In what may be (but probably isn’t) a sign of things to come, Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies has released a miniature hydrogen fuel cell power system designed specifically for R/C cars. It’s a complete power system for higher end hobby cars, and optionally comes with an entire solar powered fuel infrastructure that uses solar or wind power to turn water into hydrogen, which gets stored in special solid state cartridges. So, it’s sort of like this thing, except in a kit that can be installed on your own R/C car (or anything else).
There aren’t too many specs on performance (beyond a capacity of 12Wh, or 3-4 times the endurance of conventional batteries), but since all a hydrogen fuel cell does is create electricity, it’s not going to be like a nitro car, but it should perform just about the same as any battery powered system, and it looks like it does:
A hydrogen powered R/C car might be way less convenient than gas or batteries, but it is the future, and a microcosm of the whole hydrogen fuel situation in normal size cars, so at least you can feel good about that. Or something.
I like the idea of carrying a reusable, foldable bag for those times when you need a bit of extra carrying space, but I hate the ergonomics (or lack thereof) of the traditional grocery bag design. So even though at $30 it’s considerably more expensive than your run-of-the-mill reusable bag, I still think the Hidden Messenger from Timbuk2 is totally worth it. The bag’s made from 90% recycled PET ripstop fabric, making it lightweight and durable, but it’s the adjustable strap and over the shoulder messenger design which makes it easy to carry lots of unexpected stuff, while still keeping your hands free.
It’s nice that paper can be recycled, but usually you don’t get to experience the end result of that recycling process in a direct and immediate manner. Not this direct of a manner, anyway. This machine is called White Goat, and if you feed it 40 sheets of waste paper, it will produce a roll of toilet paper. The entire process, start to finish, is completely contained within the machine: it shreds the paper, dissolves it in water, dries it out, and winds it into rolls that are probably not huggably soft. Total cost? A mere 10 cents a roll, although the entire White Goat machine (which goes on sale this summer) will cost about $100,000.
And just in case you were wondering (although I’m sure you weren’t wondering), according to the resident OhGizmo livestock expert, for only $120 or so you can get an angora goat (plus a friend, since goats need company) who will eat a newspaper’s worth of waste paper every day (along with other food, of course) and produce cashmere, with which you can make what is surely the most luxurious toilet paper known to man. The actual goat won’t work as well in an office environment, but it does produce a bunch of free fertilizer, will pull a small cart, and if it dies on you, you can eat it.
Have you ever tried to taste electricity? You can, you know… Go find a 9v battery and stick the contacts on your tongue.* Not pleasant, right? Sony has this problem (and it’s a serious, serious problem) totally licked with an RC car that runs on juice. The tasty kind of juice. You know, from fruits and stuff.
The Tomy Ene pocket RC car has, inside of it, a “bio battery” that can generate electricity from sugar in things like juice or soda. As of two years ago, each cell could output 50 mW of power. For this little car, its speed and endurance depend entirely on what you decide to feed it, and while Sony is promoting Coke products, grape juice apparently works the best.
From what I can tell, Sony’s liquid battery technology uses enzymes to digest glucose, which may mean that they last far longer (and are rechargeable more times) than those incredibly strange Nopopo urine powered batteries, which use magnesium and carbon and only last for about 4 charges. However, when you consider which kind of fluid you’d rather donate to your batteries, Nopopo might come out ahead.
Tomy’s car, with Sony’s battery inside it, is currently in the functional (yay!) prototype stage, you can see a video of it motoring around here.
While it was created to “encourage the reuse of already consumed items by forming a new functional product” the Rethink hanger also turns out to be a clever travel accessory. For whatever reason hotels seem to think their patrons only need 4 or 5 hangers in a closet that can easily store 10x that amount, so the Rethink allows you to easily carry extras in your suitcase without taking up too much space.
The downside is that you’ll need to buy & drink 2 bottles of water for each hanger you intend to use, but when assembled it seems like it would be far sturdier than the blow up travel hangers I brought you a few years ago. $7.99 each (eek!) from Rethink Concepts available in your choice of green or yellow.
What has your dog done for you lately? If you’re lucky, maybe you get something fetched once in a while. Big whup. Erik Schiegg hit on a way to make his dog useful for a change, by equipping it with a solar charging vest. The dog runs around outside all day, and Erik’s phone gets charged thanks to the solar panel on the dog’s back. While this may not be as efficient as a stationary solar panel, most of us don’t have the space or money for one of those, and this is a cheap and easy DIY solution to mobile solar charging… Think hiking and camping trips and stuff.
You can easily wire up something like this yourself; all you really need is a solar panel (which you can find at online hobby shops) and a battery pack. Or you can just buy one of these and a roll of duct tape. Your call.
This thing is, seriously, the highlight of CES for me (so far) this year. 3D TVs and eBook readers are fine, but there’s nothing amazing about them.
The Airnergy Charger is amazing.
This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.
The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.
Here is the really, really unbelievable part: RCA says that the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after. I mean, all kinds of people are pushing wireless charging, but this would hands down take the cake… It doesn’t need a pad and it’s charging all the time, for free, in just about any urban environment.
We didn’t think you’d believe all this, so we made RCA explain it all on video:
Yeah, we’ll definitely be keeping you updated on this one.
If you’re one of those uber-hip hipsters with the solar panels on your roof, I envy you and your free electricity. But until somebody invents a solar panel that generates electricity in the dark, there are always going to be times when you’ve got more electricity than you need (high noon) and times when you’ve got less electricity than you need (low noon, aka high moon). If you’ve been generating excess energy, you’ve probably been selling it back to your energy company at a tidy profit, but that doesn’t exactly help you achieve grid independence… The way to do THAT would be through some kind of energy storage system, which lets you store up excess energy and use it when you need it. This is just what Panasonic would like to install in your house, in the form of a giant lithium ion battery.
This household battery, which Panasonic says should be able to power the average home (whatever that means) for a solid week, will be available sometime in 2011. It will be somehow hooked up to your TV, which will allow you to monitor energy usage. We don’t yet have any information on how much this thing will cost, but I bet it’ll be hard to justify in terms of storage benefits and cost savings (and possibly convenience) versus the up-front cost of the system. As with most micro-energy generation systems, it’ll probably end up being more of a feel-good measure than an actual boost to efficiency, but at least it’ll keep your computer on for an extra week when the revolution comes and there’s no more grid power.
Until there are practical and cost effective ways of transferring and storing large amounts of electricity quickly and efficiently, hybrid cars are going to have to depend on alternate power sources that can extend their range to be viable for consumer use. Cars like the Chevy Volt and the Fisker Karma use traditional gasoline engines to recharge their batteries on the go, but a company called Capstone has decided that it would be a way, way better idea to use a microturbine generator instead of a piston engine, which is exactly what they’ve done on their CMT-380 supercar. And by microturbine generator, they’re pretty much talking about a jet engine.
Related Tags: Eco-friendly, Solar-Power, Toys
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