Archive for the ‘Batteries’ Category

By 2015, Cellphones Will Do 3D Holographic Video Calls (Says IBM Survey) [Video Calling]

Around this time every year, IBM surveys 3,000 researchers to find out what they think is going to be big in the future. This year, everyone’s caught the FaceTime bug, and is looking forward to 3D hologram video calls. More »

DIY Friday: Charge Your iPhone With AAs or Solar Power

Limor Fried’s MintyBoost project is a great example of DIY and commercial tech working together. Take an Altoids tin, a couple of AA batteries, and some very smart hackery, and you’ve got a lightweight USB charger that you can use to charge/run your handheld iWhatever, or almost any other phone, camera, or small device that can take a charge off USB power. About a month ago, she released this video outlining the Apple hackery needed to make this work.

Reverse engineering Apple’s secret charging methods from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Clive Thompson profiled Fried and her company Adafruit Industries as part of a 2008 feature in Wired on “open source hardware.” The idea is that hackers like Fried can use what they find out about consumer devices to make and sell their own products, but also to produce DIY kits and share information with others who then build their own projects.

As a case study in the value of sharing this information, consider Rob Scott. Before he took his son on a week-long bike trip this summer, he used Fried’s schematic to hack together what turns out to be a really striking-looking solar charger for his son’s iPod.

It’s always nice to see what the maker community is doing to accessorize their retail gadgets; the results aren’t always super-polished, but they generally solve real problems in important use cases that don’t get addressed by manufacturers, either because they’re too unusual or they can’t be easily solved by more plugs, more peripherals, more complex devices that cost a lot of money. And in turn, we all find out a little bit more about how these magical devices get put together and how they work.

See Also:

• DIY Graphing Calculator Is Built From Open Source Hardware
• Why Arduino Is a Hit With Hardware Hackers
• Beautifully Hypnotic Video Details Canon Macro Lens Hack
• Hacker Stuffs MiFi Inside iPad, Ruins it in the Process

Panasonic Home Storage Battery

By Evan Ackerman

If you’re one of those uber-hip hipsters with the solar panels on your roof, I envy you and your free electricity. But until somebody invents a solar panel that generates electricity in the dark, there are always going to be times when you’ve got more electricity than you need (high noon) and times when you’ve got less electricity than you need (low noon, aka high moon). If you’ve been generating excess energy, you’ve probably been selling it back to your energy company at a tidy profit, but that doesn’t exactly help you achieve grid independence… The way to do THAT would be through some kind of energy storage system, which lets you store up excess energy and use it when you need it. This is just what Panasonic would like to install in your house, in the form of a giant lithium ion battery.

This household battery, which Panasonic says should be able to power the average home (whatever that means) for a solid week, will be available sometime in 2011. It will be somehow hooked up to your TV, which will allow you to monitor energy usage. We don’t yet have any information on how much this thing will cost, but I bet it’ll be hard to justify in terms of storage benefits and cost savings (and possibly convenience) versus the up-front cost of the system. As with most micro-energy generation systems, it’ll probably end up being more of a feel-good measure than an actual boost to efficiency, but at least it’ll keep your computer on for an extra week when the revolution comes and there’s no more grid power.

VIA [ Physorg ]

FAA Mildly Concerned About Flight Attendants Carrying Handheld Bombs [Planes]

They’re on pretty much every flight now: Handheld credit card readers to buy snackies and soda. None have exploded, yet, but the FAA just issued special advisories to airlines, since they’re powered by explode-y lithium ion batteries.

Now, the FAA says the airlines need approval from the FAA’s hazardous materials division, and has asked them not to store spare lithium ion batteries for the readers on planes. A few airlines went through some special training to get the okay, but at least Delta and JetBlue don’t carry spares or charge the readers on board at all.

The current rate for gadgets exploding on planes is about one every four months, says a former NTSB dude. Which isn’t so bad, considering there are millions of flights happening in that time period. Still, I have the feeling this xkcd comic is going to stay funny for the reasons it’s funny now for like another year, max. [NYT]

http://xkcd.com/651/

PowerPak wall charger doubles as portable backup battery

Here’s an interesting idea: what if the part of the cell phone charger that you plug into the wall doubled as a rechargeable extended battery pack? That’s actually coming in November with the $50 PowerPak from Technocel.

The charger is compatible with any USB cable (device-specific tips are also included for good measure) and provides about 3 hours of additional talk time depending on your cell phone model. It’ll be sold through Technocel.com as well as Sprint stores starting November 1st.

The $50 price tag seems a bit steep but true road warriors and frequent travelers might not need much convincing since it’d mean one less peripheral to take up precious bag space.

PowerPak Portable Battery and Home Charger in One Unit [Technocel.com]

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