Plenty of startups made a splash at CES 2013, signaling the start of a new era.

They weren’t all killer ideas, but the ever-growing presence of consumer tech startups foretells the new shape of CES — and perhaps even the gadget world in general. Major tech companies may not have had many big announcements, but these emerging companies are where the future lies.

For the most part, I found the ideas from startups to be far more intriguing than those from big firms. These aren’t companies that are trying to maintain any sort of corporate status quo, so they’re free to innovate and experiment as necessary. And with the rise of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sources, they’re even less beholden to investors and traditional business paths. This leads to some pretty cool stuff.

Almond+: A touchscreen router with fast wireless and home automation

Who needs a touchscreen on their router? Actually, everyone (except maybe geeks). Instead of dealing with clunky router configuration screens, Securifi’s Almond routers let you deal with the entire setup process right on the router. Its original router has been a hot seller on Amazon since it debuted six months ago, but that’s not stopping it from raising the bar yet again with the Almond+.

The new router supports the 802.11AC wireless standard, which offers theoretical speeds of more than 1.1 gigabits, as well as gigabit ethernet. That’s about three times the wireless speed of the old Almond router. The Almond+ also offers more than double the range of its predecessor, and it also supports home automation standards Z-wave and Zigbee.

Securifi is going to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the Almond+ soon, and it intends to sell the router for around $99. Considering that a good 802.11N router costs around $150, I have a feeling that the company has another potential hit with the Almond+.

Dhama Innovations: Instant contrast heat therapy

Seemingly going against several laws of physics*, Dhama Innovations has developed technology that can instantly offer icing and heating therapy in a variety of wearable wraps. In a brief demonstration at its Eureka Park booth, I felt one of Dhama’s wraps go from freezing cold to incredibly hot within seconds. Dhama says that it’s the first to develop instant cooling, and consequently, it’s the only company offering instant hot/cold therapy.

Founder Kranthi Kiran Vistakula developed the technology while at MIT, and MIT’s Technology Review named him as the Innovator of the Year in 2010 by  (among many other awards he has earned).

Dhama offers a knee, back, universal, and migraine wraps from between $142 and $188. The wraps are light, between .3 and 1 pound, and their batteries offer up to four hours of runtime.

For athletes, or anyone suffering from chronic body aches, Dhama’s technology could be incredibly useful.

* Note: I am not a physicist.

Mauz: Use your iPhone as a wireless gesture mouse

What if you could use all of the great motion sensors in your iPhone to replace your mouse? The folks at Spicebox have developed Mauz, a tiny device that plugs into the bottom of your iPhone that turns motion gestures into typical mousing tasks. But it also uses your iPhone’s front camera for Minority Report-esque visual gestures.

Spicebox launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Mauz on Jan. 7, and it’s already reached more than $8,000 of its $150,000 goal. Check out a short demo below.

Pebble

Pebble’s already received a ton of buzz over its wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, in which it raised more than $10 million from almost 69,000 backers. But it chose to debut the final version of its smartwatch, which connects to your smartphone wirelessly to show you messages, calendar notifications, and control music, at CES. Pebble was likely hoping to target the attention of the gadget hounds that roam the show, but it also faced the danger of being overshadowed by a ton of other tech news.

And yet, despite being Pebble’s very first press conference (and the first press conference creator Eric Migicovsky ever attended), it still managed to make an impact. Looking back at CES 2013, it was Migicovsky’s nervous energy during his press conference, and his sheer enthusiasm for finally getting the Pebble out the door, that resonated with me the most throughout the show.

Popchillas World: Autism therapy with games and a robot

It may look like a Furby, but Popchillas World from Interbots is trying to do much more. It has developed an iPad app, as well as a companion stuffed robot, to help autistic kids learn social skills and daily routines. It covers basic tasks like brushing your teeth or complex scenarios like managing emotions. Interbots head of software David Culyba pointed out that autistic kids tend to interact well with touchscreens and robots, so Popchillas World has a shot at being a big help to their parents.

Re-Timer: Goofy glasses that can solve your sleep problems

VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig fell for these trippy glasses from Re-Timer, which use green lights to help your body reconfigure your sleep patterns.

You wear the glasses in the morning when you first wake up for 50 minutes four days in a row. Or if you wake up too early, you wear the glasses at night before you go to bed for the same duration.

“You’re training your body to a different rhythm,” Re-Timer operating manager Claire Hoban told us. “The green light activates the photoreceptors in your eyes and makes you more alert.”

The glasses are based on more than years of scientific research, and Hoban noted that they also helped her deal with jet lag when travelling to CES from Australia. The Re-Timer glasses cost $274 and are available online.

Zboard: The electric skateboard rolls on

We were big fans of Zboard’s weight-sensing electric skateboard back at DEMO Spring last year, and it ended up making waves at CES as well. Zboard won the top prize from Showstoppers and Launch.it’s CES startup competition, beating out several strong Eureka Park contenders (including Dhama Innovations and Liquipel).

Zboard also announced that it’s now seeking $750,000 in funding (on top of the more than $278,000 it raised on Kickstarter last year.)

So far, Intuitive Motion has sold hundreds of Zboards, founder Ben Forman said during the competition. It offers two models: The Zboard Classic for $649, which has around 5 miles of range and a top speed of 15 miles per hour; and the Zboard Pro for $949. The Pro version uses lithium ion batteries, so it’s lighter and offers double the range.

Imagine being able to mute your TV by shushing it or pausing a video simply by getting up. If Cube26 has its way, such interactions will come to TVs and smartphones in the near future.

CEO Saurav Kumar said today at CES 2013′s Eureka Park that he believes Cube26′s “natural vision control” could revolutionize how we interact with all manner of smart devices.

“Lots of smart devices are coming to the market, and everyone wants to get better at interacting with these devices — especially companies like Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft,” Kumar said. “We’re trying to make the machine learn how humans interact so it can naturally interact with them.”

Interactions that Cube26 can already manage on a TV include:

• Mute: silence a video by placing a finger to your lips.
• Pause: Hold your hand up to pause a video stream.
• Presence detection: If you get up and move out of the room, the video pauses. It resumes as soon as you are back in front of the set.
• Facial recognition: Detect and catalog your emotions based on your facial gestures.

Kumar thinks the practical applications of his technology are bountiful — like how Netflix could use it to learn what videos you like based on your facial expressions.

“Netflix has good recommendations, but it could be more personal. Every time I’m watching this one show, I like it and it could feed that emotional information back to the app,” he said.

Cube26 is working on other gestures as well, including volume controls and selection of items in an application.

Kumar said his company has signed one big customer so far to use its tech, but he could only say it is “one of the largest Japanese electronics companies.”

“They are developing their retail marketing product line and using it inside shops and stores,” Kumar said. “They want to know if that person is a male, female, happy, etc. It could used be for product placement or other things.”

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Cube26 was founded in January. It changed its name from PredictGaze to Cube26 a few days ago.

Check out the video below to see Cube26 in action.

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show is shaping up to be strikingly different from previous years — and it may just hint at changes for the entire technology industry in 2013.

Tablets have been the highlight of the past few shows, but they seem less important this time around. And Microsoft, which previously kicked things off with an opening keynote and a major presence on the show floor, is taking a major step back (likely to focus on its own events, like the recent massive Build conference).

For all the hype, companies, and press at CES, we haven’t seen any truly major announcements over the past few years. (The last big one I can remember was the blowout Palm Pre reveal from 2009.)  Other companies will inevitably fill the vacuum created by Microsoft’s absence. And now that the luster on smartphones and tablets is wearing off a bit, perhaps we’ll actually see something new and surprising this year.

Here are a few things we’re expecting to see (and some we’re not) at CES next week. (And check out our extensive interview with Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on CES.)

Startups play a bigger role in consumer electronics

Last year CES featured its first dedicated space for startups: Eureka Park. It was an oasis of innovation at the show (and it also helped that it was far from the crowded floor). Eureka Park was the highlight of last year’s CES for me. It’s where I encountered cool ideas like Perpetua’s body heat-powered wireless sensors, Bluestacks’ software for running Android apps on Windows, and A.M.P., a music-playing robot from Ologic.

Many of the startups demonstrating at Eureka Park last year sported some sort of physical product — something that’s surprisingly rare in the wider startup world. The variety of interesting companies at Eureka Park could be a sign that startups are ready to make a bigger splash in consumer electronics in 2013.

This year, Eureka Park will be 40 percent larger and will feature more than 140 different companies, according to CEA’s Karen Chupka. Eureka Park startups will also receive much more attention this year thanks to Showstoppers Launchit, a new demo-and-pitch event that will highlight the more interesting companies.

Qualcomm proves why it matters to you

Most consumers have likely never heard of Qualcomm, even though chances are good that they’re reliant on its mobile processors and wireless chips every day.

But that’s all going to change this year, as Qualcomm chief executive Dr. Paul Jacobs kicks off CES with the opening keynote. Neither Qualcomm nor Jacobs seem like the ideal successors to Microsoft’s and Steve Ballmer’s recent bombastic keynotes, but the change is nevertheless important. It shows that Qualcomm is finally willing to step into the spotlight, and that it may finally want some recognition. (Jacobs was also interviewed by Charlie Rose last night.)

With Qualcomm taking the lead, perhaps we’ll see more of a focus on the internal components making new devices possible at this CES. And instead of Microsoft’s pie in the sky research projects, which typically dominated its keynotes (but rarely made it to consumers), we’ll hear about realistic component advances that will actually impact shipping products.

Expect Qualcomm to make more noise throughout the year as it fights to become a household name.

Reduced emphasis on tablets and smartphones

CES, and indeed the entire mobile industry, has been a bit drunk on tablets over the past few years. More than 100 tablets were featured at the 2012 CES, and 2011 sported a similarly high number. The tablet bonanza mostly came from companies jumping over themselves to build Android devices — even if they weren’t offering anything unique. This year, the tablet sector seems more sane.

It’s pretty clear now that the market only has enough room for a few Android tablets to succeed. And with the success of the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, all signs are pointing to cheap and small tablets becoming the mainstay Android slates, a standard that’s difficult for smaller manufacturers to meet.

The advent of Windows 8 may lead to a few tablet announcements from big PC makers. But judging from what I’ve seen over the past year, most companies would rather hold their own media events later in the year to show off major new devices rather than fight for attention at CES.

Nvidia is expected to show off the Tegra 4, a powerful new mobile chip for smartphones and tablets, so we may also see some devices announced around that. But even if that does happen, Nvidia has mostly lost the mobile chipset battle to Qualcomm, so I won’t expect to see many Tegra 4 devices at CES.

I don’t expect many big smartphone announcements at the show, either. Samsung is hyping up a mysterious new device, but chances are slim that it’ll be the Galaxy S IV, the latest addition to its flagship line. It’s only been around eight months since the Galaxy S III debuted, and I can’t imagine Samsung would want to cut its lifetime short. I’ve also talked with a few mobile carriers who mentioned they won’t be showing off any significant new devices at the show.

Increased emphasis on touchscreen computers

Now that Windows 8 has proved Microsoft can merge both desktop functionality with the ease of tablets, expect more companies to show off their touchscreen-enabled computers at this year’s CES. While they’re not exactly new, this year touchscreen computers will finally have a vehicle to demonstrate their usefulness via Windows 8, something that wasn’t possible with previous desktop operating systems.

If I’ve learned one major thing from reviewing Microsoft’s Surface, it’s that touchscreen functionality in a notebook is more useful than you think.

Mirrorless cameras take the stage

Cameras like Sony’s NEX series, which offer the quality of a DSLR without the heft and expense, are all the rage in the these days. Mostly, it’s because mirrorless cameras have massive mainstream appeal — they offer higher quality and more options than simple pocket cameras, but aren’t as complicated as DSLRs.

This year the CEA awarded one of its CES Innovation Awards to Sony’s RX1, the first mirrorless camera to squeeze in a full-frame sensor (the current gold standard in DLSRs). There’s a good chance we’ll see a few more full-frame mirrorless cameras debut at the show. At the very least, we’ll see new models, new lenses, and even cheaper prices at CES this year.

Wrapping up: Another year of innovation ahead

CES is ultimately a trade show, meaning it’s intended more for the buyers and sellers who attend than media and consumers.

Despite all it has working against it — the crowds, the hype, Las Vegas — CES remains one of the most interesting tech events of the year. With so many companies and industry figures in one spot, it’s where we’ll begin to see the tech trends for the next year take shape. So even without the promise of a shiny new tablet on the horizon, I’m ultimately excited to brave the crowds this year along with the rest of the VentureBeat crew.