Kickstarter
Kickstarter on Spoot: Spotted Early: a running collection of 2 stories we have gathered and hand-picked because they are worth your time. Every post here touches on kickstarter in some way — the news, the analysis, the deep dives, and the occasional surprise find. # Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns, concept designs, tiny… New stories are added to this page as we find them, so check back if you want to keep up with what is happening around kickstarter, or subscribe to the RSS feed to get them as soon as they are published. Browse the collection below, or head back to the homepage to see everything Spoot: Spotted Early is covering right now.
Engram feeds your samples to the glitch gods and records what crawls back
There's a sampler that feeds your audio to the glitch gods and records what crawls back. Thoughtful Things just launched the Kickstarter for Engram, a groovebox that runs a "tiny AI" locally, no internet required, to mangle incoming sounds and hallucinate entirely new ones. That's the part that gets me: this isn't a push-button, get-song box. It's built for the experimental, the uncanny, the stuff that sounds wrong in the best way. The model is custom-trained and designed in-house, which means it's a weird little beast with a specific taste. I want to hear what it does to a drum loop. If you're into clever hardware that refuses to behave, this one's worth circling back for.
The sun does your drapes' dirty work now, no motor required
The sun does your drapes' dirty work now, no motor required. We've seen smart curtains before, sure, but they usually want a chunky motor, a hub, and a stern talking-to about Wi-Fi passwords. This new one skips the machinery and just lets the light do the pulling. That's the razor clam in the spec sheet, the detail that makes you lean in. It's clever, sure, but we're gently skeptical until we see it ship. The campaign's live now, and it's worth a scroll if you've ever wanted blinds that move without you lifting a finger or lifting a screwdriver. It's not quite the cinematic wall-buster Epson's pushing with its new lasers, but for the window-bound among us, this feels like the quiet win. Stay spooty.