What if you could just pop your tablet into a small wedge on a table and connect it to an HDMI cable to project the screen onto a wall?
That’s the simple vision behind “Project Wedge,” a fledgling startup out of Olympia, Wash., that is using a crowdfunding campaign in an attempt to garner financial support to move the tablet projection system from prototype to production. (That’s “Project” as in “projector.”)
They’ve set a price of $157 for preorders through the online campaign, but backers won’t be charged unless they hit their $50,000 goal.
Robb Anthony, an Evergreen State College student who is the CEO and inventor of Project Wedge, does a great Jonny Ive impression in this video explaining the project, although he insists it wasn’t intentional. “I am a hard-core Apple fan, and so I think I incidentally drew from that,” he said, laughing in a recent phone interview.
The projector, with a promised battery life of four hours, will work with tablets including the iPad, Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy and Kindle Fire.
Anthony is a serial entrepreneur who started out with his own t-shirt company at age 15, and has participated in a variety of entrepreneurial competitions around the Seattle region. His partners in the business are Keith Tatham, Mark Rentfrow and Ben Walker.