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Freecharge Windup Mobile Phone Power Source
Harry Morgan writes: "The UK's Guardian newspaper has an interesting article in it's
Online Supplement
concerning Freeplay's handheld, windup mobile phone power supply
the Freecharge. Although
larger and heavier than several spare batteries, it has two distinct advantages over the former, you don't
have to turn the phone off to connect it and it will never go flat a long as your arms work!"
Back in the early days of telephones, one had to turn a handcrank to get an operator... Then they were replaced with rotary dials... still crankin' but quicker than waiting for personal service. Then touch tone came along.. no more cranking! And now we have this... Ahhh, we've come so far... dan(crank calling)
Very Viridian. It certainly seems like a lifesaver.
Now, if only I could jack it up to my PDA and give it that last few seconds of oomph it needs to grab a critical number...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
and it will never go flat a long as your arms work!
a heavy-hearted sigh is heard from the collective armless community of the world
nice, the host yanked the DNS link before even 5 comments were posted :)
:)
now that's what I call saving bandwidth (and also whoring out the hosting provider's info too)
Rather than constantly cranking your phone to get power (rather like that really annoying flashlight), why not make a round phone and rather than crank it, have an internal crack attached to a string - the Yo-Yo Phone!
Play with it for a while, make a few calls, and play again to recharge.
And if you can do a sleeper for more than five minutes, you get a discount on your monthly phone bill. "Walking the dog" with it will gain you bonus minutes as well.
Anonymous Coward: (n.) 1. nerd at school or library. 2. karmawhore in training. 3. embarrased prep.
You know, renewable resources aside, if you imagine the amount of energy humans consume daily from physical work, and the amount of work it _should_ take (given 100% efficiency) to power these small devices, human effort is truely the ultimate renewable resource. I can't even imagine the efficiency, cost and energy savings of using human effort to offload the power requirements for small devices like this. Think of the energy, no only to produce, but to store, ship, sell, package, etc, batteries for small devices. Gone, hopefully, if this type of technology gains a foot hold (or arm hold, pardon the pun.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
You Euros and your cell-phone envy...
While clicking "freeplay" yields a bad link, This Link should bring you to a good review of this service...
I have always looked at windup-power sources as having a very limited market.
:
;), I can't really see a market for this.
The thing is, batteries are just fine for most people. The only situations where batteries are not good enough would be
a) when its in storage for such a long time, the battery might die (and this really almost doesn't apply to most modern batteries)
b) when you need so many batterys worth of charge, and its just not feasible to buy more (like hiking, being on a boat, etc)
c) when you absolutely need reliability, and if you use a battery, it could die, and then you would be fscked for some reason or another (again, like camping...)
So it seems to me the only people who would want this sort of thing are people using it in very remote areas, or disaster survivalists.
And here's the problem with those markets. Cell phones are inherently based on having a lot of neaarby infrastructure. You need an operating phone network, an operating nearby tower, and so on and so forth. And when you are in a remote are, those things often just aren't going to be available. The same applies to a nuclear holocaust sort of situation.
See, the success of the freeplay radios and flashlights has been basically because, though they are bulkier and less convinient, they allow for a great deal of freedom. You don't need to have batteries, you don't need infrastructure around you, etc.
And cell phones definately are not "free" in any sense of the word. chances are, anywhere where a cell phone would work, you can find a place to rechange your batteries. So this is an almost paradoxical product. I have a fair degree of difficulty in thinking up any situation where this would be useful. and finally, unlike the flashlight (which, by the way, I own), you would not be able to stop whatever you are doing, recharge, and start again, due to the nature of cell phone calls.
So, aside from the "coolness" factor (which is pretty nifty
Haha - fear my l33t karma-whoring skillz.
Since the site's down, here is the Google cached copy.
Unfortunately, history is a good example of why problems like this are usually cancerous in nature, and require a violent, unjustifiable (and yet completely justifiable, at a macroscopic level) response.
I 100% agree with you, but please make reference to a culture/society in the past that has successfully curbed its own problems when the downside of those problems were not felt by them? I dont think its happened much.
Nevermind that our entire economic system is geared towards consumption. Its hard to turn an entire nation or three into martyrs.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Trevor Baylis, idea man behind the Freeplay radio, had previously been working on the Electric shoe charger. But that domain and light searching reveal no sign of its fruition. This story mentions the shoe model charging a mobile device like a phone.
Here is the BBC story on the wind up model from July 2001.
Here is the Wired story from January of this year.
People with normal cell phones in cars are bad enough but now they have to concentrate on winding the phone up too?
Yet another reason not to go outside.
This won't catch on for a lot of people, but if we want to do it in an economical way, we should let it get out onto the market first to be sold to those who could use it now. I could use it. I ride transit, so sitting there cranking a phone won't be a problem for me. It's only a matter of how much the phone costs compared to other batteries.
Hopefully, this begins to catch on, and once it does, it can be sold in the form of a stress reliever or whatever the marketers can come up with.
But first, try to sell it to the campers who like to take their ham radios out with them.
Another helpful thing would be to get the battery manufactorers to standardize on their batteries, so that one adapter can be used for many phones. Then the adaptors can be sold seperately. Only one adapter is really needed per house hold.
testing out my trending skills
I have a watch that uses the kinetic energy from arm movement to keep itself ticking along (ie you shake it every now and then). Why can't they put something like that in a phone? Most poeple carry their phone with them all day, so they could be using it to charge the battery as they walk.
This is NOT to say that there are not nasty transnational corporations doing bad things, but for the most part in most places where large numbers of people are facing starvation today it is due to their despotic rulers.
Examples:
Zimbabwe, formerly a breadbasket country, is facing famine in large part do to Mugabe's disastrous land use policies.
North Korea, suffering famine recently ( although I haven't checked the status lately ) due largely to the mismanagement of their communist government.
If you really want to know who is oppressing the people of the third world, look not to the developed world and it's consuption, but rather to the pointless excesses of the rulers of the third world.
there are more fun ways to excersize an arm while on the fone with your girlfriend...
.. like curling weights
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
"...it will never go flat a long as your arms work!"
Does this mean that porn could be considered a perpetual motion device?
"Derp de derp."
The URL doesn't work... you can see it here
This reminded me of the the windup Linux Webserver.
So now, all you need to do is connect the phone up to the webserver to provide the network connection, and you have a fully mobile, fully human powered solution.
Just became that much more difficult...
(must extend text not to be penalized for one liner)
(mod me down if its not funny...)
I'm a virgin.. Who will give me my first karma point?
Tournament Management Online &
"it's" means it is
and
"its" is the possessive.
Slashdot's editors make this mistake often. That may have been fine in 1999 where dumb kids had huge valuations, but it doesn't fly in this decade.
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
The tread mill is probably the worse case scenario, however.I don't shower till before bed time, so I wouldn't need to shower more than once. As it is, I turn off the water when I put on soap or lather my head, so I hardly think that anyone should be lecturing me on water consumption. However, you have a valid point. My ideas are only for people who work out already. I wouldn't go out of by way to get people to exercise more just for the sake of "generating electricity".Drinking water can only be a good thing, even if it is only perspired out. It's important to cleanse our systems.Why would anybody need to do that? If it saves money, energy and time, *and* people *will* use the idea [without being forced], then what is the problem? I'm only suggesting an idea, not finding a way to force anybody to do anything.
testing out my trending skills
At first, I thought this would be a great idea for an emergency cell phone. Leave it in your car, and if you break down or get in an accident, just a little winding and you can call for help. No worries about batteries dying.
Then I realized that if you got in an accident, you might not be ABLE to wind the thing. A phone meant for real emergencies would need to be operable without having to wind it up first.
I'd recommend using one of those battery packs that takes AA cells, then filling it with Eveready's Energizer Lithium AAs. Not only would they give a long talk time, they also have an incredible shelf life. Ideal for emergency use.
Simply cutting back and not buying every single gadget produced would help. There are people who are devoted to living "more simply" who advocate giving up some 'luxuries', slowing the influx of 'junk' into your life and making other adjustments. See Live simple for more information.
Anarchists never rule
I suppose that this guy, who slept on his arms last night, will have a bit of a problem.
Ah, yes... Kids in the Hall... I miss you.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
I'd love to see that happening to use with my PDA. Squeezing the toy would roduces electricity by recycling the wind going thru the whistle using a tiny dynamo. A recharging battery would be located in the toy. The gesture would feel more natural I think. Squeak it! ;-)
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
I've been reading your kind of environmental elitism preaching about how the rest of us need to sacrifice for years.
Presumably you think "your message" is important enough to exempt you from the reduction of consumption the rest of us "need".
You might find it interesting to track down the origin of your message... who funded the studies that are used as the basis of your advice. Who funded the "deep ecology" agenda?
You will be surprised and not plesantly.
Tech Public Policy stuff
It's <URL:http://www.freeplay.net/newsite/product/fr eecharge.html>, actually.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Unless someone has forgotten their car charger (Unlikely - My car charger is often the one thing I remember, as it's always in my car), there is no need for the FreeCharge.
The FreeCharge is good for those who will be going where there is no power - Like on camping trips. Businesspeople don't need it - They can bring their "brick" wall charger and plug it in at the hotel.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
is the philosophy of a cancer cell
I'd pay $10 more per month for a cell system that worked that way.
Why? If the telecom can install a tower in east bumf*%k with having to run power to it, they could probably cover the costs of adding the solar cell and possibly a wind turbine.. This should cost you less, not more..
I think if you extract some rotational energy from a yo-yo to charge a battery, it'll be a lousy yo-yo... just sort of drop and then not have enough momentum to come back up again.