CE Week’s Startup Pavilion Serves Up Bikes, Hydroponics, And Rotary Phone Photo-Sharing

In the Startup Pavilion at CE Week, there’s just as much diversity as there is similarity among the new flock of products and services hitting New York. We saw a number of bikecessories, bike services, and reached the other end of the spectrum by visiting a cloud-based hydroponics monitoring solution and a nice twist between new-school photo-sharing and old-school phones.

Join us, won’t you, as we journey through Startup Pavilion?

SocialBicycles.com

SocialBicycles is a company looking to disrupt the bike-sharing services sweeping the globe, namely in Europe and most recently in New York city. But rather than keeping all of the technology within the proprietary racks and kiosks, SocialBikes have a little tech package on the back that stores a locking system, GSM cellular chip, and a GPS chip. This lets each bike act as its own autonomous system. Just find a bike on the map, reserve it with your phone, and pick it up.

Right now, SocialBicycles is focusing on selling to universities, municipalities, and corporate campuses.

MyBell

What do you know? Another bike startup.

MyBell is a small digital bell for your bike that can be customized the same way that you can customize the ringtones on your phone. Simply move any .mp3 file over to the MyBell via a microUSB connection, and that noise (whether it be the Jaws theme or a line from a Nicki Minaj song) will thereafter be emitted from your MyBell each time a driver cuts you off.

Eventually, the MyBell will include LEDs, but it’s still in the development stage with plans for a crowdfunding campaign starting at the end of the summer. The founders expect the device to retail at $50.

Bitponics

To grow a hydroponic garden, there are a number of factors that require constant monitoring. BitPonics lets you monitor these things remotely, thanks to a $499 device that uses a suite of sensors to monitor things like PH, temperature, humidity, light levels, and more.

That device sends real-time information to the cloud, which is displayed in a web dashboard. Not only can you monitor and control your garden remotely, but the service offers up tips on how to keep your plants happy. And if that weren’t enough, you can connect with other growers to share and receive tips.

The web service is built on a freemium model, with a standard tier at $9/month and an enterprise tier of $49/month.

Rotobooth

Rotobooth is a product meant for events and parties that combines the old with the new. It’s a rotary phone booth, at its core, with souped up technology and LED bling. It’s fairly straightforward.

Dial your number into the phone dial, and you’ll be prompted to take four different pictures. Those pictures are then displayed on the wall of the party, and also sent to your SMS inbox with a link. The link lets you see all four photos separately, or as an animated gif.

Pricing for the Rotobooth comes on a quote-by-quote basis.