Crowdsourced tech: Photos of the 16 biggest campaigns
1. Ubuntu Edge : $12,814,216 (40%) : Indiegogo
With sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, the masses can fund the next big thing in tech. Here are the projects have raised the most enthusiasm, and money.
Raising more than $12 million is impressive. Unfortunately, it wasn’t near enough (imagine that) to bring to fruition the Ubuntu’s phone concept, which needed $32 million to meet its Indiegogo goal.
Pebble is a customizable watch that works with various apps and can send the user notifications for things like emails and phone calls, from your phone. Pebble’s runaway success on Kickstarter made smartwatches a thing and helped launch the wearable computing revolution.
Music legend Neil Young’s crusade for better audio quality became the third-most successful Kickstarter in history after much talk as to whether anyone would want to pay for a new music device. The answer, apparently, is “yes.”
The makers of this printer, Formlabs, aimed for a 3D printer that was affordable, high resolution, and reliable. More than 2,000 backers wanted in on the idea.
3Doodler markets itself as the world’s first 3D printing pen. It heats and cools plastic so the user can draw in 3 dimensions, or trace stencils on a flat surface.
This home security device has multiple sensors that take in and analyze data on things like motion, temperature, sounds, and movement, alerting the resident when something doesn’t seem right at home.
After a very successful campaign for a product called Geek Out, LH Labs, created a new Indiegogo campaign for a high definition digital audio system called Geek Pulse. Where it differs from Pono Music, for example, is that it’s not strictly a music player, but a tool to enhance audio from your computer, meaning music, videos, games, etc.
The Scanadu Scout is a medical tricorder that measures things like heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, and more, and delivers that info to your phone.
This kit was designed to make building a computer as easy as building with Legos. Kano also teaches basic coding and computing principles, and even lets you hack games like Pong and Snake.
As a global nomad with experience living and raising children in China, the USA and Europe, Erin Carson loves to share her knowledge of both literature and travel through her writing. Carson has a master's degree in library science and a…