not supporting these kinds of manufacturers and looking for ways to have better use for household textile waste. You don’t even have to create new clothes from them but find other uses outside of fashion.

Designer Name: Sze Tjin Yek

The Sorbet acoustic panels is one such project, turning all these shredded textile waste into acoustic panels that can be used for homes, offices, and other commercial spaces. Panels like these are important to minimize noise pollution within closed areas for both the mental and physical health of users. But instead of the usual acoustic panels made from open cell polyurethane, these are made textile waste which have the second lowest recovery rate in Australia after plastics.

These panels are made from 100% laundered and upcycled household textile waste. These are durable enough but of course they need to be bonded together and the inventor used a starch-based glue. And since the textile used have different colors and textures, there are three aesthetic options created: Blueberry Lemonade (blue and gold), Red Velvet (red and black(, and Hundreds and Thousands. The third one uses more color options since textiles are of course varied.

This kind of panel is of course more sustainable than your usual ones that use recycled PET and textile fibers bonded with mycelium. The next step would be to create a process that can make this commercially viable and also look at installation methods for it.

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LEGO® Cataclaws to bring creative, festive fun this holiday season

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Depending on what activities you do, the upcoming holidays can either be the most joyful or the most stressful time of the year. Generally, children have the most fun during gatherings especially if there are toys and games involved. The spirit of play and fun sometimes goes out the window for grown ups but LEGO® thinks everyone needs reminding that there’s nothing more important than playing together this Holiday.

Designer: LEGO®

Cataclaws is a new icon that LEGO® is launching just in time for the holidays to become a “CAT-alyst” for play. The bricky rather than furry creature was actually born out of the minds of kids to remind both the young and the old that there’s no limit to where LEGO® bricks can take our creativity and imagination. This time it’s a tuxedo cat wearing a red and white beanie that will encourage people to play around this time of the year.

The brick-built feline is introduced in a short film showing it going on an adventure around the city to turn boring or tense situations into something more fun. In the video, you’ll also see 20 different products and builds, including a freezing cold queen, a cat who can’t wait to be king, and characters from a galaxy far far away. There are also some mini Cataclaws builds within the video if you want to play spot the Cataclwas.

If you want to dress up your LEGO® feline, they will also be selling a Cataclaws Christmas sweater while you can build the beanie yourself by following the building instructions. We’ll probably see Cataclaws in other campaigns next year as they are making it their new icon.

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Portable moka pot lets you enjoy coffee in the middle of nature

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While I will most likely not be going camping anytime soon, there are a lot of people who enjoy this kind of thing. There are also a lot of campers or outdoor enthusiasts who like to enjoy having a cup of coffee once they have pitched their tents or reached their mountainous destination. Sure they can just bring a flask or heat water for their instant coffee but wouldn’t you rather “brew” your own coffee when you’re marveling at nature?

Designer: Militello Design

This product concept is called Moka-mp and based on that name, you kind of already know what it is. It is a portable moka coffee pot that is light enough but still durable enough that you can bring it with you when you’re climbing a mountain or spending the night camping outdoors. It’s meant to help you enjoy your time with nature while still drinking a cup of brewed coffee.

The moka pot doesn’t look like your usual stovetop coffee brewer. If you didn’t know that it brews your coffee, you might think it’s just a regular portable cooking pot, albeit smaller. The bottom part holds the water while just above it is a safety valve and the space where you put your coffee powder and where the coffee magic happens.

This can become an essential part of your camping and outdoor gear if it becomes an actual product eventually. Those who love both coffee and the outdoors will have a good time as they sip their (hopefully) delicious cup while enjoying the wonders of nature. However, I’d stick to my cup of coffee in an air-conditioned coffee shop, thank you very much.

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Movable trolley cabinet lets you be more mobile in your work space

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Whether you’re working from home or from your office, you probably have just one desk or workspace where you spend most of your time. But there are also those that for one reason or another love to move around the room when working. It can be a hassle to keep moving your stuff when you need to move from one place or another. This product concept might just be the solution if you have that problem.

Designers: Keetae Kim, Jinsu Du, Young Jin Kim

Kimmipak (named after the three designers) is a concept for a steel trolley that you can help move around the stuff that you need to work on if you’re moving from one place to another in the room. It looks like a piece of luggage except that it opens up like a cabinet. But just like your luggage, it is something that you can store things in and then roll around if you need to bring stuff to and from your other workspaces.

When you open the cabinet, there are two layers but it can probably be modified as well if you need more shelves. You can ise it as a bookshelf, cabinet, and the top can also be a mini table. There is a removable toolbox at the top where you can place items like garden supplies, tools, beauty stuff, etc, if you need them carried around but you don’t need the whole trolley.

It’s an interesting concept for those who move around a lot in the room and you need your tools or stuff with you. Some steel or filing cabinets also have wheels for easier moving around if needed but this one was specifically designed to be portable and movable like your luggage.

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