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Emergency Gadgets Reviewed
Carl Bialik writes "When power lines go down, hand-cranked radios and standalone cellphone chargers could come in handy. Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg reviews emergency gadgets, including a $50 radio that picks up TV audio and gets 35 minutes of power from a 30-second crank. Of course, Mossberg also offers the caveat that these gadgets could be rendered useless 'should the communications infrastructure itself go down.'"
Fire extinguisher. You know, for when the servers catch fire during the slashdotting.
It doesn't have a handcrank but it has a pump and a trigger.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
After thirty seconds of cranking I'm usually asleep for thirty-five minutes!
;)
Sorry, I couldn't resist
As anyone who has lived in the 3rd world can tell you, you can pick up TV on ordinary FM radios it is a matter of tuning it to the right frequency. I have seen these things in Asia for years.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Compact Power Systems also introduced a product called the iRecharge, a rechargeable portable battery that fits snugly around your iPod, iPod mini or iPod shuffle giving the iPod and iPod mini 12 hours of extra play time and the iPod shuffle 40 extra hours.
I mean, in an emergency, I want my iPod recharged!
I don't see many people during a disaster, finding the manual, and trying to find out how to use the power switch - "Hmmmm, now how do use the on switch?"
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Anyone have a hand-crankable EMP?
The $50 radio that picks up TV audio will be useless when the mandatory switch to digital OTA broadcasts occurs. (Unless something interesting will be broadcast on those frequencies after that point.)
If you're charging your iPod you aren't having a fucking emergency.
A radio could be quite useful, but not nearly as useful as a couple of cases of bottled water.
-Peter
A hand-cranked device that could produce 3-5 days of food and water would probably be popular.
[...]these gadgets could be rendered useless 'should the communications infrastructure itself go down.'
If you can no longer get shortwave signals on your radio because the communications infrastructure itself went down, listening to the latest news is the least of your problems. You should be looking for the stone ax and the closest cave to move into.
I have been using my original Freeplay radio for about 8 years now.
Unlike the more recent models, it operates on a spring driven generator for about 45 minutes, or in sunlight. It has no internal batteries at all.
The lack of batteries is a Very Good Thing. Rechargable batteries die, and sometimes they short out. If so, you got no radio - cranked or solar.
The downside is that the radio is the size of a loaf of bread. The upside is that it has a very large speaker and very nice sound.
I toyed with the idea of adding an external power tap, but there are dire warnings about opening it up and releasing the giant spring. Someday perhaps...
Sweet, now I can listen to the Playboy channel when the Apocalypse comes. Nothin better than a little porn to calm those nerves.
Compact Power Systems also introduced a product called the iRecharge, a rechargeable portable battery that fits snugly around your iPod, iPod mini or iPod shuffle giving the iPod and iPod mini 12 hours of extra play time and the iPod shuffle 40 extra hours. It has an on/off switch, so you can charge your iPod as needed, as well as a charge-level indicator that glows to tell you how much juice is left.
My house is destroyed, I have no food and water, but thank god I can still listen to U2 - Vertigo!
I can get 35 minutes of pleasure from a 30 second crank.
While there may be value to hearing whats going on in an emergency, I'd be able to actually call for help should I need it.
A technicians-class FCC license is very easy to get, and small handheld tranceivers are not very expensive.
Thats MUCH more useful in an emergency than a TV. I can hear the weater broadcasts, radio, and emergency bands and much more usefully, I can actually transmit.
What are "standalone cellphone chargers"? Surely it would be just as good to have a spare, fully charged battery rather than something running from batteries charging the cell phone battery.
Unless, of course, the charger ran solar power. Maybe they should just make a solar cell cellular phone for just this situation.
Matthew Grint Midnight Artists
That is why I have a CB with sideband. Even if everything else goes down, I can still talk to others who have CBs and find out some info. I can broadcast and receive from my truck. I always keep one of my fuel tanks on my truck full, and don't usually let the other go below half.
Also, shortwave is always a good bet. And finding a way to listen the Hams is always good, even when you aren't in an emergency.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Copies of Slashdot screenshots printed and laminated.
You know, those weird dads that have the big antennas on their roofs? Every suburb has at least one. Go talk to them and learn how it works. It will be the only reliable way after a real catastrophe hits.
They review two crank radios and then extra battery cells for your cell phone and iPod? How 'bout an actual review of several hand crank radios. At the local Radio Shack they had three different ones, as does Sharper Image and other stores. Just because it says "Wall Street Journal" doesn't mean its useful.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It's a cheap gizmo for the beach or a day outing, not a sturdy radio for emergencies. Of course, an iPod charger isn't exactly an "Emergency Device" either.
What I'm really looking looking for:
There are several radios which use which have some of this feature set, but it seems like there is a market for a radio which has all of these features.
To be truthful, I want a pony.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I staffed the Emergency Preparedness booh at out local Bad Art and Overpriced Wine Street Fair last weekend. People love to show their tech-savvy gadgets - but are you really prepared?
Buckets. Emergency tech is low tech. You are going to care less about whether your Treo works and more about clean water and a warm place to take a dump. (Store your water in jerry cans, obviously, not buckets.)
And don't wait. The entire Houston area was all out of plywood by Monday night, according to a friend of mine there.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
For connecting between multiple 12 volt DC powersources and 12 volt loads - a frequently recommended connector is the Anderson Powerpole.
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I have a few sealed lead acid batteries for emergencies -
portable - 12v 2.5Ah SLA with blade connectors for the battery and a choice between Anderson Powerpole and a connector for my VX5 handheld tri-band transceiver - can get WX, FM, AM, and transmit on 2m 70cm, and 6m.
for base station - a 12V 75Ah SLA with Anderson Powerpole connectors and a connector that can bridge the Anderson powerpoles and the power connection for my base or mobile transceivers - a Yaesu FT-1500M, a FT-857D, and a FT-7800.
Info on the Anderson Powerpole connector is at http://www.scc-ares-races.org/hardware/andersonpp
The Boy Scout Motto - Be Prepared
Peter AI6PG
My comments are mine alone, and do not represent the views of my employer, friends, family or cats.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
When searching for info for my parents who were concerned about losing their reef tank when Rita hits and takes out the power, I ran into a page discussing how you can hook up a car battery to run an old UPS. It got me wondering - couldn't you hook up, in the same manner, a UPS to a car battery that is still hooked up inside a car, and run the car so that it's alternator basically acts like a generator and your UPS as the inverter? Sounds like it might be an easy way to make a portable generator. Aren't alternators usually capable of up to 800 watts or so?
Also, I can kill you with my brain.
Take a look at http://www.radios4you.com/ or http://www.kaitousa.com/ and invest in a radio that also does shortwave if you're looking for an emergency radio. For far less than the $50 you'd spend on the yuppie crud in TFA, you can pick up a solar/crank/charger model and a decent antenna reel, which would let you pick up broadcasts from europe, cuba, the USA, the caribbean (BBC news), or just about anywhere else. All you lose is _local_ broadcasts when the communication infrastructure takes a nose-dive.
First of all, it's a linear generator, so each time the weight inside crosses the center it makes power; second, it uses an LED which is much lower power than old incandescent bulbs; and third, it has a supercapacitor which can power the LED for a few minutes with 30 seconds of shaking. Just be sure to shake it horizontally, as the instructions warn that you might break it if the weight hits an end too hard on a vertical downstroke.
The best part is you never have to worry about the batteries running down or leaking when you don't use it, and you never have to avoid using regularly for fear of running the batteries down. It has a power switch, so you can shake it up and use it as needed, then just shake it again when it runs down.
Slashdot readers would be recommended to get the "red" model, as that is translucent and you can see the guts of it operating, for higher geek value.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Remember your water heater -- lots of clean water there. Turn off the input valve in case the water supply gets contaminated.
Get a good water filter, and possibly something to kill viruses, like iodine.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Would increasing a state's sales tax by .01% provide enough revenue to send each household one of these emergency radios as well as 2 weeks worth of MRE's, water, and a first-aid kit, every year?
What better way to help prevent the large scale suffering that so many endured during Katrina while waiting for rescue efforts.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
It will still receive AM
It will still receive FM
It will still receive NOAA Weather Channels
It will still recharge your cell phone
It will still recharge AA batteries
It will still function as a flashlight
That's an odd definition of 'useless'.
But I'll up the GP one -- don't stop at Technician, get your General Class ticket. Techs can't really communicate without infrastructure (simplex VHF is normally very short range). General Class and above can use HF, and that is usable for long distance communication without any infrastructure at all. I've run voice on 17 meters from Colorado to New Zealand using a backpack radio many times. NVIS on 40 and 75 provides reliable regional communications with nothing more complicated than 100 feet of wire.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
People who can't bother to prepare themselves are only going to eat their emergency food and sell their radios.
Like it or not, there is always going to be a large part of the population that is going to expect the government to bail their ass out of every mess they get themselves into.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I have a general class ham radio license and have a 2-meter radio in my 4WD truck and a smaller 2-meter radio that I keep in my backpack. There are two main types of radios that hams use, they use an HF radio for bouncing a signal off the ionosphere and talking to people hundreds or thousands of miles away. If they only want to talk to hams locally or in a nearby city they usually use a higher frequency radio such a 2-meter radio that does not bounce off the ionosphere.
About 5 years ago I had a girfriend who was a ham with a technican class license who had a 2-meter/440 radio in her car. If there was ever a disaster and got seperated we had agreed on which frequencys we should use to contact each other. It is not unusual to hear husbands and wives who are hams checking in with each other while one is at home and the other is doing errands. In a major disaster they should still be able to stay in touch with each other.
I have several battery packs for the 2-meter radio that I keep in my backpack. One is rechageable and the other battery pack is not rechargeable but contains AA alkaline batteries which can be replaced from the extra stash that I always keep on hand. Here in Arizona there are ham radio repeater stations on my of the mountain tops. Most repeater stations have battery and/or solar power backup. The can be used to communicate with hams who live 100 miles or so away on the other side of the nearby mountains. The ARRL has some info about becoming a ham. Most of the local hams all know each others name and callsign.
I also keep several LED flashlights around such as the Pack-lite which are so efficient that they will run for 200 hours on high and 1,200 hours on low. I also keep a couple of 5-gallon cans of water in the back of my truck.
One thing to note is that a wate filter would NOT help in New Orleans. Those filters are only good at filtering out disease-causing organisms. This is great for drinking from a mountain stream, or even a fresh-water lake.
Firstly, NO suffered from flooding from the SALT WATER lake. In order to drink salt water, you need a desalinator. Those cost around $500 or so.
Secondly, the other main problems is that the water is contaminated with chemicals. The flood covered the underground gas tanks in gas stations, entire vehicles (full of oil and gas), everybody's garages (where they store the insect killers, old lead-acic batteries, etc.). There is no practical way for the average person to be able to drink this stuff. Even if you try distilling the water out, you would likely also distill some chemical contaminants.
In NO, the ONLY solution is bottled water.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I've always been told that it's unreasonable to expect a full aid to reach you in the first 72 hours after a disaster (especially if you're in a huge shelter - getting food to thousands or tens of thousands of people at a time when infrastructure is destroyed or extremely stressed can be problematic to say the least). So, I've assembled what is called a 72 hour kit. It has:
Clothing - 1 or 2 sets of sturdy work clothing (jeans, shirt, etc.), socks, an old pair of boots/shoes, underwear, etc. Also, a good baseball cap for the sun. Mostly old clothes I don't wear any more or stuff I got from Goodwill.
Medical Kit - standard first aid kit and GOLD BOND powder. In a disaster where your clothes get wet (hurricane, flood) you will seriously want some Gold Bond to fight the chaffing or you will be useless to any relief effort in a day or two. Of course, diabetics and those on perscription medicine should keep a stash of supplies here as well.
Toiletry Kit - toothbrush, toothpaste, bar of soap + caddy, wash rag, towel, disinfectant. Mostly just older stuff I don't use any more or the wife has deemed "unpresentable" in our bathroom (well, except the toothbrush and soap... those are of course, new).
Food - enough food to keep me alive and reasonably happy for three days. I prefer stuff that doesn't need to be cooked - trail mix, granola bars, vienna sausages (when I bust out those you know it's getting bad... yuck...), etc. Some people get MREs, but I just get the grocery store stuff and replace it every once in a while.
Bottles of water - a couple of bottles of water that I rotate in and out every few months or so. I personally think two to three gallons is enough for 72 hours, but your mileage may vary.
Other essentials - pocket knife or leatherman, battery powered or crank radio, durable flashlight with lots batteries (Mag lights make decent hammers in a pinch), matches, small tool kit, etc.
All of this fits in an old backpack and sits in my closet so I can grab it and get out if I need to. All together, it probably cost less than $100, although I mostly used items I had laying around and didn't have much of a use for. The cost to rotate the trail mix and granola bars probably comes to $10/year, and I keep bottled water around the house anyways. Very low tech, but functional.
Keep in mind, it's not just hurricanes and earthquakes one should be concerned about - a semi truck that flips near your home while carrying dangerous cargo can create a need for evacuation at a moment's notice. Odds are, it will take a while for a shelter with a kitchen to be set up.
I wonder how many lives could have been saved in the recent disaster if more citizens had prepared themselves with something like this.
I didn't say anything about "usurping authority". What I'm saying is that it's up to us to protect ourselves whn there isn't any authority who is willing to protect us. The cops fled NO. They weren't not willing to do their jobs. It wasn't until the state and the feds got some troups in there that the local cops showed up. In the meantime, if you had no way of protecting yourself, you were screwed. Because, the COPS WERE NOT THERE! So, there was NO authority to usurp. End of story. That's why the richer neighborhoods had to hire their own security and kept guns around.
Which is why emergency workers, as a first response priority, disarmed every refugee who fled, or was forced to leave the Katrina devestated area.
If that is true, it was a very stupid thing to have done. The trouble makers stayed behind. The law abiding citizens needed protection from those dirtbags. And since the authorities were unwilling and/or ineffectual, it was up to the individual.
I'll repeat what I said before, Our government (the authoritues as you put it) is ineffectual during a disaster. Either due to lack of planning or their own cowardice.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Since my question is off topic, I will post AC. I have a dumb question (there are no dumb questions, just dumb people asking questions...). Is it possible to be a Ham if you don't have anywhere to mount the antennae? Like if one lives in an apartment?
Not a dumb question, and not really off topic, either, I think. The mods can differ with me if they want; I've got karma to burn.
Yes. It is limiting, but not a show stopper.
Ham radios themselves come in all shapes and sizes, from some very tiny radios that will fit in a shirt pocket to some monsters that will take up a rack or two.
Ham radio has a number of different bands (usually referred to by approximate wavelength, e.g. 2m, 6m, 10m, etc) that have different behaviours. The longer the wavelength of the band, the larger the ideal antenna would be. It is possible, however, to operate with a less-than-ideal antenna.
For shorter-ranged bands (70cm, ~440MHz, 2m, ~144MHz) it is possible to put the standard ideal antenna (a 1/4 wave is pretty standard) on a hand-held radio. It's a little awkward at 2m, but doable. You can also use what is called a "loaded" antenna, where there is a coil somewhere that makes the antenna resonate despite being too short.
For 2m, I most frequently use a hand-held radio, and it has a little 10" "rubber duck" antenna on it. I can put the radio on my belt and the antenna is short enough that it mostly stays out of trouble.
For 10m, I have a wire antenna in the attic that is about 7.5m long. It could be shorter if it needed to be.
The trouble is that the lower bands are the really-long range bands, and it takes a good antenna to be able to use them well.
You can also see if there are any ham radio clubs in your area that have sufficiently-equipped radio rooms. I am the treasurer of the Schenectady Museum Amateur Radio Association and we have a reasonably well-equipped radio room that is available to any member who can demonstrate competence in using it and has the appropriate licence.
That's probably a longer answer than you expected, but I am very passionate about radio, and it is difficult for me to give short answers.... sorry :)
www.wavefront-av.com
...I would have liked to have seen more variety of products reviewed. If you're interested in emergency goods, this is one of the best sources for emergency items that I've found. They have a local retail store close to where I live. It's fun to just go in and see what they have. Some of it's the standard camping stuff, but a lot of it is pretty clever. I bought a solar battery charger that works very nicely. I also got a emergency radio that's similar to the one in the article, but that has 4 possible power sources and has a built-in flashlight.
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Are you an able-bodied male between ages 17 and 45? You're part of the militia, bucko.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
As for the space blanket. I never expected to find a use for one until one night out in the woods. I had just bought a new tent and was told it was water proofed and I didn't think twice about testing out out first to see if it was. My wife and I come to find out on our first night out on a hike that the seams were not water proofed at all and the seams actually acted like a gutter to funnel water inside our tent. With a few inches of water in the tent it quickly wiped out our clothes, and beding. If it wasn't for the space blanket I am not sure if my wife and I would have been able to stay alive due to the cold temps and nothing else able to hold heat.
I will always carry a space blanket with me whenever I am out in the woods and in my pack for disaster times.