Engineers and developers are known for playing with cool toys in between bouts of heavy R&D. This holiday season is supposed to be filled with some of the coolest gadgets yet. Cubicle farms across tech land will be buzzing with lights and sounds when all the developers return from the holidays.
If you have a developer in your life and want to help stock them up with cool toys for break time, check out these 9 cool gadgets.
1. Stop using glue. The future of sticking things together is here: Bondic. Bondic is a pen sized liquid plastic welder. This welder was originally developed by a dentist who realized it had more uses outside of fixing teeth. It works by extruding a liquid plastic that hardens when exposed to a UV light at the tip of the pen. “Fix toys, eyeglasses, jewelry and more. Bondic works on wood, metal, and even fabric. Use it for craft projects or to enhance existing products, like adding a GoPro mount to a bicycle helmet.”
2. When the IT guys get a little uppity, send in the Nerf Terrascout. It’s a remote controlled nerf gun mounted on a drone track vehicle. The gun has its own camera allowing for two points of view and an 18 round magazine for maximum stealth devastation.
3. Here’s the ultimate hypoallergenic pet- dinoflagellates, they’re bioluminescent plankton that comes in a small sphere called a Bioluminescent Aquarium. The sphere glows when given a little shake. The dinoflagellates store energy from indirect sunlight throughout the day and emit the energy as light when slightly agitated. This is a pet and will need regular feeding.
4. Continuing with the pet theme, next is on the list is Sphero 2.0 Robotic Ball from Orbotix. This is a programmable robot ball that is waterproof, pet proof, and you can control it from your phone. Sphero comes with a wide range of accessories and skins. It’s compatible with iOS 8+ and Android OS 4.4.2+ (Kit Kat) or greater and comes with an inductive charging base.
5. No list of geek toys would be complete without flying drones. The DJI Phantom 4 Professional Quadcopter 4k UHD Video Drone. This drone comes with auto takeoff and return GPS capabilities. The camera captures HD video at 30 fps 4×3 12MP and is gimbal stabilized.
6. Okay, this one isn’t so fun, but it’s damn useful. The Magicup is an anti-spill coffee mug that you can sip from anywhere on lid’s circumference. If it tips over, a lid snaps shut almost instantly containing the spill. This is the ideal coffee cup for people who work around electronic equipment or computers. This also makes a great gift for the perfect klutz in your life.
7. Keep sodas under your desk and cool them off in under 3 minutes with the Spin Chill Quick Beverage Chiller. The Spin Chill,
… clips onto the top of a can or bottle, and uses convection to allow warm liquid in the center of the container to make its way to the outer edges, cooling the beverage down at least 20 times faster than traditional cooling methods.
8. Find out who’s been stealing your sandwich from the breakroom refrigerator with the BB2Bottlecam 30hr. It’s a video camera disguised as a small bottle of water. No one pays attention water bottles. The top half holds actual water and can support a 64GB Micro SD card. It also supports motion detection.
9. You and your team pulled an all-nighter before a presentation. You’re ready to present but everyone looks like they slept in their clothes. You save the day by whipping out Collar Perfect, a compact travel iron the size of a beeper (an ancient communication device). It has two heat plates that can pinch in a parallel position to press collars . Or, the plates can be butterfly-opened to a flat plane for normal pressing. Collar Perfect was designed by a Marine to keep his uniform sharp.
