Hardware

This piece is part of the Slush Chronicles series, “Founders Unplugged,” where we interview founders and key personnel of innovative companies, to hear their thoughts on the event we’re attending or dive into other spontaneously chosen topics. Slush 2024 founder: Jukka Tuhkanen, HIIL I ran into Jukka Tuhkanen, Director of Sales and Partnerships from Hiil, a wood “startup” transforming waste …

Norwegian startup Playpulse has successfully launched their gaming bikes in an activity park for children in a shopping mall in Shenzhen, China, part of the China Bay Area and a major startup hub. The company’s mission is to turn exercise into a fully-fledged computer gaming experience, boosting exercise motivation and battling sedentary lifestyles across the globe. After launching in Norway …

Airtame, a Danish startup that produces a wireless HDMI solution for both the business and education sectors, has announced the launch of their second generation hardware product, Airtame 2. The company started in 2014 with a record-­breaking crowdfunding campaign and a mission to remove cables in professional environments. The new product will deliver much more than a cable-free solution by …

Industrial inspections are a risky job.  To inspect overhead power lines, for example, a person usually has to climb up a high tension wire, deal with wind and weather conditions, and on top of that, perform a detailed inspection.  Droneplan, a startup based in Latvia, is creating intelligent flight planning software to enable drones to perform autonomous inspection. Droneplan started …

The biggest robotics festival in Europe, Robotex, that took place in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, hosted among other things the first live concert performed exclusively for robots. Robotex 2017, taking place from 24-26 November, was attended by more than 15,000 spectators. The event offered various activities for kids, students, robotics enthusiasts and even grandparents. It also hosted what was believed to …

Didrik Dimmen helped co-found FlowMotion ONE, a smartphone stabilizer that was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter earlier this year.  They recently took home the “Best Newcomer” award at the Norwegian Startup Awards, and have built a passionate global userbase. We caught up with Didrik to ask him a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and the Norwegian startup ecosystem. What is your most …

Paralenz, a new project by Danish design agency Moef, has broken a Kickstarter record, by obtaining a third of their funding in just the first 8 minutes of their crowdfunding campaign.  Paralenz is a high-performing underwater camera especially designed for divers. To be deep under the sea is like stepping into another mysterious, fantastical world.  But human ingenuity has made …

Helsinki in the beginning of June was quite literally the hot-bed of start-up and investment activity in the Nordics. The beautiful 25°C weather complemented the hot new innovative solutions on display. Several events created the perfect melting-pot with which to showcase Finnish and Nordic talent to a wider audience of international visitors. Several key events took place during the week …

TactoTek, a leading manufacturer of 3D injection molded structural electronics (IMSE) solutions based in Oulu, Finland, announced today that it has been named a recipient of a €2.5 million EU Horizon 2020 award to mass produce injection molded electronics (IME) solutions. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument of Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe’s global …

The Button Corporation, which launched world’s first IoT physical push button from Helsinki in the Spring of 2014, has launched a new bttn Mini designed by award-winning Finnish industrial designer, Harri Koskinen, best known for his Block Lamp, a light-bulb held inside two shaped pieces of clear glass, which is exhibited in MoMA in New York City. Harri has designed …

Drones are all the rage right now, buzzing above our heads with with our without human interaction.  We have all seen scenes shot in birds eye views from flying drones.  Now, a Norwegian company has decided to take drones from the skies to the sea, and build a drone meant for exploring the oceans depths. Blueye Robotics is a Trondheim …

Everyone has experienced a weather forecast that does not quite hold true and ruins everything from picnics to camping trips. The anemometer developed by the Danish startup Vaavud has set out to solve this problem. Vaavud is a crodwsourced weather service on a mission to deliver personalized weather information in high resolution. It is basically a “Waze for the weather.” …

This past weekend Brussels hosted the first ever Hackathon dedicated to Virtual Reality (VR) in Europe, where close to 100 participants took over the co-working space Co.station to hack the next generation of VR technologies. The event was hosted by a collaboration of MIC.Brussels and impulse.brussels, who supports the development of companies using VR.  20% of the participants came from …

Mistbase is an upcoming IoT start-up that provides the technology that makes IoT possible, and is ready to take on the telecom giants. The company, based out of the Ideon Innovation Incubator in Lund, Sweden, was founded in mid-summer 2015 by long-time friends and colleagues Michal Stala and Magnus Midholt, who have a combined experience of over 20 years working …

The two-day tech conference Next, which happened in the middle of the four-day Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, was an introduction to the new technologies that will shape of how we will live and work in the future.  But what about the ethics behind these technologies? It all comes down to the kind of legacy we are leaving and what we …

Helsinki based Health Operator offers personalized diagnostics and monitoring services to the private health sectors as well as commercially to the public. They were one of the winners of this year’s Nokia Open Innovation Challenge, held at Slush 2015. Imagine going to the bathroom to go about your daily routines, while an array of non-invasive sensors monitors your blood pressure, …

One of the main themes at NEXT15 , the two-day tech conference that occurred concurrently with Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, was mobility. The conference attempted to answer the question “How will we move?” with all the opportunities and challenges that it implies. But zooming out and looking at the question in the context of the entire conference – with discussions …

While sailing on the west coast of Sweden, Meshcrafts founder Åsmund Møll Frengstad of Norway  found himself bothered by the inequalities in energy consumption between himself and a fellow boater. First, while the other boater had a giant boat compared to his, both had to pay the same daily fee to charge their boats.  In actuality, Åsmund may have consumed …

It takes a while to process the multiplicity of the two-day tech conference Next, which happened in the middle of the four-day Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg. The conversation flowed between consumer trends and music hype, pop-culture, and up-and-coming innovations. At NEXT15, business, lifestyle and technology mingle together and can no longer be separated. This years theme, “How will we live?”, …

PHI Blades is a Hamburg-based startup working to improve wind turbines by redesigning the rotor blades. Rotor blades can be expensive, and don’t necessarily last a long time as they are constantly exposed to the elements. PHI Blades solution is remarkably simple:  they have developed a rotor blade made entirely of wood. The founders recently participated in speed-dating with investors …