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Domain: freeplayenergy.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to freeplayenergy.com.
Comments · 15
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Re:Solar and handcranked are the way to go
For small consuming devices like cell phones, a hand crank might be good enough. However, there aren't any practical hand crank solutions for high consumption devices like laptops. The OLPC project abandond hand cranks due to the fact that children wouldn't be able to use them to effectively power the laptops.
Foot cranks are getting there, and there are some already on the market, like this one: http://www.freeplayenergy.com/product/weza
Not really good enough for a gaming notebook, but probably acceptable for small 13 inch or less models. -
Re:Solar and handcranked are the way to go
>Are there practical crank chargers out there?
There's the Datexx SuperBattery. A caveat: the crank is all plastic and not the high-strength kind. That being said, it seems to work adequately.
For more serious use, I'd look into the treadle powered Freeplay Weza instead or the Freecharge 12V. I have Freeplay's crank powered Indigo lantern and it is very well constructed.
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Re:Why is Sugar gone from the XO?Why did Negroponte decide to go with Windows, at $3/license no less, when Steve Jobs offered OS X for free? Negroponte claimed he wanted an open platform. Why the change of heart? What the hell is going on?
The OLPC laptop hasn't been selling in anything like the numbers the idealists expected.
The price just keeps edging skyward.
Meanwhile, the designer of OLPC's display has moved on to greener pastures. In a year or two, perhaps three, the XO's hardware will be out-gunned by every budget laptop on the planet.
The Intel Classmate is already in its second generation.
If you are shopping for a dynamo and solar powered radio, your choices now extend far beyond the Freeplay.
Given enough time, the precision manufacturer in Asia will beat you on tech and beat you on price
- even with an OEM Windows install.
It is very, very, hard to stay ahead in this game.
The OEM doesn't have to design for the fantasy of local production and service. The manual assembly and repair of an out-sized clockwork mechanism. That sort of thing.
He can sell his product in any market he chooses to enter. The case doesn't have to lime green.
[and given the trendy designer colors of the latest mass-market Dell laptops, that should stand as the most naive and short-lived anti-theft device ever conceived by the mind of man.]
Most importantly, he doesn't have to conform to a constructivist philosophy of education or the geek's ideology of free and open source.
What place these have in the primary grades, how well they serve the student in the higher grades and in vocational training, are decisions he can leave to the education minister.
Which, from the minister's point of view, is where they belong.
If he wants Squeak, he can have Squeak. If he wants Coding4Fun he can have Coding4Fun. If he has doubts about Sugar, if he thinks that understanding the Windows GUI and MS Office are marketable skills, he has an alternative.
The geek forgets that arguments about lock-in can cut both ways.
Apple's worldwide share of the PC market was 3% in late 2007 - and probably closer to 2% when OSX was being offered to OLPC for free. In the third world the visibility of the Mac can be as close to zero as makes no difference.
The pragmatic choice, if you went for the proprietary OS, was always Windows.
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Re:The other shoe drops
You know the Baylis radio project turned into a successful company right? They even make wind up generators for the OLPC: http://www.freeplayenergy.com/ Mind you, one thing that Baylis and his colleagues did right was to go to Africa with a selection of prototypes to see which features were most wanted. IIRC they'd been trying to make it look small and cool, as you would for the European market, but the most popular prototype was the biggest and loudest. I wonder if the OLPC group could have learnt something from that?
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Freeplay makes 'em
Freeplay's been making stuff powered by fairly hefty but still child-crankable watch spring technology for a long time: http://www.freeplayenergy.com/products
I bought a Freeplay radio back in the early 90s when they were still made in S Africa. -
here ya go
You might like some of the stuff these guys make, including a universal human powered charger for small gadgets. We have a couple of their things, the original crank and spring (clockwork) powered multiband radio, and a later, crank to generator model, excellent build quality there. The OLPC guys are still contemplating going with their foot pedal push generator thing, along with the yo yo string puller last I heard.
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Re:Travel as light as you possibly can
If you must insist on carrying technology like a digital camera or a PDA, look into alternative energy sources to be able to recharge batteries while on foot. Obviously, do the homework and use the lightest devices that have the best efficiency and use common battery types.
A wind-up FreePlay FreeCharge could be useful to supply enough power to your small devices or even to recharge a set of AA NiMH batteries...and you could get a lot of mileage out of it (pun intended). Not too expensive at 11oz and around $60 either.
It might be worth the extra pound to use green energy.
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CAPTCHA of the comment: synergy -
clockwork
...they are very nice, I have two of them, although for day to day use I have a plug in sangean multiband. I've been meaning to pick up one of their wind up flashlights they have now, too. http://www.freeplayenergy.com/
I wish they would make a laptop. It needs the clockwork deal, plus a remote solar panel you could stick in the window. Something like the OLPC but for adults, albeit simiar type specs and idea, low power, all solid state, self powered, etc. -
windup
I sort of like the idea of a crank or windup clockwork spring generator for additional electrical supply, like the MIT laptop was originally supposed to have. If it is spring and clockwork, you don't have to wind for a long time, my baygen/freeplay radios (they have flashlights, too) you can wind completely up in less than a minute, then they give 30 minutes radio. I know it wouldn't last as long with a laptop, but it would be *some* emergency power as your battery started to go. There's even a foot powered generator you could get, throw it on the floor and just a slow pumping action acts as a generator, leaving your hands free and not bothering the computer. Something like this, perhaps a bit beefier the Stepcharger
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Re:Leaked Picture link here!
That's just stupid.
The Freeplay radio (most likely the provider of the power source of these things) subsidizes it's radio giveaways to the Third World by selling their product to wealthy consumers in the rest of the world. http://www.freeplayenergy.com/index.php?section=ho me -
Wind-up charger
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Wind-up radios illustrate similar pattern. . .Freeplay, an innovative start-up piloted by a couple of hippies with a dream, decided that third world citizens ought to have access to radio communications technology. The idea was to create a wind-up radio for lands where battery and wall power were not feasible.
The finished product rocked. I lived with a room mate who owned a couple of them, and they worked wonderfully. The weird thing, though, was the price-tag.
In the third world, a wind-up radio cost about ten bucks. But here in the West, where money grows on trees and the streets are paved with gold, the average Yuppie had to shell out up to $200 for the gizmo.
I don't know if I agree or disagree with this kind of marketing, but it'd be interesting to see how the story goes with MIT's do-hicky. Not that it'll probably make much difference; from their web-site; "these laptops are not in production. They are not--and will not--be available for purchase by individuals."
For my part, I am partial to the HP Jornada 820 when it comes to small and ultra-portable computers. Word-processing with no moving parts other than the flip-screen and lap-top keyboard means an 8 hour battery life. --It runs on flash cards, and so long as all you want to do is write and store data, you can't do much better. (Forget gaming, though, but I couldn't care less about that.)
I think there should be more devices like this generally available; they're just so useful. Dedicated word-processors with good key-boards and screens are hard to come by and too damned expensive for what you get generally. The Jornada is the exception, which is probably why the plug got pulled on it. --HP stopped making the Jornada 820 back in the late nineties; I got mine off Ebay for about $250, and I use it all the time. I wish it could run on wind-up power. I wonder if there's a charger out there which has a hand-crank. . .
I think there's a subconscious conspiracy to make sure people don't have access to useful tools for writing and creating which don't come armed with severe operating limitations, (the standard lap-top with lame battery life), and a million and one mind-numbing distractions, (DVD players and game and music options. Bah. Writers write, they don't waste time messing around with toys.)
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Better Freeplay link
http://www.freeplayenergy.com/
They have added some cool new products. -
Re:Baylis generator = no batteries at all
The original Freeplay radio contained no batteries. It just contained a windup clockwork mechanism which powered a generator. This was back in 1996 or so.
If I remember right, the radios were manufactured in South Africa as part of a joint commercial/NGO economic development product. The foundation manufactured commercial radios for the American & European commercial markets, and used the money to fund more economic development projects in Africa.
Read their history for more information.
The more recent consumer models do contain a battery pack, and are manufactured in China. -
Some gadgets they missed..
In no particular order..
Perhaps it doesn't appeal to the stereotypical geek, but the vibrator. The pocket calculator as well as; The calculator/remote control/radio controlled/FM radio *wristwratch* (surely the pinnacle of minitiaturization!).
Of course, the bonefone: link. The transistor radio. The world receiver radio. The wind-up/clockwork radio/charger. The intimidating maglite flashlight. Glowsticks! Neither electonic, nor moving parts, but who can resist luminecence!
7" 33 1/3rpm vinyl gramophone records; or I can do you even better than that - 7" 33 1/3 rpm plastic gramophone records that were given away as inlays with MSX Magazine, that you'd dub on tape, and you'd "load" programs off of the tape using the regular "data cassette recorder".
CB (Citizen's Band, 27 "megacycle") radio. ZX80. C64. Nuff said. The lava lamp! Duh! The strap-on (wait for it) keyboard (keyboard guitar).
The hearing aid. The answering machine remote control/handheld DTMF tone dialer. Also; the blue box! The minox sub-miniature "spy" camera (as seen in james bond). The SLR Single Lens Reflex camera. Automatic tweezers (They don't work particularly well, but they have a gadget-esque movement)
The portable DVD player. Toys robots (remote controlled, especially; the robosapiens is a good stab at the concept). Magnesium firestarters. (I'm the firestarter!)
Personal Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (P-EPIRBs) RC cars, helicopters. E.g. The translator pen (scans text when you move across it, translates) The penman robotic plotter and of course the closely related concept of the Logo turtle..
The random movement printer (If and when it becomes widely available..) Lego mindstorms (programmable bricks..)
The most important hand-helds historically; the Smith&Wesson and the AK47.
Also, though not an autonomous device, nor mechanical, nominated for achievements in disrupting the global economy, I'd like to recognize bubblejet printer ink, for costing more than its weight in gold or oil.
Aerosol spray canisters; specifically,
every graffitti artist's friend: spraypaint and every gadget-minded geek's friend: deodorant (especially the miniature cans) and of course; aerosol cheese! Also, perhaps slightly more
palatable, mace pepper spray.
The electric toothbrush (with induction-loop-charging-circuit magic!)
Not the greatest gadget in history until you consider it's "dual use" nature, and the fact it's marketed so widely.
Sattellite TV. Not the most portable of gadgets, but come on! Windscreenwiper glasses. (Though more of a chindogu) The mac. The iMac for doing it twice. The aibo.
The "orgasmotron" (actually just a head massager, not at all naughty) Stylish pin clock. The keyghost hardware keystroke logger.
The digital camera. The digital photo frame.
The credit-card sized Anything, but in particular, the cre
