Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Even though they’re still in the prototype stage and not terribly efficient at this point, I still think these solar powered rechargeable batteries are a brilliant idea. Designed by Knut Karlsen, the SunCats are basically a set of old NiMH rechargeable batteries wrapped in a flexible Photo Voltaic cell created by the Institute for Energy Technology. When the batteries are drained, you simply leave them sitting in a windowsill or anywhere with ample sunlight and they’ll recharge themselves.

The PV cells were simply glued onto the batteries and wired up using a conductive silver pen and some flat wires scavenged from a broken canon lens. At the moment they only provide a weak trickle charge to the batteries, but Knut envisions a second version with built-in capacitors and electronics to make the charging process more efficient.

[ Notes from Knut - The SunCat Batteries - DIY prototypes ] VIA [ Inhabitat ]

By Evan Ackerman

Fuji EnviroMAX batteries are just like any other disposable batteries, except that they are actually disposable. Like, you can throw them out in the trash. Not that you should necessarily DO that, but the point is that (unlike other batteries) they don’t have any toxic elements in them. So you can feel less guilty or something. You’ll be able to buy EnviroMAX batteries in AA, AAA, C, D, etc. at hardware stores and other major retailers (like Target and CVS) by the end of March, and here’s the important bit: they’ll cost the same as traditional non-reusable batteries that are made from pure unfiltered evil. Oh, and independent testing apparently shows that the environmentally friendly ones last about 15% longer. So why not buy them, right?

Incidentally, the Fuji rep and I had a bit of an argument about whether it’s better to buy these and toss them in the trash or buy rechargeables (which have all kinds of nasty heavy metals in them) and use far, far less of them… And let’s just say we didn’t exactly reach a consensus. Oh well.

[ GreenFuji ]

By Evan Ackerman

Ultracapacitors, or supercapacitors, are the new batteries. They recharge very, very, very quickly, the charge lasts for a long time, and you can keep on cycling them for tens of thousands of charge cycles. Kinda puts conventional rechargeable batteries to shame. Except that conventional rechargeable batteries are cheap and everywhere, but let’s just ignore that for the moment and talk about the 5.11 Light For Life Tactical Series UC3.400 flashlight, which has an ultracapacitor built right in. A 90 second charge will power this flashlight at 90 lumens for a 90 minutes, which equals a wicked impressive 23.5 hours out of 24 of on-time. You can recharge it 50,000 times (that’s a charge a day until the year 2143) with virtually no battery degradation or memory effects, but the LEDs themselves are only good for about 5 years, or until 2014. How disappointing. I really could have used 135 solid years of illumination.

The UC3.400 costs $170 (on pre-order for delivery in 2009), which is not so bad if you spread it out over a century or so (you’ll actually save about 40% over similar flashlights). It’s one of the very few ultracapacitor devices we’ve seen, and they’re certainly not cheap. But I’d totally pay a premium to endow my cell phone (or my laptop, for that matter) with a battery that recharged in 90 seconds and had no memory effect, wouldn’t you?

[ 5.11 Tactical ] VIA [ FlashlightNews.org, the world's only flashlight industry news website ]

By Evan Ackerman

I don’t have a USB volcano, but if I did, I bet I’d want to use it all the time, everywhere. I can do that with this USB power bar, which has a rechargeable 2200 mAh lithium battery inside plus a 5 volt USB power port to charge all your USB stuff. It also has a power level indicator, and a flashlight thrown in for good measure. A variety of included adapters let you charge iPods and common cell phones, and you should be able to charge things at least once or twice from dead. Once you’ve run the power bar’s battery out, you can recharge it from a USB port on your computer, or from another power bar. It’s $32 from USB Geek, which isn’t that much to pay to have a volcano available anytime, anywhere. There’s no telling when it might come in handy…

[ USB Geek ] VIA [ Geekalerts ]

By Evan Ackerman

Although I’m in no way complaining about my MSI Wind’s 6 cell battery and the legitimate 5-6 hours of productive (or whatever) on-time it provides, it’s not always enough. I guess there’s a market for this all day (8+ hour) computing thing, because Lion Battery/Mugen Power is about six weeks away from releasing a 9-cell battery for the Wind. There’s nothing sexy about it (they just stuck 3 extra battery cells on there, from what I can tell) but it packs a whopping 7800 mAh, which should be good for 8+ hours with no trouble at all. Pricing is TBA, but it may actually retail for less than a replacement 6-cell (which costs like $140), since the 6-cell has to go through an MSI distributor while Lion Battery is selling the 9-cell straight to you.

Personally, I think the 6-cell is an excellent compromise between portability, longevity, and (of course) sexiness, but if you’re one of those suckers who feels the need to work an 8 hour day, the 9-cell battery might be yet another reason to get yourself a Wind.

[ Lion Battery ] VIA [ MSIWind.net Forums ]

By Evan Ackerman

Carbon nanotubes are pretty amazing things. They’re the strongest and stiffest material on Earth: a 1 millimeter diameter thread of them can support a weight of about 7 tons. The problem is that they’re expensive (and tricky) to produce, especially in any quantity that isn’t just broken bits of tubes. The journal Science is reporting that researchers at the NanoTech Institute of the University of Texas at Dallas have come up with a way of cheaply and quickly manufacturing large sheets (we’re talking meters) of long nanotube strands that are completely transparent and stronger than steel. The sheets are “spun” out of a self-assembled nanotube forest, and can be created with fairly simple machinery at a rate of up to 10 meters per minute. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why the sheets couldn’t be made as long or wide as you wanted. The last picture in the series above shows a nanotube sheet supporting droplets of water and juice that weigh about 50,000 times more than the sheet itself… Pretty cool. No information on cost, though. Read the paper here (PDF).

Laptop batteries that recharge to 90% in 10 minutes, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’re concerned about the iPhone’s overall size and the varied reports about its battery life, I don’t think the iPhoneck Backup Battery solution is going to entice you to make the upgrade. While it provides the iPhone with an external 1300-1400 mAh lithium-polymer battery that can recharge it in about an hour and a half, it also adds about 2 or 3 inches to the length of the phone when attached. Sure it’s designed to match the contours of the new iPhone 3G (though the first gen iPhone is pictured) but you probably don’t want to carry this thing in your pocket while you’re topping up the battery. The iPhoneck Backup Battery ’should’ be released on August 1 according to the iPhoneck website, and will sell for $42.99.

[ iPhoneck Backup Battery ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By Jonathan Kimak

So you want a portable charger for your phone or mp3 player but the solar powered iPod is years away from reality. Instead you could try the Dance Charge.

A company called GotWind worked with music company Orange to create the Dance Charge. Weighing 180 grams the charger wraps around your arm and uses the kinetic energy from your body’s movement to power the battery. You can then plug in your phone or other electronic device to the charger to power it up.

The Dance Charger isn’t available for sale yet, but a prototype is being used at the Glastonbury Festival and will hopefully survive the mosh pit.

When it does come out and you use this and can only charge your phone up to 1 bar of power after a day’s worth of movement, it’s probably a sign that you need to get out of the office more often.

VIA [ Crave.Cnet ]

By Evan Ackerman

Rechargeable batteries are the bee’s knees. The only downside to them is that you have to, like, charge them and that requires, like, an outlet. The Powerfilm solar battery charger is designed to charge 2 or 4 AA batteries in 4 or 8 hours. The entire thing weighs less than carrying 4 replacement batteries, and with judicious use, I bet you could keep your camera + GPS + MP3 player all humming along indefinitely while you hike the Himalayas. It’s functional, rugged, and compact, and somewhat unsurprisingly, seems to have been designed for the military. Considering that, the price probably won’t surprise you either… The Powerfilm solar battery charger will cost you about $130.

[ Select Solar ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]