Slashdot Mirror
Solar-powered Handbag
karvind writes "BBC reports that a student, Rosanna Kilfedder, from Brunel University has designed solar-powered handbag to make finding keys and other items at the bottom of a bag easier. The handbag, dubbed Sun Trap, uses a solar cell attached to the outside of the bag to trap energy from sunlight. The energy is stored in an internal battery which lights up the lining. The lining is made from an electroluminescent material and is lit up by the bag's zip which acts as a switch. The bag goes dark when the zip is closed or after 15 seconds if it is accidentally left open. A secondary use of the portable battery is as an emergency charger for mobile phones and other wireless devices."
Somehow I just don't see how adding a battery to a purse is going to make things easier to find. You know that women are just going to have one more thing in the purse to move around, and there's going to be too much in there for the light to actually penetrate... I mean seriously, most women I know have a double decker bus worth of stuff in there. It's a wonder they all don't lean when they walk. ;)
I'd like a rucksack like that
Cue Lady Bracknell imitations throughout offices the world over.
Weirdly Lady Bracknell is still alive and has her own blog!
Bus error in your favour. Collect 200kB
Sounds useful. This is an example of why it's good to have women in engineering/CS programs. Would a guy ever have thought of this?
You know what everyone here is wondering....when will this tech translate over to our wallets? :)
It's a man bag....it's European!
Carry a proximity transponder in your pocket, so if your bag is nicked it screams "help me, I'm being blagged!"
Argh.
Rummage in the handbag for the blinged-up cellphone with flashing keypad and Fiddy-Cent ringtones, all up in the club with the glowing bag...yeah this'll fly I imagine. Shiny stuff sells.
Just don't open it on a dark subway because Homeland Security might gun you down first and check for the stolen enriched uranium later.
Aaargh!
On one hand, it's a gadget, so I have to get one.
On the other, it's a handbag, and I'll not be seen dead with one.
What's a geek to do?
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
... and even I think this is a neat idea.
I would love this for my backpack, so I could find the stray pencils or my long lost stapler that I know is lurking near the bottom.
Also I had a vision of the breifcase from pulp fiction.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Mirrordot link: http://mirrordot.org/stories/fc31868e7adf08fb5742b 8ec20ecfda9/index.html
- in the windows of cars parked in the sun, powering anti-theft alarms
- in the fabric of sun shades for the beach, powering a beer cooler
- on the backs of notebooks, adding to their pathetic battery life
- on rucksacks, powering the old ipod
- in the garden, keeping the gnomes warm
But for the handbag, why not simply make a material that is opaque from the outside and transparent from the inside, which lets light in but not out...?
My blog
Additionally, I though light was supposed to be unable to escape from a black hole...
Argh.
Not being someone who carries a handbag - this sounds like one of those - "Damn, why didn't I think of that" ideas. The phone charging setup is also a perfect use of tree hugger friendly and chic. I can foresee this becoming a very useful trend. Where do I get the rights?
Stay tuned for new sig...
Women buy handbags because they look cool (see: Birkin bag phenomenon, Kate Spade, etc). The trick with this is getting it licensed by these players for their future fashions ... Is it even possible? I could see this being sold as a "premium" feature, for a "special solar edition" version of the bags in their line, or something like that ...
Solar-Powered Handbag lamp. Cuz the world was screaming out for one of those. Sh'yea, right.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to finish my drink.
If a true slashdotting hasn't yet occured you can see in the pic that the pattern of the light source is stars or something similar.
It won't sell well amongst American woman unless they replace the stars with Louis Vitton/Gucci/Burberry/Prada symbols. And to be more accurate they need to be fake Louis Vitton/Gucci/Burbery/Prada symbols.
Wouldn't it be better if the handbags had a key compartment, and a cellphone compartment, with nice painted icons on the covers?
Oh no, they had to add expensive solar cells. Look if you want light on the freaking bag, why not just make it transparent on one side, or maybe add a stupid PLASTIC WINDOW instead of the solar cell?
Sheesh! Someone please delete this story as they just did with the "Windows broken" story a few minutes ago.
Ah, so you would like a blackbody handbag?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
I wonder if the EM from the electronics would cause a problem with the magnetic swipes on credit cards and such...
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
This will be great for all those female slashdo...
I mean, it'll be a great gift for some slashdotter's girlfr...
Why is this article here, again?
they're a fasion accessory. Putting solar pannels on it won't make it anymore attractive to women, unless you get some Italian/French/NYC designer to plaster his name all over it.
If the goal was comfort and ease of finding things, women would buy cargo pants.
I want one of these for my jeans, so when I unzip them, the light of god will be cast unto all.
But this is something aimed at women. Why is it on Slashdot, unless someone needs a gift for their mother or sister.
Technoli
According to our very careful examination of Mary Poppins (we have a very diligent daughter), Mary Poppins carries a floor lamp in her carpet bag. This kind of takes all the magic out of that, no?
As I think of it, though, she DOES also carry a plant. This innovation could be used as a grow light for all kinds of, er, lucrative and preferably quickly moveable crops. Why, oh why, didn't something like this come out when I was in a position to use my entrepreneurial side less morally?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If this is for a woman's handbag, I think it would be much more sensible to attach something to her jaw and get mechanical energy from there as she talks. Because the sun eventually burns out, you know.
Sunlight. What's that?
My wife bought a purse 6 months ago that had a LED attached to a watch battery in it. Provided the same functionality, but had to be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to install. It would go off when the purse closed as well.
What we need is a laptop bag with a remote detonator / self-destruct device, so if someone steals my laptop I can frag them.
". She'll see that it's a gadget and realize that geeks really are great because they create things useful for them."
We created the pill. That should be good enough for them.
Exactly the fields that need further advancement. Oil reserves are running out, but keep buying hummers. What you need is to find those keys.
today is going to be clear and sunny yay
I think this is basically taken from the media lab idea:s /byob/byob.html
http://web.media.mit.edu/~nanda/design/electronic
I was going to write a comment about ubiquitous energy systems but you beat me to it. On the other hand, I don't think anyone has noted yet that the backpack might generate juice even in the dark.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
it's probably hard to accessorize with solar panels.
free online diet tracking.
I think that adding a power supply to the purse is an excellent sales move - just imagine the new "geek-purse" - it's got blue lights around the edges, some hydraulic jacks to make it rock, maybe an X-Box installed, a GPS so you don't have to ask directions...
:)
Go ahead - pimp your purse!
For all of you tech geeks who also own an iPod(TM). Burton snowboards is coming out with a solar backpack in December that includes a solar cell that is capable of charging an iPod(TM). This can be used on an airplane as well, and the solar cell fits perfectly in an airplane window. It's a perfect bag for backpacking or camping when you'll be away from power for a long time, but you still want to listen to your tunes. Read more here: http://snowboards-for-sale.com/burton_snowboard_pa cks/solar_amp_pack/?sd
Functional, fashionable, and tres geeky!!!
Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
And geeks should have a solar setup. After all, eventually their right hand gets tired.
We're geeks, we never go outside. How could this thing work?
Bah, now if it got its energy from, I don't know, the motion of the bag while walking...
Wait a minute, that wouldn't work either. Damn.
What you need are pants like that.
Solar cells on the outside, and when she unzips your pants they light up inside to make life easier!
Sweet! Now I can have my very own MacGuffin!
Target offers, now, a lady's handbag with a battery powered bright white LED that lights up when the magnetic clasp is opened. Maybe it is not as "sexy" as the bag in the article but it is simpler, cheaper, more practicle and more environmentally friendly (no solar cells and special linings). It is also more practicle in the sense that it will last just long enough until the owner drops it in favor of the latest fashion.
It takes a STRONG magnetic field (not to mention an oscillating one) to damage a magnetic strip on a credit card. Think about this: What device that emits significant EM radiation will you find in most women's purses?
Answer: A cell phone. And yet somehow credit cards manage to survive.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
This one doesn't have a light, but it's a lot cooler looking (and has a lot more solar cells.) Funny that the two appear to have been developed at about the same time.
Say what you want, but thats actually pretty damn cool. I just wonder if it'll ever be part of a handbag, as solar panels don't exactly fit in with most schemes on Coach bags...
Shit, why do I know that? Damn sister.
"Additionally, I though light was supposed to be unable to escape from a black hole..."
Heaven help you if you drop a flashlight down your pants?
First, they went on camping gear. Then they went on radios. Now they're in purses.
This isn't so valuable so much for the money some people will save, or even the added convenience women will have. It's just that the more solar power and solar energy is in the mainstream, the better off more widespread adoption will be.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Everyone knows light can't escape from a black hole.
I always said that being a male that I would NEVER buy/carry a purse.
But with the quantum leap of technology that this bitch has made..
Well, the pressure to get one is becoming unbearable.
Maybe I can sue to stop this beast from spreading any further.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
What happened? Are the refridgerator light midgets breeding too much and the kids grew up and needed jobs?
Her idea is good and well-intentioned, but a more couture-embracing design would be required to invoke a broader appeal. Put the idea in a beautiful handbag, and she may have something that sells well. But I'm beginning to think -- and see -- that many women are becoming very selective about which handbag they carry. The design of this bag doesn't look like one that could carry her idea well. Good thinking, though.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
I work at Brunel, and designs from the students in our Design Department hit the BBC webpages every year around this time. And each year, we get a flood of email to our 'webmaster' email address, cursing the design for not curing cancer or ending poverty.
You have to realise, these designs are developed as an exercise in the skills taught by the course. Some of them are interesting, but they're not finished products. You might as well criticise engineering students for wasting their time building balsa bridges and devices to allow an egg to be dropped off a roof without breaking.
Yeesh!
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
What about my European Carry-all?
Are they planning a model for a European Carry-all?
Women without children buy handbags because they look cool. Women with children buy handbags because the equipment necessary to maintain a child takes a huge amount of space and they don't want a backpack. Fashion tends to be secondary... the bags carried by mothers are generally hideous sacks.
This would have enormous appeal to the soccer mom crowd. A mother has to find one particular tiny item out of several dozen quickly while two small creatures are screaming and tugging on her arms.
We all know you ment man purse.
Let's get a woman's opinion of this...
[cricket, cricket]
One reason this bag won't sell: Tampons!
I have an enchanted jock-strap (Obligatory Simpsons quote)
However, my point was that having the little light (from lightbulbs, i.e. above your door) entering the bag from the sides, might help. Also, something that perhaps I didn't stress was that handbags are badly designed from the beginning. (A bag, period!)
They haven't evolved in the ages, unlike briefcases which have separate compartments for pens, paper, cellphones, PDAs, glasses, etc. etc. No, instead of function-specific compartments, bags have MORE BAGS inside! (Whee)
Think about it. You open the bag, and you touch-and-search to find whatever you're looking for. It's not there? OK then, open the zipper and search in the sub-bags in the same way.
It would be much easier by opening the velcro-compartment for your cellphone or keys. Simple data compression principle: If it's searched for more often, have less time needed to look for it.
But well, considering my fascination for nanotech and new technologies, i guess this (the tiny lights inside the bag) is a needed step towards "intelligent clothing" after all.
...it would make more sense to just make the bag out of transparent plastic?
I guess when it rains it'll have a built-in cattle prod that can shock purse snatchers, but that's hardly what I'd call a safety feature.
As for usefulness, for some unknown reason I have my doubts about "solar-powered handbag".
I can find my keys in my purse during the day - you open the purse and sunshine does the rest. It' coming home at night, in the dark that's the problem. Having a see through purse won't help when I can see anything already!
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
It's kind of scary to know that purses well known for their quality of absorbing (and keeping) all kind of stuff, such as candy wrappers, loose change, lipsticks of all kinds etc.etc. have now achieved the ultimate power and can trap the Sun itself!
when inattentive, overly permissive, or just adventurous DMs allowed Continual Light to be cast on a Bag of Holding, and they held about as much as most women in my family manage to hold in theirs. I think my mother-in-law has an entire convenience store in hers.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I have been debating buying EL wire for a while now to do something cool with it. It's like having the ability to make your own neon signs.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Back when people carried big clunky calculators around, belt packs were fairly common on engineers, and nobody gave them any crap about it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I just interviewed at a small tech company - to everyone's surprise their latest shipment of desktop PCs came preconfigured with clear cases and blue / UV neons inside.
What's next - PCs preloaded with pr0n?
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?"
...would be so much more useful.
Who thinks that this is silly? Why go through the trouble of making a lit-up handbag? It would make more sense to just spend the extra three seconds searching.
Does nobody remember the PowerBook 1400? The sheer popularity of that notebook should have sparked the iMac, iBook, etc. much, much sooner. One of the many personalized things you could get to fit in the back was in fact a solar charger! Check out the picture of the Powercover.
...I mean, Slashdot's female-community is going to be baying for his blood after reading that remark.
Oh, wait.
[W]hy not simply make a material that is opaque from the outside and transparent from the inside, which lets light in but not out.
I'm going to assume by "light" you mean "electromagnetic radiation." Such a material would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics and allow you to build a perpetual motion machine, as follows:
(1) Construct two boxes of the material, and put them side by side. In the first box, let the transparent "side" of the material face outward, and in the second, let the opaque "side" face outward.
(2) Put a bulb of water in the first box, and connect it by steam tubes to a condenser in the second. Install a turbine and generator in the steam tubes.
(3) Connect a light bulb to the output of the generator.
(4) Now, give the thing a little push, say by shining a bit of sunlight on it. You can take it out of the sun after it gets going.
(5) Light goes into the first box but can't escape. So that box gets hotter without limit when light falls on it. Eventually the water boils, generating steam, which proceeds to turn the generator, generating electricity, and then to the condenser box. Light escapes the condenser box but can't get in, so it cools without limit whatever enters it. So the steam condenses back to water, and is returned to the boiling box to repeat the cycle. Meanwhile, the electricity powers the lightbulb, which serves to heat up the boiling box. Once you get the machine going, it goes on forever.
(6) So far, we've just got a widget that buzzes forever. But we can easily do useful work with it by replacing the light bulb with some other load, so long as we take the waste heat from the load (emitted as infrared light) and make sure to shine it on the boiling box. The end result is a source of free energy. On the grounds of TANSTAAFL, a.k.a. the Second Law, this device is forbidden in our Universe. If you try and build one in your garage, the Thermodynamics Police pop out of n-space, kill you, confiscate your machine, and alter records and memories such that you appear never to have been born at all.
This sounds completely pointless. Yeah, looks good on the picture when there's only one thing in the bag, but I can't see if being any use when you have a bag full of cables, USB drives, bits of paper and all the other stuff that women carry around!
Say a lady had a handbag with a hidden "deadman" switch on it someplace. As she is walking she holds the bag there, keeps the button depressed, something along those lines anyway, could even be a RFID proximity tag to a matching tag on her clothes, say a brooch pin or something non obvious. If a purse snatcher snags the bag, the button is released and phones home to some security outfit with a running account of GPS coordinates, or once the two RFID tags lose contact with each other because of distance it automatically phones out with the details. It could be the cellphone itself that does the activation, which would help if the snatcher just cobbed the contents and dumped the bag down the block someplace. Heck, something like that would be good for wallets.
some of us carried nice heavy slide rules in leather sheaths. There *weren't* any calculators unless you mean one of the few (whatever, not a large number) mainframes that existed at the time.
...there are no females on Slashdot.
None.
Mmm hmmm hmmm mmm hmmm I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!1one!
"Yep, here it comes... The ever-present "feature creep"."
Felix, the cat's bag could do a lot with a very simple "reach into me" interface.
Back in mid-2000 I helpd a friend of mine add a light to her purse. The lights activated via a small switch mounted on the strap. The lights themselves consisted of two led arrays, mounted on either side of the purse, about a quarter inch below the zipper (stitched into the lining, only the ligths were visible -- poking through "button holes" also stitched into the lining). The whole business was powered by a 9v battery located in a smaller inside pocket.
She seemed happy with it -- it did what she needed it to do, and only when she asked. The solution presented in the article doesn't seem all that great.
Required reading for internet skeptics
When wearing this bag, adds darkvision and the quickdraw feat when taking items from the bag.
you could just use a flashlight, almost certainly saving an assload of money.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
I saw it on the RSS feed, but the story was gone when I clicked on it. Something about the head of Windows development sending a pessimistic memo to Bill. Pretty average /. story, in other words.
to go with the solar bag.
Slashdotters can't be choosers.
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
You know, a woman's handbag is like her... oh never mind.
Now when your looking in your purse the thugs will find you that much easier. The only thing I could think of to counter this would be to some translucent bricks in the bag so that it would magnify the light effect so that you can blind the thug and beat him with a now weighted bag.
"I love it when men - especially Geeks - are faced with such dilemmas. One can literally see the conflict going on of :p heh heh heh."
a) I want toy
b) I don't wanna be girly
You're kidding, right? We're talking the same people (and I'm one of them) who'd come in a "Work Sucks" t-shirt to a meeting with a client, or bring some childrens' toys to work and actually play with them, or various other flavours along the same line. Seems to me like at least half the true nerds would just get the cool toy and even bring it to work to show it to everyone, and either
A) not care (or not even realize: a lot of us are Aspergers' syndrome cases) what anyone thinks about it. Or
B) A + actually try to attract attention to it, as a means to make a point how stupid is to judge someone by their choice of clothes and bags. (We geeks are good at getting into such crusades.) Or
C) A or B + thrive on the attention they get. (Just being a smart person doesn't mean one can't also be an attention whore.)
Now, mind you, I like my toys to be a bit more nerdy than just lighting up when opened. Build a solar-powered MP3 (or better yet, Ogg Vorbis) player into that thing, give it an USB connection and at least 1 GB Flash, and I'd get one even if it were pink and heart-shaped.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
While Ms Kilfidder's ingenuity is truly remarkable, I think she has missed the boat as to the true benefit of her invention and has thereby misjudged her potential market. She, understandably so, believes that women are going to be the primary market for the Sun Trap Handbag... but I think that once men hear about this product... they will actually buy more of them by many times over! The inside of a woman's hand bag has ever since it's inception by a woman (I suppose), been a frightening mystery. All of a man's childhood fears and most of his adult fears are instantly replayed as in "your life flashing before your eyes" when he hears those dreaded words... "Honey, will you get (insert your own words here) out of my handbag?" Now for all but the numbest of men... there is at least a 30 second period of time during which a rush of jumbled images of the bogeyman, things lurking under the bed, a porcupine waiting in the hollow tree you just stuck your hand into, the cashier turning on the flashing red light just above your head and asking into the public address system for a price check on the super maxi pads with wings... add your own fears here, if you are a man you know what I speak of, the fight or flight response we all experience when faced suddenly with the unknown. Unfortunately, the fight or flight response leaves us with only two options, neither of which are particularly appropriate. This knee jerk response fades into the realization that we actually will have to DO something. Do I stick my hand into the handbag and see if I get lucky... nah. Do I just dump out the contents of the handbag and risk destroying her finely tuned storage system... nah. I should buy her one of those Sun Trap Handbags and then I could just look inside and... wait a minute... Do I really want to know what's in there? NAH! I'll just cut the tree down and bring her the whole thing! http://propellerhat.com/