5 BEST Things I Saw in Vegas at CES 2024

Summary

An engaging look at exciting new tech unveiled at CES 2024. Highlights transparent OLED TVs, low light solar cells to replace device batteries, noise canceling earbuds targeting hearing loss, heart monitoring wearables, and easily expandable home battery systems. Surprising resurgence of hydrogen for energy and transportation. Overall shift towards companies backing up sustainability claims with measurable progress.

Takeaways

• 😀 LG showcased transparent TVs that can switch between opaque and see-through modes
• 😄 Ambient Photonics created a new dye-sensitized solar cell with better performance and seamless integration into devices without batteries
• 😸 OrCam Hear is earbuds with targeted noise cancellation for hearing assistance
• 😎 Withings BeamO is a portable medical device for ECG, blood oxygen, temperature monitoring and digital stethoscope
• 💡 Shelly's new Gen 3 devices are small energy trackers to monitor power usage of appliances and trigger automations
• 🔋 Modular and expandable home battery systems from EcoFlow, Anker and others provide more affordable energy storage options
• 😋 'Balcony solar' with small panels and batteries is an emerging trend for apartment energy backup in Europe
• 😮 Hydrogen production and uses for transportation were unexpectedly highlighted by major companies like Bosch and Hyundai
• 🌍 Companies emphasized sustainability goals and actual progress, not just lip service
• 👍 There is interest in hydrogen for more equitable global access to clean energy

Q & A

What were some of the key trends Matt noticed at CES 2024?

Matt noticed trends like transparent TVs from LG, low-light solar cells from Ambient Photonics, wearable healthcare tech like OrCam Hear and Withings BeamO, modular and expandable home energy storage systems, and increased interest in hydrogen across multiple companies.

How does the transparent TV technology from LG work?

The TV has an opaque backing that can roll up and down to switch between a traditional flat panel screen and a transparent mode. In transparent mode, it can display art or apps that seem to float in space.

What makes the solar cells from Ambient Photonics unique?

They use a new type of dye-sensitized solar cell with much higher power density, 3-5x better than typical cells. This allows small devices to charge from indoor lighting without batteries.

What healthcare wearables caught Matt's attention?

The OrCam Hear earbuds for customized hearing assistance and the Withings BeamO which can monitor heart health, blood oxygen, temperature, and more.

What was the key trend in home energy storage?

Modular and expandable battery systems that allow easy customization and upgrading of home energy storage, from companies like EcoFlow and Anker.

What surprising resurgence did Matt notice around hydrogen?

Many major companies like Bosch, Panasonic, and Hyundai spoke positively about hydrogen's role in future energy systems, surprising Matt.

What hydrogen applications did companies discuss?

Transportation uses like hydrogen vehicles from Hyundai, as well as production of hydrogen from waste sources.

How did companies talk about sustainability?

Most companies discussed concrete goals and progress, rather than just lip service, which Matt was happy to see.

What is balcony solar?

Hanging solar panels off a balcony to charge a small battery pack and provide apartment energy resilience, though not common yet.

What follow-up content will Matt produce?

A podcast called Still TBD where he will discuss audience feedback on the trends and technologies from CES 2024.

Outlines

00:00

📺 Innovation Mix: Transparent TVs and Low-Light Solar Cells Show Promise

Paragraph 1 summarizes highlights from CES 2024, including transparent TVs from LG that transform into artwork when off, and new solar cells from Ambient Photonics that efficiently convert indoor light into energy to power electronics without batteries.

05:00

👂 Hearing Assistance and Health Monitoring Advances

Paragraph 2 discusses innovative healthcare products from OrCam and Withings unveiled at CES 2024. OrCam Hear aids hearing through advanced noise cancellation to isolate voices. Withings' new BeamO device enables at-home health diagnostics like ECGs, pulse oximetry, temperature checks, and cardiac/respiratory auscultation.

10:04

🌇 Modular and Apartment-Sized Energy Storage

Paragraph 3 covers the rise of modular, scalable home battery systems from EcoFlow, Anker, and others ideal for energy resilience. It also discusses the concept of 'balcony solar' - small solar+battery systems to provide backup power in apartments.

Keywords

💡CES

CES stands for 'Consumer Electronics Show' and is one of the largest annual trade shows for consumer electronics. It offers a glimpse into new and emerging technologies. The video discusses trends and innovations spotted at the 2024 CES to highlight promising technologies like solar cells, healthcare wearables, home energy storage, etc.

💡solar cells

The video talks excitedly about new low-light solar cells from Ambient Photonics that can generate electricity from ambient indoor lighting. Their high power density could enable small, battery-free devices by charging supercapacitors instead, reducing electronic waste.

💡healthcare wearables

Advanced healthcare wearables like OrCam's Hear for tuneable hearing assistance and Withings' BeamO vital signs monitor are highlighted for their potential to act like simplified tricorders from Star Trek to monitor consumers' health and share data with doctors.

💡home energy storage

Several companies showcased modular and expandable home battery systems for energy storage and backup power. Their simple add-on nature makes home energy storage more accessible and scalable for residential use compared to single, fixed capacity products.

💡balcony solar

Balcony solar refers to small solar panel systems designed for apartments that can charge a battery and provide backup power by simply hanging outside. Though not widespread, the video suggests their potential for equitable access to solar energy.

💡hydrogen

Surprisingly, hydrogen solutions got significant airtime from companies like Bosch and Hyundai. The video discusses if this signals renewed hope in hydrogen's viability, including potential advantages in equitable global access compared to lithium batteries.

💡sustainability goals

The video positively notes that companies didn't just pay lip service to sustainability goals but offered real progress updates, suggesting these environmental commitments may have meaningful industry traction.

💡transparent TVs

LG's attention-grabbing transparent TVs use switchable opacity to show content or literally disappear when off. Though niche and expensive now, the video considers if it proves a concept that could achieve mainstream affordability someday.

💡noise cancellation

OrCam Hear earbuds showcase selective noise cancellation that can tune out whole noisy environments except specific voices. This level of sound isolation and discrimination abilities impress the video creator.

💡energy monitoring

New Shelly Gen 3 devices can unobtrusively monitor appliance energy use to identify waste and enable automation like the video creator's system to trigger ventilation based on range hood activity.

Highlights

LG unveiled a transparent TV that literally disappears off the wall when not in use

Ambient Photonics has developed a new type of solar cell that can charge devices without batteries

OrCam demoed earbuds with sophisticated noise cancellation that can tune out background noise and isolate voices

Withings showcased BeamO, a tricorder-like device that can monitor heart health, blood oxygen, temperature, and lung function

Shelly revealed a small, affordable energy tracker to identify wasteful devices and trigger automations

Modular, expandable home battery systems were a major trend, with capacities up to 90kWh from companies like EcoFlow and Anker

"Balcony solar" is an emerging idea to power apartments with small solar setups, though not widespread yet

Major manufacturers like Bosch, Panasonic and Hyundai reaffirmed commitments to hydrogen tech for energy and transportation

Hyundai discussed converting waste into hydrogen fuel with new technology

Bosch announced forthcoming hydrogen engines for vehicles

Hyundai revealed a new version of their hydrogen fuel cell Nexo vehicle

Manufacturers cited global equity issues around battery materials as a driver for hydrogen adoption

Most companies underscored sustainability plans and progress reports, not just empty promises

The video sponsor Headspace provides meditation and mindfulness tools to aid focus and mental health

Please suggest other CES highlights to discuss in upcoming podcast episode

Transcripts

CES is usually a mixed bag.

It’s a great place to see where the tech sector is heading, or at least where it thinks

it's heading.

There were several trends from previous years that are starting to pay off in big ways,

and some showstoppers that have created a lot of buzz.

But what really caught my eye, and what you might have missed, ran the gamut from low

light solar cells to apartment-ready home energy storage to some tech that has a direct

impact on our lives and health.

Along with renewed interest in…hydrogen of all things?

Trade shows are often full of vaporware and empty promises.

But this year felt different.

So, what were the highlights that I think are worth watching?

And what new tech surprised me most?

I’m Matt Ferrell … welcome to Undecided.

This video is brought to you by Headspace, but more on that later.

Before I give my two cents on the best of what CES had to offer, let’s talk about

clarity.

Or rather, transparency.

I’ve gotta bring up what many of you have already heard about through tech news and

social media: transparent TVs.

Why transparent?

That was the question that went racing through my mind when I first heard LG bring it up

during its keynote.

I definitely wasn’t asking for that feature.

Were you?

But then I saw it.

It worked way better than you might think.

I also got to take a look up close and personal on the show floor and was still blown away.

Would I want this in my house?

No, my TVs are just fine — but it was interesting to hear LG’s pitch for why we’d

want one.

Instead of looking like a giant black slab when not in use, it literally disappears off

the wall.

The way it works is actually pretty clever.

It has an opaque backing that can roll up and down to either look like a traditional

flat panel screen or the new see-through mode.

When transparent, it can act like an art screen displaying what looks like objects sitting

on the table, or smart TV apps floating in space.

The transparency was a seamless effect that worked really well, but that whizbang feature

is going to come with a high cost right now.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is a trend that sticks with us and trickles down

to affordable models, or if it will fade into obscurity the way 3D support did for most

TVs.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me get into what really captivated me.

So, low-light solar panels aren’t exactly new.

They’ve been around for decades, and you’re probably already familiar with seeing them

on small things like keyboards and calculators.

However, the US-based company Ambient Photonics has something new they’re bringing to the

market right now.

And from what I’ve seen, it’s actually novel enough to change the game.

It’s a new type of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), which is able to capture full

spectrum light, so anything from compact fluorescent lights, to LED lights, to ambient sunlight

in a room can be converted into electricity.

What sets their technology apart is the power density they’ve accomplished: 3 to 5 times

better performance than a typical DSSC cell.

Why does that matter?

Well, think about all the devices in your life that use AA or AAA batteries or built-in

lithium ion cells.

That includes all your remote controls, wireless keyboards, mice, trackpads, Internet of Things

devices like motion sensors, and so on.

You get the idea.

Those same devices, when combined with Ambient Photonics solar cells and a supercapacitor,

would never need to have a battery replaced … because they’d never actually have a

battery.

That means gadgets that use fewer materials but are longer-lasting and more robust, all

without having to replace batteries.

The solar cells you usually see on devices like this have to be linked together in series

in order to get the voltages and power they need.

Buf if you shade one cell, you knock the entire array down — as I’m sure many of you found

out by fiddling with the calculators in school.

Unlike those, Ambient Photonics’ technology involves one uniform cell that can come in

a range of sizes.

I saw examples of wireless mice that had a single large solar cell on the entire surface

of the mouse.

You could barely see the cell through the surface.

The matte texture design was nuts.

They showed me a bifacial solar cell integrated into a streaming box remote, like the Amazon

Fire TV.

No matter how you set this remote down, whether face up or face down, it’ll

always be able to charge.

There’s a lot to this tech I don’t have time to get into here, so let me know if you’d

like a deeper dive in a future video.

Before getting into the next exciting thing you should know about from CES, there’s

something else I need to talk about.

Does your mind race out of control like mine does?

How many solar panels would that take?

How long would that battery actually last?

How does that thing actually work?

How many wood chucks could chuck wood?

Wasn’t I supposed to be working on a CES video today?

Today’s sponsor, Headspace can help with that.

This isn’t something I’ve talked about much on the channel, but I’ve been struggling

with some burnout recently … I love making these videos, but it takes a lot of time and effort to pull them

all together and I have a lot of stress and anxiety around it, which started coming to

a head late last year.

Headspace has been a huge help to me.

They have something for everyone and teach you tactics to help calm and focus the mind.

It’s a meditation app to help you learn daily habits to support your mental health.

One of my favorite parts is that they also offer courses to help walk you through the

why and how of it.

There’s a great one I just started to help break down how to get better sleep.

If you’d like to see how Headspace might be helpful for you, you can try it out completely

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Sign up with my link in the description below.

Thanks to Headspace and to all of you for supporting the channel.

Now, back to the next CES highlight.

I’m a huge fan of wearable technology and how it can positively impact our lives.

I’ve been wearing Apple Watches from the very beginning, and I bought them for my parents

to be able to call out for help if they fall down and aren’t able to get help.

So, when I came across the company OrCam, a couple pieces of tech really grabbed my

attention.

I personally demoed the OrCam Hear, which is a device to help people with varying levels

of hearing loss.

It looks like an ordinary pair of earbuds, but there’s some wildly sophisticated technology

at play here.

There’s a companion smartphone app that lets you activate and deactivate targeted

noise cancellation.

When I put them on, it tuned out all of the noise from the show floor and I could only

hear the voice of the person giving me the demo.

There were three people at the booth talking to me, but I could only hear the one.

With a couple of taps on the phone app, I could then hear two of the three of them.

Then all three of them … but the rest of the show floor was still muted out.

Their noise-canceling is able to discern between specific voices!

Safe to say that demo blew my mind.

Staying on the more personal, healthcare side of things, there was also a new device from

Withings called the BeamO.

This is like our first step towards a little tricorder, so you know the Star Trek geek

in me was loving this one.

Using a single device, you can perform an ECG and monitor your heart, check your blood

oxygen levels, and take your temperature.

It even has a built-in stethoscope that you can share with your doctor for remote diagnostics

for your heart and respiratory system.

I really want to get my hands on that one.

Next up for me was in the smart home realm at the Shelly booth.

I’m a big believer in energy monitoring technologies because with knowledge comes

power.

In a previous video, I showed off how I’m using a Shelly relay I hooked up to my home’s

Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) to link it into my smart home.

I’ve got one automation that ramps up the ERV automatically if my house detects power

draw from the range hood fan.

Well, Shelly has a range of new Gen 3 devices that are way small, about the size of a quarter.

One is like a miniature version of the relay I’m using on my ERV, but that’s not the

one that really got my attention.

This little guy is an energy tracker and would be extremely easy to add to any outlets or

devices around your house.

In a very tiny and affordable box, you can track basically anything you want.

Think dishwashers, washing machines, dehumidifiers … This can help you track down wasteful

use cases or trigger automations, like the one I’ve got set up with my range hood fan.

It’s really slick.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on that one to test out.

The next highlight for me shouldn’t be a surprise.

It’s probably not going to be a shock that I spent a lot of time jumping between all

the battery companies and booths that I could find … and there were a lot.

There was a clear trend this year that came through loud and clear and it’s pretty exciting news

for home energy storage options out there.

No, it’s not hydrogen, but there’s definitely some surprises with that too, which I’ll

get to in a minute.

It was actually modular and easily expandable energy storage systems that seemed all the rage this

year.

Every company under the sun had a similar setup.

EcoFlow has probably the most impressive of the bunch, with their new Delta Pro Ultra

power station.

It’s a modular and portable system that can work for anything from RVs to your house.

You can plug directly into the unit or link them into the EcoFlow Smart Home Panel 2 for

energy monitoring and automatic backup power switchover for your entire house.

It uses a lithium iron phosphate battery chemistry, which is what most of the companies were using.

Each module has 6kWh storage and you can combine them together for up to 90kWh of storage.

That would last the better part of a week for most American homes.

That’s just staggering.

That modular approach extends to Anker, who launched some new entries into their SOLIX

line, like the Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power station.

It’s very similar to EcoFlow, but starts at 3.84kWh and can scale up to 26.9kWh with

a total of 6 modules.

Then you can combine multiple stacks for a total of 53.8kWh of storage.

The main takeaway is that these systems are very adaptable to a wide variety of setups,

and offer some pretty granular scalability.

With a Tesla Powerwall you’re probably starting in that $15,000 - $20,000 range, but with

these you’re starting at $5,799 for EcoFlow and $3,999 for Anker.

That makes it easier to get into home energy storage and scale as needed.

But this is where another trend starts to crop up.

It’s one that I’d really like to see take off here in the US, but it’s only really

taking hold in some parts of Europe right now, like Germany.

It’s often referred to as balcony solar — which is appropriate, seeing as it’s

literally just hanging a couple of panels over the edge of your balcony.

Tie those panels into a small battery pack and plug into a home outlet and you’ve got

instant apartment power backup.

Anker has the SOLIX Solarbank E1600, which has 1.6kWh of storage.

It’s not a lot, but for an apartment that could get stretched out a long way.

Another company called Marstek had something similar that I saw.

I’d love to do a deeper dive on balcony solar and why it’s not really a thing everywhere

yet.

Let me know if you’d be interested in that.

That brings me to what surprised me the most.

It’s a divisive topic every time I talk about it on the channel … and that’s hydrogen.

I was shocked at how many companies talked about going big on hydrogen in their keynotes.

> “We are focusing in particular on hydrogen.

We believe it'll be central to meeting our future climate neutral energy needs.”

For example, Bosch talked at length about their innovations generating green hydrogen

to their PEM fuel cells and how it’s essential for the clean energy future.

Panasonic said something similar, and also spoke about how their facilities are using

hydrogen and solar panels to make their climate neutral goals.

On top of this, Hyundai discussed how they’re expanding their HTWO brand from just fuel

cells to their entire hydrogen value chain (production to use).

From their waste to hydrogen technology where they can take literal sewer sludge and turn

it into clean hydrogen.

As if that wasn’t surprising enough for me, both Bosch and Hyundai brought up hydrogen

for transportation.

I thought the hydrogen car talk was done by now, but nope.

Bosch is going to be releasing their hydrogen-burning engine and Hyundai has a new version of their

Nexo hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

That raises a big question: why?

Reading between the lines, there’s a sentiment that there’s not enough equity or availability

for batteries or their components for the entire world.

Hydrogen can, in theory, open up more equitable access to clean technologies around the world.

It’s a nice sentiment, but I’m a bit skeptical that they can pull it off.

I’ve long thought that we shouldn’t write off hydrogen across the board because it does

have some really compelling use cases, but they were championing the use cases that I

thought were kind of … well … dead.

Aside from that, I was also pleasantly surprised to see every company talking about their sustainability

plans and goals.

More importantly, many were actually discussing their progress based on the goals they’ve

laid out over the past year or two.

I was happy to see that it’s not just lip service, as we got descriptions of follow-through.

That could be a video on its own.

So was there any tech from CES 2024 that caught your attention?

Jump into the comments and let me know.

And be sure to check out my follow up podcast Still TBD where we'll be discussing some of

your feedback.

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Your support really helps us to keep delivering you these videos every week.

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I’ll see you in the next one.