See Clearly, Clean Safely: The TOFARO Visual Ear Cleaner

Another day, another Kickstarter. Who doesn't want an in-ear camera system?

Ever felt like you're flying blind when cleaning your ears? Traditional cotton swabs can be ineffective and even push wax further into the ear canal. TOFARO, a new visual ear cleaner on the scene, promises a safer, more precise clean with the help of a high-definition camera.

Box

TOFARO boasts a 1080p HD camera that transmits a live feed to your smartphone or tablet via a dedicated app. This allows you to magnify and examine the inner ear, ensuring you only clean what needs cleaning. Blurry images are a thing of the past, thanks to TOFARO's advanced lens technology.

Inside box

Safety is paramount when it comes to ear care. TOFARO features a detachable cleaning head with a built-in storage compartment. This not only keeps the head clean and hygienic but also prevents accidental loss. The 360-degree angle detection and a smart gyroscope ensure you have complete control and can maneuver the cleaning rod precisely within the ear canal.

Silicon scraper

TOFARO is designed to be compact and portable. It can be carried around easily (though would you want to?). It has a WiFi hotspot that you connect your phone/tablet to and then the app simply connects via this.

Camera with cap

Though not a medical device, it's always important to ensure the device is used safely and shouldn't be used if previous problems with any parts of the ear.

Cap removed

Looking inside your ear may show unexpected things and if these are serious seek medical advice rather than poking around and damaging yourself.

Unit twisted, exposing tube and light that is inserted

The silicon scrapers are relatively soft and if placed behind any wax and gently pulled forward, the wax usually comes with it.

USB-C charging

Again, if wax lodged in the ear and doesn't want to move, don't try forcing it, you can do damage to the surrounding area.

In Ear

The above is a view from the camera of a real ear.

It's a novel device with a decent camera (and gyroscopic stabilisation if required).

VirginMedia to go High Def

VirginMedia will shortly be launching new HD channels on their cable platform (the one they advertise as being fibre, which is really fibre to the street cabinet and co-ax to the home).

Sky have been offering several HD channels, now Virgin are catching-up with content from the Food channel and various Discovery channels.

It doesn't seem they have Sky's HD film channels, but then it's not in Sky's interest to offer them to Virgin customers.

BBC Multiplex B reorganisation

Ofcom has granted BBC Free to View Limited a license variation for the Multiplex B so that it can be reorganised to allow for the broadcast of High Definition (HD) Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).

Current Standard Definition DTT is broadcast using MPEG-2 while HD is likely to use MPEG-4 as it requires less bandwidth than the same content broadcast on MPEG-2. Unfortunately this means new Freeview boxes will be required as none (or very few) of the existing boxes on the market have MPEG-4 decoders.

This will mean lots of current Freeview units being binned and new units will have to be purchased.