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!"

Comments

Never go flat

[handsomepete]

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

Re:Never go flat

[phutureboy]

and it will never go flat a long as your arms work!

Hehe. Sadly, that's the story of my life.

pre-emptive slashdotting?

[CheechBG]

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) :)

... Why Windup?

[Eddy Johnson]

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.

better workout

[Cyberop5]

there are more fun ways to excersize an arm while on the fone with your girlfriend...



.. like curling weights

Re:This is awesome.

[eugene ts wong]

I've always hoped they could somehow turn health clubs into some sort of mini power station. All that energy being spent on absolutely nothing.

That's an amazing idea. I've never even thought of that. So simple, yet brilliant. I'm not trying to suck up or anything. It's just that the only thing that I've seen as being a hinderance to all of this is that one person turning a generator wouldn't produce enough for him to make it very practical, once you factor in the costs of electricity [from competing sources] and the hardware. However the costs really become reduced once you reuse the hardware, it would really make a difference. I wonder where we could get this ball rolling.

I suppose the energy created is probably nothing compared to that the the club's AC units are putting out, though. The "green" health club would have to have no AC I guess.

True, but certainly the technology is out there to convert back and forth. Who knows? Maybe if enough people begin to use Stair Masters, then there will be a AC generators.

PS. Are exercise bikes (the ones with digital stats) powered by wall AC? It seems like they should at least make these human powered, if they're not already.

I don't know for sure, but searching through google for exercise bikes should turn up a few companies that would give a few specs. It would probably be best to wait to find out later on. I think that it would be wise to see who would be willing to try a new idea.

I'm so interested in this that I'm tempted to present the idea to a few companies to see how well it is received.

One idea, might be to generate enough electricity to turn fans to cool entire buildings. I don't see any problems with this, *if* there are enough people. At Expo 86, they put out a bunch of exercise bikes and people just came up there to ride them to see if they could get all of the lights to light up. As more electricity was generated, the next light would light up, till you reached the top. Perhaps apartment buildings could convert a basement room for this type of thing. People may be willing to cycle more if their own apartments were being cooled off.

Windup linux

[ukryule]

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.

Eh.

[TheSHAD0W]

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.

Re:Eh.

[matthew.thompson]

Trevor Bayliss, the inventor of the original Windup Radio, sprung (pun intended) upon the human power idea whilst listening to or watching a programme about how the developing world was trying to spread information regarding HIV and AIDS by radio but that batteries were prohibitively expensive.

Freeplay was set up to provide these radios to the developing countries at a cost they could afford - partially subsidised by the sale of the devices in the developed world.

It is more likely that instead of this device being designed directly for the likes of you and me it has been designed for the places where mobile telephony is about the only form of telephone available and where electricity is likely to be in short supply or intermittently available.

That we can buy the devices is probably a way to subsidise the sale of them in much the same way as the radios.