Solar Powered Jacket Charges Your Gadgets

blorg writes "Wired News has a story about a new jacket from SCOTTeVEST that uses flexible solar panels on the shoulders to recharge gadgets in the pockets. The idea is that you can now keep all of your gadgets charged, even if you are spending an extended period of time away from a power source. The solar charging is an addition to an existing jacket with features including 42 hidden pockets that can be wired together through the jacket lining."

Comments

Clever

[Krapangor]

the solar cells weight the same as batteries and their production uses up more energy than they provide in their entire lifetime.

Re:Clever

[thomasa]

"production uses up more energy than they provide in their entire lifetime"

This is false. The energy used in production
is balanced by the energy produced after a couple
of years of solar energy production. Solar cells
can have a life time of over 20 years.

This is ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

But what I really want is a solar-charged version of North Face's MET5 Jacket for an extended heating period.

Could a pedometer type of charger be made?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or would there not be enough movement and/or efficient parts to generate a decent amount of power?

FineTex exterior

[Sara Chan]

The jacket has a FineTex exterior. Does anyone know how this compares with Goretex? (The web sitesays "just like Gore-Tex, but not as costly".)

Headphones in the hood?

[richlb]

Why didn't they stick a hood on that thing and integrate headphones into it? That would be cool.

lady with "warmer" jacket already stopped

[Speare]

There are a number of wired jackets which would cause security problems. A lady with a self-warming leather jacket was stopped recently, and there are self-defense electrified jackets which would definitely be seen as a weapon.

On the other hand...

[mangu]

...who wears a jacket on a sunny day?

Re:Solar good, stupid bad.

[NixLuver]

That's because they don't want you sucking up their precious power.

I'd wager that there are enough people with cell phones, PDAs, laptops, and portable music devices that to provide any significant number of outlets would generate a hefty boost in the electric bill... Not to mention that they couldn't put in 'a few'.

What woud make this perfect

[Cy Guy]

Would be for the jacket to also accept firewire, USB 2.0 and bluetooth connections from the gadgets then act as a WiFi router back to your computer and/or the Internet. Now that would be sweet.

Walk by an open Access Point and suddenly you get updated for your email, the latest RSS feed from SlashDot, the MP3 tracks from that CD your friend just baought and ripped, etc.

Re:this guy has been trolling this vest for years

[Scott Jordan]

You are completely wrong on almost all your "facts" and assertions. Just to name a few: We have no VC funding. The product is priced right. Try to find any similar products with less features for anything less. Fisherman vests cost about $100 and look ugly. Of course I would like to hit a home run. Who wouldn't? I suppose when you step up to bat you are satisfied striking out??? Good luck to you in all your endeavors. Perhaps the media knows something that you don't. Scott Jordan, CES SCOTTeVEST LLC

Re:Bad karma vibes comeing from this guy

[glesga_kiss]

He's got a family-owned nitch business, and he is a tech-nut. I don't see *anything* wrong with his only postings on Slashdot being about his products.

I agree. How many folk have things in their sigs linking to products or OSS project they have worked on? Quite a lot. Or, how many "sorry for OUR server melting" posts are there...?

Provided is isn't a "First post, buy the jacket" type of person with nothing to contribute other than noise, then it's not a bad thing. Everyone wants to plug their shit...

Better solar cloth on the horizon(?)

[cryptochrome]

Just when Spheral Solar is finally working out the manufacturing angle. Their tech has the advantages of crystal cells but is flexible.

True - but only for a given value of true

[dbIII]

the solar cells weight the same as batteries

This is absolutely correct, 1kg of solar cells weighs the same as 1kg of batteries.

their production uses up more energy than they provide in their entire lifetime

On the surface this may seem nonsensical - but if you consider a prototype solar cell, and all the work that has gone into producing that, the fuel costs associated with producing the wheat in the sandwitches the researchers had for lunch, making the cars they drive, and the the price of their childrens education - then it certainly takes a lot of energy to do all that. Once things go into production you have ecomonies of scale, which makes it entirely possible to have a cheap pocket calculator that runs on solar cells, instead of having to plug it into a power socket. The trick of adding in extra irrelevant costs, both economic and otherwise, is widespread and is described well in Bruce Sterlings book "The Hacker Crackdown" which can be read online. In that book it describes how the material written in a manual was listed in court documents as being worth the entire cost of the computer system it was typed up on, and the wages of several employees who also had other things to do, and not the few dollars it cost to order it through the mail. This solar energy argument has similar substance, but is correct if you go to silly extremes; after all, we wouldn't have solar cells without the industrial revolution, and that generated a lot of pollution.