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Foot-Powered Laptop
mrd98 writes: "There is an article in the Register about a U.S. developer who has created a foot-powered device which can be used to charge laptop batteries. Apparently 5 minutes of brisk pumping will give you 20 minutes of battery life, it can also be used to power most other electrical devices with a rechargable battery."
Charging my laptop. Honest!
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Apparently 5 minutes of brisk pumping will give you 20 minutes of battery life
Think of what this could do for the sex toy industry.
*sigh* I can't believe I've stooped this low.
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This looks like it has a lot of promise... not so much for regular use so much as emergencies. Laptops have some pretty high power drain sometimes... I'd imagine that a device that can power one for 4 times it owns usage time must require a good deal of input power, aka, work (or the dreaded e (exercise) word).
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As a diehard Emacs bigot I'd prefer Control and Meta pedals.
Apparently 5 minutes of brisk pumping will give you 20 minutes of battery life
For me, 2 minutes then it's nap time...
Think about it. All those tech workers who are looking for a job now can get a job to keep up the laptops of office workers up and running.
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I suppose this could be good for long hiking trips for people who just have to get their email fix.
That would kind of defeat the purpose of a hiking trip, though.
So, it's true... in the future the machines really will turn us into living power sources.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
...this should also take care of Thrombophlebitis a condition of blood clotting in the legs when they do not move enough... Great for those aging geeks!
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
...of that Tech Support story (urban legend?) in which someone called saying that their computer was broken. When the tech support guy asked to describe the problem, the person said that they pressed on the foot pedal but the computer wouldn't come on. The foot pedal, of course, turned out to be the mouse...
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Windows takes 20 minutes to boot.
Guys typically take shorter to reach orgasm [not speaking for myself here ;)]. women need more time 'at-it'. this solves that issue. guys do a brisk pumping for 5 minutes. put that battery into you-know-what and the women get to go at it for 20 minutes. didn't solve world hunger. but very close. very close.
This sound like a great idea. Just combine it with a solar power charger, a sattelite phone, and you'll be able to get online anywhere in the world. :-)
There's also the hand cranked cellphone for when you need a workout for your arms.
/Styx
This is the answer for XP's peers development utilization question. As one developer would be coding, the second would be pumping up the battery -- no more questionable waist of developers' valuable time by just watching over the coder.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
To go along with your foot-powered laptop, you might want to check out the Freecharge windup generator due out for Motorola cellphones this quarter. It won a Time Product of the Year citation.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
5 minutes out of every 25 must be spent charging. Ok that means you end up wasting 12 minutes out of every hour. I'd say this is much less than I end up wasting on other things like solitaire, minesweeper. PLUS, you get exercise out of it! Sign me up!
Seems like a rather low yield to me - my grandfather used to sell Singer sewing machines, and has an amazing collection of antiques.
Among them are two treadle style, with a large two-foot pedal, and a long band to transfer the power. That sucker got going REALLY fast, with a lot of momentum. Admittedly, it was all iron as well.
It just seems to me that five minutes of pumping that sucker would have given me about 2 hours worth of laptop power!
and laptop users will be the fittest people on the planet! I can see conversations now...
"Hey, Bob, your son is really getting big and strong!"
"Yeah, Steve, he's going to be as strong one day as a computer programmer! Maybe even as fit as a linux kernel hacker!"
"You don't say?"
An additional battery weighs about the same (both are around 300g).
I always wondered if this "charge while you walk" thing would be such a blessing. The whole Law of Conservation of Stuff says that you can't create energy, you need to borrow it from somewhere. In this case, every bit of energy you used to charge your electronics would be energy that WASN'T spent moving your body along. I imagine that walking like this would feel difficult and strenuous, sort of like walking in sand. Has anyone actually tried chargers like this?
Am I the only one with a habit of shaking my foot/leg nervously? I could put that to use!
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There are a lot of things your clothes do to absorb energy that you don't notice. You don't want the soles of your shoes to be too springy, for example. If you can put some of the absorbed energy to good use instead of turning it into heat, you'd never notice the difference.
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Currently a whole bunch of energy is spent absorbing the shock of your foot hitting the ground. That energy would be enough to power most devices, and would actually make walking more comfortable.
Though Compaq Australia tried to announce something like this before.
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/01/0158234.shtm l
- passion
Sorry, theres only one thing I pump briskly for 5 minutes and I certainly don't get a 20 minute charge out of it.
In this case, every bit of energy you used to charge your electronics would be energy that WASN'T spent moving your body along. I imagine that walking like this would feel difficult and strenuous, sort of like walking in sand.
Hmm... Most geeks I know sit in front of a computer all day and then go to the gym and excercise (if they get excercise at all) on a bulky treadmill, bike, or resistance weight system.
As long as it was comfortable, I don't think most people would mind a little extra effort in the amount of 'unavoidable' excercise they got walking between offices or tapping their feet to the MP3's.
I, for one, could save serious buckage on my electrical bill if I put a pedal-type charger under my desk while I worked.
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So you see, this is not a light event at all - All from having programmers that are physically fit, too.
Don't buy one!!!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Im no expert, but i dont think being charged at changing rates for a short period of time will do too much good for those 100+ dollar batteries.
Maybe I don't understand what you mean, but it is my understanding that batteries are recharged with pulsed DC power? Sounds to me like a pedal you pump would do the same thing.
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If 5 min. of foot pumping gives you 20 min. of battery life it seems to me that 20 min. of typing on the keyboard should give me 5 min. of extra battery life. I preface a keyboard solution as I won't have to think about the act.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Ouch! Wouldn't that hurt your arm? How well do wristwatches burn, anyway?
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So by extension, if this device gives the equivalent of wall-socket power, you should be able to recharge the battery while you work (like plugging in your laptop and working), thus obviating the "this wastes 1/5 of your time" argument posted several times above. After all, if N minutes of pedaling gives you 4N minutes of charge, then the battery is charging faster than it's draining, right?
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Another approach is to store the power in a wind-up spring, which turns a generator that supplies your power. There's been interest in this approach for years, but it never seems to go anywhere. Probably most people would rather look for a power outlet than turn a crank.
Great, now people will be complaining about the iMac not having a second mouse button or foot pedal.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Maybe people in this country would lose weight!
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Why are we devolving back to pedal-operated machines? What about solar, &c. energy supplies?
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It wouldn't have to be a platform in the platform shoe style. Nike made a shoe that had an extention on the toe only a while ago that was for running in place. Something along those lines would be what I was thinking. BUT, apparently talking about shoes with a pump that recharge electronics is completely offtopic to an article about a device you pump, with your foot, to charge electronics (as the article states, not the /. posting).
It's more usually a sign of stress. It's only (paranoid) schizophrenia when you're tapping your foot because the FBI just passed a message into your brain that if you don't tap your foot they will take you out with their orbital "laser".
graspee
Maybe we could see something similar for computers. If you want to play Track and Field on MAME, you have to get on the treadmill for half an hour and run for real.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
From the website:
:), or buy 2 of them when they'll reach 3rd generation with 15W output.. you'll look like your pedalling at your desk... heh...
Output Power: 0 to 6 Watts / 18 Volts Direct Current (DC18V)
Funny, my laptop draws about 30W of power... I don't know if he talks about powering a PDA or a laptop, but in the case of most modern laptops with almost gigahertz processors with 3d graphics chips and dvd players and 40GB hdd, all of which are power-optimized of course, but still eating a few watts here left and right, it adds up pretty quickly.
Just look at the power rating of your battery, 5000mA/hr 12Volts for example, the battery lasts about 2 hours, if you do quick maths, 5A/hr @ 12 Volts gives you 60Watts/hr, which obvioulsy means you can plug 60Watts power for about 1hr then the battery dies, so effectively, 30W for 2 hours is about right. Now if that device can output 0 to 6 watts, let's take the best case scenario... 6 watts... you'd have to pump 10 hours to keep 2 hours on your laptop.
Unless you're running on a 486 with 10.4 DSTN LCD, I don't see how this is really practical for modern computers... unless you plug the whole office on this to power the server and keep the employees in shape
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A third exercise to add to my book, "Fitness for Computer Geeks."
For the curious, the other two are:
the 21" monitor lift and Luser-Aviodance cubicle racing.
If the energy is there, why generate heat inside your shoes (making them stinky!) via the compression of the rubber, when you could harness that energy?
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It might hurt to shift into gear when I drive, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna allow my computer to take my ability to walk too!
Ahhhhh.. gotcha. Yah, memory affect sucks ass :)
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The article mentions they'd be useful on airplanes. First, have fun explaining that one when going through the security checkpoint. Second, everyone sitting around you on the plane would be just thrilled about it; they'd probably ask the flight attendants if there are any empty seats available near a screaming baby or a jumping 4-year-old.
However, with an electric ink screen instead of a backlit LCD display, and some frugal software requiring less CPU and memory, 5 minutes of pumping could probably get you 2 hours worth of play.
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I would be in much better shape if I was forced to power my computer with muscle-generated electricity.
Think of the health benefits if all of our electonic devices had to be muscle-powered. Couch potatoes would become musclebound, or would get lazy and read more, which is also good.
Internet addicts like myself could get some aerobic activity on a treadmill to power up our 'net surfing.
evanchik.net
I guess you haven't tried Tantric pumping. It charges you up for hours at a time.
Some interesting research into human-powered computer systems has been done at MIT Media Lab. Here are some links:
Before you know it we'll all be wired for sound, uh MPEG-3. Stph
You couldn't generate power for free from vehicles passing along a road - the energy would have to come from somewhere. Any system you come up with would cause increased drag, killing fuel efficiency. Remember that little ol' law of thermodynamics - you can't get something for nothing.
Welcome to Slashdot. You see this sort of thing here all the time:
TiVo: "I don't see the use for this. I never want to record television anyways, and when I do, *I* am intelligent enough to program my VCR." (Missing that TiVo completely changes the way you watch television.)
TV tuner hardware for the computer: "Why would I want to watch TV on my computer? I've got a nice couch with a big TV." (Missing that some of us live in small apartments or dorm rooms and would love to be able to save a bit of space by having the computer display to double duty.)
Macs: "Why would I want to spend all that money on a Macintosh, when I can assemble my own machine out of chewing gum, duct tape, and rubber bands, that runs twice as fast for 1/10th the price?" (Missing that most people don't like to tinker with their computer.)
The article claims 6 Watts of power output.
My previous laptop used about 20W, my current one has a spec stating over 60W on the bottom.
So for a reasonable laptop (25W), it would be more like 20 minutes of pumping would give you 5 minutes of battery life...
Roger.