Instant camera that can capture sound

Instax is the brand of instant still cameras and instant films marketed by Fujifilm. Digital backlash or something, this is still popular among young people. Fujifilm has released a hybrid instant camera "instax mini LiPlay" compatible with card-sized films, as a new lineup.

It is the smallest and lightest in the series, and it has a direct print function that can print the images stored on the smartphone on film. However, the most distinctive feature is "capture sounds". When you take photos, you can print out messages or other sounds as QR codes with the photos. When listen to the sounds, you can play it by scanning its QR code with a QR code reader of your smartphone. You can record up to 10 seconds.

They have proposed the idea of taking photos of the sea and taking the sound of the waves together. It is perfect for recording summer memories.
It also has features like a camera app, such as checking the images before printing photos, adding filters and design frames.
The size is 82.5mm × 122.9mm × 36.7mm, the weighs about 255g, has a built-in type lithium ion battery, and can print about 100 photos with about 2-3 hours of charge time. There are three color variations, Stone white, elegant black and brushed gold, and the price is an open price. In addition, you need to download the free mobile app instax mini LiPlay to use the Sounds feature and the Direct Print feature.

This will advise you about alcohol

As summer approaches, many beer gardens will open throughout Japan and the party season will come. However, if you take alcohol too much, of course, it will hurt your health. Therefore, product design and development company STUFF and Toshiba-Memory have developed a learning type IoT alcohol gadget TISPY2 with open innovation.

This is a combination of an alcohol sensor and an SD memory card to measure the alcohol concentration in your breath when drinking and advise you on how to drink alcohol. It also records your drinking data and works with your smartphone via Toshiba-Memory's WiFi-equipped SD memory card FlashAir, allowing you to check your drinking data yourself from a web apprication. The more you use this, the more this learn about you from your drinking data, and give you personalized advice: "You're drinking fast today" "Would you like to drink water soon?" This also has a guest mode, which measures the concentration of alcohol contained in the guest user's exhalation on the spot and displays general advice(It can't be used personalized to the guest).

It supports Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, and you can link it with your smartphone to change the language setting. The power supply is two AAA batteries and also supports rechargeable batteries. The body color is black, and the color variations of the part that measures exhalation are pink gold and silver. The size is 70x70x18mm, the weight is about 100g, and the communication is IEEE802.11b/g/n (Wi-Fi). They have raised development funds with makuake, a crowd-funding platform, and have already raised about three times the target amount. You can reserve this from 13,500yen(tax included). The shipping is scheduled for August.
Project page is here.

Hearing aid with 3D sensor and AI

A hearing aid is a gadget that supports the hearing of the ear. However, Starkey's smart hearing aid Livio AI offers more features than traditional hearing aids.

It has AI-controlled hearing aids and works to reduce the noise if your surroundings are loud. It also has a health tracking function that measures your body and brain health in your daily life. Because the deafness is one of the cognitive functions, it works closely with the brain. In addition, it has a fall detection notification function, so it can be used as a watching gadget for elderly families. If you are interested in international exchange, the real-time voice translation function that support 27 languages this will help. The price is very expensive at 630,000 yen(The hearing aid itself is tax exempt). However, it also has many features like headphones, such as wireless streaming of phones, music and media, etc., and is very versatile.
The target users are mild to severe deaf people, and the warranty period is 3 years.

via https://www.starkeyjp.com/blog/2019/05/livio-announcement

AI designs photobooks

The reaction to sharing photos on social networking services is now reviving physical photobooks in Japan, and there are many photobook production services linked with mobile photo applications. But we're selfish, so we feel troublesome to select photos and photobook layout design. So cheetahs, a group company of leading photo supplies company Kitamura, has released a new mobile application sarah.AI, which AI does.

They originally offered the photobook service sarah, and they added an AI to it to automate photobook production. The main functions of this are the best shot function, the automatic grouping function, and the collection function. The best shot function performs layout adjustment by face recognition and quality determination to remove blurring and duplication by scoring. The automatic grouping function groups photos from date and location information and automatically generates a title for each story and event(Of course, you can also give yourself titles). And, with the collection function, you can edit photobooks without having to select photos individually. All they can be done with the application only, but you don't need external communication, so you can protect your privacy. In addition, it has automatic layout function and various designed covers, so you can make a 140 x 140mm 24-page photobook simply by selecting them. You can make one photobook free each month, but you can add pages by paying 25yen for every two pages(Up to 96 pages).
They have only released an Android version, but an iOS version will also be released in June.

Hands dedicated to potato chips

You might think of this as a silly gadget, but it certainly seems useful. Toy maker Takara Tomy-Arts is collaborating with confectionery maker Calbee to release Smart Potato Chips hand on June 29.

This is the dedicated device that allows them to eat Calbee's potato chips without getting their hands dirty. This is an item that modernized the potato chip magic hand Potechi-no-Te(ポテチの手) released in 2010. Potechi-no-Te gained popularity that it was possible to eat potato chips without getting its hands dirty and became a huge hit item selling over 300,000 at that time. This renewal is based on the background that the number of people eating snacks with chopsticks is increasing so as not to dirty the screen of smartphones with the spread of smartphones. They have added the function of a touch pen for smartphones to the magic hand. You can grab potato chips with a magic hand, eat it, and operate your smartphone with the touch pen on the other side.

In addition, in collaboration with Calbee, coloring and logo based on package design of 4 kinds of popular potato chips flavor are adopted. The size of this is 37mm × 178 mm × 40 mm, the weight is about 36g, and the price is 1,382yen(tax included).

via https://www.takaratomy-arts.co.jp/specials/smartpotatochips/ (Japanese)