The weather kept up but there was a brisk breeze as we headed out to the Messe for the final visit. By now we had been to all the halls and seen all that was available, and the purpose of this day was to go and check out some things again.
I spent two hours checking the multitude of Chinese thingamajigs and whatchamacallits, most with Bluetooth if not gigabit LAN. It’s amazing what they have come up with, and were I in the market for importing USB connectors or cabling or selfie sticks, I’d have been in heaven. It was interesting as it was, don’t get me wrong. Like this Taiwanese window washing robot.
http://youtu.be/oGTwL5Jzgxo
On the way I met the same multicolored filament dealer I saw on Monday and spent some time figuring out his delta-mechanism printer. As you see, he has printed all the parts he needed outside the ones he had to buy. This type of device probably scales well in the Z direction but I forgot to ask just how tall things he can print.
There was also a fascinating stand for piezoelectric motors. For the most part you don’t see these, but you hear them when you use cameras. The focusing is driven with these motors. The motors fit well on a business card:
The stand had the motors in operation outside of lenses, and they’re fun to watch. I shot some video of a device used in in vitro cell counting. There are two motors driving the tiny laser which scans the Petri dish for cells, and all you hear is a crickety chirping sound.
So, what should I say about CeBIT 2015 – was it worth it? Definitely. This event is simply vast, with 450,000 square meters of available space and 700,000 visitors (2014). There are stands with products you can’t even recognize, and then again 24 stands for cash counting machines alone. All the big players are here from IBM to Microsoft to Google, as well as more than 300 hopeful startups. You see so much stuff that it’s overwhelming at first, but you soon learn to filter out the interesting ones.
My tips are:
1) Plan ahead what you absolutely must see and keep searching for that
2) Allocate time for wandering around. Two days is not sufficient unless you want to really focus on your key things.
3) Bring comfortable shoes.
4) Engage the people at the stands. They’re just dying to tell you of their work. Besides, you never know what you might learn.
5) Be prepared to pay 2,50€ for a glass of tap water. The prices all have the jungle surcharge.
I’d love to hear your comments on the CeBIT blogs so please drop me a line!
Signing off with a rare selfie, which I only took because of the iconic Conference Center in the background.
