Their Key to Success: Cal Grads Launch The Smart Knob

Fort Mason’s century old Festival Pavilion was the perfect setting for Engadget’s inaugural Expand show in San Francisco last weekend. The old building with its steel bones showed off 21st century drones, electric cars, and the latest in electronic gadgets that literally made participants say ”wow!” out loud.

Some of the products are already on the market, while plenty of entrepreneurs wandered the show floor making new contacts and getting advice about crowd sourcing.

Berkeley Grads Start Company

Amongst the companies competing in the Insert Coin competition was The Smart Knob, started by grads Clark Li and Merrick Lackner.

Like many great ideas, it started with the thought, “There’s got to be a better way!”

Li took his family on a vacation to Big Bear in the mountains of Southern California. They arrived at their rental, but couldn’t get in.

“We waiting an hour until someone arrived,” he said.

The result of his frustration is The Smart Knob which consists of a keypad that sits over a doorknob. Key-in the code, it pops off revealing the key. Li kept it simple on purpose—it make it accessible to everyone.

“My parents won’t be able to use a smartphone, but they can use this,” he said.

Engadget Expand

Engadget is an online magazine focused on happenings in the world of technology, gadgets and consumer electronics. Engadget Expand featured speakers, cool tech stuff and a competition, Insert Coin, for $20,000 in startup funds for new ideas.

Several companies displaying their products were focused on reducing energy consumption—Nest of Palo Alto, and Insert Coin challengers Radiator Labs and Observos.

Another amazing product was Ziphius, an aquatic drone controlled by smartphone or tablet. Ziphius’ inventors came all the way from Portugal to show their product. Other long-distance commuters included Scubo 3D from Spain and an entry from Manitoba.

ZSpace of Sunnyvale bowled-over attendees with its revolutionary 3-D product that allows you to pick-up and manipulate objects, via a stylus, on a computer screen. Whether a patient’s own heart, a product design, a mutated gene or architectural plans, the uses for this product are astounding. To make it even cooler, it has a “camera” that you can fly through the objects, seeing them from the inside.

Engadget Expand’s sponsors all had extensive displays of their latest products, including Lenovo , Outlook and Toyota .

Editor’s Note: Engadget and Patch are both owned by AOL.