When you think about it in terms of user experience, tuning a guitar is pretty much the worst part of playing the instrument. Roadie , a Bluetooth-connected smart tuner that automatically adjusts your strings for you, is about to make things a whole lot easier.
The project recently graduated from the China-based Haxlr8r hardware accelerator with the launch of its Kickstarter campaign , which reached fully-funded status in about five days.
Co-founders Bassam Jalgha and Hassane Slaibi gave me a brief demo of the tuner over Skype, and I’m sold. You simply connect the Roadie to your smartphone, stick it on a tuning peg, pluck a string and let it automatically adjust it. Gibson already has its own automatic tuning system , but Roadie will work with just about any guitar as well as stringed instruments that use similar pegs.
The accompanying app can store information on the elasticity of your strings in order to let you know when it’s time to replace them. You can also use it to pick preset and custom tunings.
Tuning a guitar is one of the main deterrents for beginners, so a device like Roadie would increase the likelihood that you’ll stick with the instrument after you pick it up. Combined with new learning methods like Ubisoft’s Rocksmith game, picking up the guitar is now easier and more fun than ever before.
Jalgha and Slaibi plan to begin shipping the Roadie, which will retail for $99 but is available to Kickstarter backers for $79, in June 2014. Kickstarter hardware projects have a propensity for delays, so I was curious whether that was a realistic date.
“We gave ourselves margin for error and any mistakes,” they said. “We’re really hoping we’ll be one of the very few Kickstarter hardware projects that deliver on time.”
The fact that they’ve spent the past few months with Haxlr8r should help their case significantly. The pair have already settled the manufacturing process and just need to complete work on the Android and iOS apps.
Jalgha and Slaibi noted that relocating to China for the accelerator helped them to iterate. They managed to create new prototypes weekly during the program while still keeping the process affordable.
“In four months we were able to move from a prototype to an almost final product,” they said.
I already use a guitar tuning app on my phone, since it’s easier than carrying around a separate device, but having the benefit of mechanical automation will make the process even easier. If you’ve always wanted to learn guitar but have been put off by tuning, you’ll want to pick up a Roadie when it arrives next year.
7 of the best kitchen gadgets from 2015
When it comes to connected homes, smart locks and entertainment systems are in abundance. But for me, the real home innovations are in the kitchen.
Cooking is a totally different task today than in years gone by and with these handy gadgets, it’ll never be the same again.
Credit: Smarter Store
If you have spent the holidays curled up on your couch, this kettle is probably what your dreams are made of.
The iKettle 2.0 lets you boil the water without standing up using an app on your phone or tablet.
You’ll just have to make sure you have someone else to fill the water first.
➤ iKettle 2.0 (EU and UK only, £99.99)
Credit: GetDrop
While experienced cooks might be able to measure by eye, most of us are better off using a weighing scale. Drop is a smart scale and accompanying app that will measure any ingredient you desire.
It’s more precise than using a regular kitchen scale and the app lets you select recipes and the scale will detect when you’ve added the right amount of each ingredient, as well as telling you when to add the next one.
➤ Drop ($99.99)
There are few things as satisfying for an avi cook than growing your own ingredients. Whether it’s herbs or vegetables, Parrot’s Flower Power will help you get it right.
The plant sensor can be placed alongside whatever you’re growing to feed info back to its accompanying app about the health of your plants.
➤ Flower Power ($59.99)
Credit: Samsung
Samsung’s refrigerator comes complete with an 8-inch WiFi connected touchscreen display, which lets you access all the cooking apps you need, as well as music and radio services like Pandora for some in-kitchen entertainment.
The display also acts as an interactive memo pad, so there’s no need to stick post-its on this fridge.
➤ Samsung Smart Fridge ($3,599)
Credit: Pantelligent
If you have ever over-cooked a steak, this pan will save you the stress. Pantelligent has a central temperature gauge that tells you through an app on your phone that the food is cooked correctly.
You just need to input some information about what it is your cooking, tap the phone on the pan’s handle and it will guide you through the best way to cook your meal.
➤ Pantelligent ($199)
There’s nothing worse than deciding what you’re going to make for dinner then realizing you’ve run out of the ingredients. Neo smart jars can help curb that by monitoring what you’ve got left in the pantry.
The jars recognize how much is left in them, the nutritional content and best-before dates. If you are running low or it’s going out of date, the connected app will notify you and add the items to a shopping list.
➤ Neo ($99 for two)
If you’d rather a beer instead of a cocktail, grab yourself a PicoBrew. The clever machine lets you brew your own 5 liter kegs using licensed recipes from over 400 craft and home-brewers around the world.
Interestingly, you can also use the brewer as a sous-vide machine to cook.
➤ PicoBrew ($599)
OnePlus and Meizu busted for cheating benchmark tests for better performance
Your OnePlus and Meizu handsets might not be as powerful as benchmarks tests say.
XDA-Developers reports the two phone-makers have apparently tweaked some of their top-selling devices, including the OnePlus 3 and 3T as well as the Meizu Pro 6, to artificially boost CPU performance when running benchmark tests.
Unlike standard testing optimizations, the phones have been modified to automatically switch their processors into overdrive mode anytime widely-used benchmarks are detected.
The publication notes the rigged processing performance can be observed when monitoring the differences in CPU activity between running regular apps and benchmark apps. But both OnePlus and Meizu have different approaches of accomplishing this.
While OnePlus has programmed both its big and small processor cores to idle at 0.31 GHz for non-benchmark tools, the processing power of both cores increases to, respectively, 1.29 GHz for the big one and 0.98 GHz for the small one as soon as benchmarking apps are detected.
In addition to this, OnePlus appears to have hard-coded a list of benchmark tests (Geekbench, AnTuTu, Quadrant, Androbench, Vellamo and GFXBench) into its firmware. As XDA-Developers points out, this could explain why running a “disguised” version of Geekbench 4 under a different name failed to trigger the high-performance mode on the OnePlus 3T.
In the case of Meizu, XDA-Developers discovered the manufacturer has modified its big cores to activate whenever benchmarks are detected. While the big cores are expected to switch on anytime the device requires additional processing might, the Pro 6 appears to have been set to keep the big cores idle until benchmarks have started running. In other words, while the Pro 6 might not rely on the big cores when running regular apps (even when extra processing power might be required), they will certainly be activated during benchmarks.
OnePlus has confirmed the misleading configuration to XDA-Developers, promising to stop cheating benchmarks by limiting artificial CPU boosting exclusively to games (for purposes of ensuring smooth performance). This is what the phone-maker had to say:
The publication further notes that, while OnePlus is certainly not the only one resorting to such practices, so far it’s the only phone-maker to acknowledge any wrongdoing – not that this alleviates its actions in any way. Meizu is yet to follow their example.
In any case, it is worth pointing out that XDA’s findings suggests the improvements in performance in the case of OnePlus were rather insignificant. It also stressed that the artificial throttling had no impact on OnePlus 3 and 3T reviews as the modification wasn’t yet implemented at that time.
Credit: XDA-Developers
More alarmingly, however, XDA-Developers revealed that in addition to OnePlus and Meizu, the news outlet discovered similar irregularities when running benchmarks on phones manufactured by other brands.
While the publication refrained from naming any potential offenders until more research has been conducted, it shared some of the companies that haven’t been caught cheating. As of now the list includes Google, HTC, Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor and Sony.
Back in 2013, Samsung was caught pulling off a similar trick to simulate performance gains on the Galaxy Note 3. While the South Korean giant faced a heated backlash, AnandTech eventually published a report showing that a number of other major manufacturers, including LG, ASUS and HTC, had similarly engaged in the same practice.