When attending a massive music and arts festival, the last thing you want happening is your mobile phone dying so you miss out on distractions like email, Facebook and Twitter. So once again Orange has cooked up another concept device to be tested at this year’s Glastonbury festival of contemporary arts that lets you recharge your electronics without having access to an outlet. In the past they’ve created devices like the Power Pump and Power Wellies, but this year it’s a t-shirt that will theoretically be providing power to future concert goers.
To be specific, it’s actually a piezoelectric film panel on the front of the t-shirt that generates the power. About the size of a piece of A4 paper, it works like a large microphone, absorbing sound waves and converting them into an electrical charge via interlaced quartz crystals that is then stored in a separate battery. As long as sound levels stay around 80dB, the Sound Charge shirt should produce about 6 W/h of power over the weekend, which is roughly enough to recharge two old-school cellphones, or a single modern smartphone. Not exactly the most efficient solution out there, but it’s certainly eco-friendly.
They aren’t going to hold a drop of water, so referring to these decorative bowls as ‘vases’ is a bit of a misnomer. But as an eco-friendly way to decorate your home, they’re certainly unique. Each Air Vase starts as a single circle of intricately cut paper (we’re assuming lasers are involved) that can be stretched out to a various shapes and containers with some careful manipulation. And from what we can tell, the Air Vases are probably made from a thicker card stock, given how well they hold their shape. Each side is also printed with a different color or design, so the completed vases will look different depending on what angle you’re looking at them from.
There’s an official Air Vase book(~$27) available which seems to do nothing more than illustrate the various ways you can use Air Vases. But a set of 3, in white, is available from Kaminokousakujo.jp for ~$16.
I know I’ve seen bicycle/sofa mashups online before, but Jacek Holubowicz’s Sofa Bike has a level of polish and finish that makes it look like you could walk into a Schwinn dealer and take one home. But you can’t. The bike is a one-off, built by hand, to explore the idea of enjoying a bike date with a special someone. Two sets of pedals connect to two separate 8-gear hubs allowing each person to carry their own weight, and hydraulic braking and steering are handled by a single crank located on the left arm of the sofa. It’s even got a folding roof that easily pops-up thanks to a set of assistive gas springs, and its own sound system powered by a rechargeable battery. Best of all? The video I’ve included below makes driving it around look like a heck of a lot of fun.
There are obvious benefits to using an exercise machine on a regular basis. All that health and fitness stuff. But a company called SportsArt has created a machine that can actually save you money too. Well, in the long run at least. Their S770 Pinnacle Trainer comes with a pretty steep $8,499 price tag, but besides getting you in shape it’s also able to harness the energy you’re putting into exercise and convert it into usable electricity.
The machine has a built-in heart rate monitor and on-board computer for tracking your progress, which are all powered by the trainer itself. There’s never any need to plug it into a wall. Unless your home is setup to allow devices to feed electricity back into the grid, since the S770 features an external power inverter that generates electricity from your workout. Apparently up to 2,000 watts during a rigorous session, which can potentially save you thousands of dollars on your power bills if you stay dedicated to using the machine throughout the year.
When I first came across these Trash Amps, which were recently shown off at the 2011 Maker Faire in San Francisco, they seemed like a great way to upcycle old cans or Chinese food takeout containers. But after reading up on the product, I’m less excited about their eco-friendly potential.
At first I assumed they used old cans as a resonance chamber, boosting the performance of the Trash Amp speaker which sits on top once the can is beheaded. But it turns out the can is really only used as a decorative sleeve for the self-contained speaker unit that slides inside. In other words, by itself the Trash Amp works just fine as a compact speaker without the need for a can or other container. The inventor, who shows off the product in the video below, even encourages you to switch things up when you get tired of one can design, so in a way you’re not even really giving a used can a permanent home.
Admittedly the speaker sounds like a vast improvement to the built-in speaker on your smartphone as demonstrated in the video, but for $49.99 it better!
Instead of just slapping a thin, flexible solar cell onto the outside of a messenger bag, Diffus Design has taken a far more subtle approach with their Solar Handbag. Working with designers from the Alexandra Institute and Swiss embroidery specialists Forster Rohne, Diffus has integrated 100 miniaturized monocrystalline silicon ‘sequins’ onto each bag in such a way that they simply look like a repeating design pattern with their exposed wiring. Not as distinct as the L & V that many people lust after, but far more useful.
During the day, with enough exposure to the sun, the bag can generate enough electricity to recharge a mobile device like a smartphone. But when not being immediately harvested the energy that’s generated is stored in a lithium ion battery that remains hidden away inside the purse. And at night a network of fiber optic lighting inside the bag will also draw on the battery providing a soft, diffuse glow making it easier to find things in the dark. Pricing and availability info haven’t been announced yet, but it’s safe to assume it isn’t going to be cheap unless you can charge enough gadgets to make it pay for itself in the very long run.
Just because you’re not paying the electric bill every month, doesn’t mean you should leave every light on at the office when you leave. So to encourage people to be more proactive about turning off the lights when they leave a room, designer Da Deng created this playful Bye-5 switch which can be operated with a simple high five, a skill most employable persons already have.
The switch is of course shaped like a 3D hand, complete with a skin-like texture which encourages people to give it a solid high five slap. And besides turning off the lights in the room, your positive reinforcement also activates a soft, glowing nightlight inside the hand so that people can still find their way around a now darkened room. It’s just a concept sadly, so the Clapper will continue to enjoy its monopoly in the ‘novel way to switch off the lights’ market.
Instead of turning a crank or awkwardly shaking it to squeeze a few minutes of illumination out of it, the Lightstarter flashlight takes the Survivorman approach by having you rub it between your hands as if you were starting a fire with a stick. Of course we all know that starting a fire in the wild isn’t quite that easy, but it’s a nice throwback to times when fire was really are our only artificial source of light. And like other dynamo powered flashlights the Lightstarter will run longer the more effort you put into it. Three seconds of rubbing gives you about thirty seconds of illumination, while a full minute rewards you with up to ten minutes of light.
Unfortunately at the moment the Lightstarter is just a concept waiting for partnership or purchase, so you’ll probably be better off actually finding a pair of sticks and starting a fire yourself than waiting for this to go into production.
By now we all know that metal reusable bottles are a far better alternative to buying single serve portions of water in plastic bottles. Not only are they better for the environment as most plastic bottles are just discarded, but in the long run they can save you a lot of money by bottling H20 yourself. So if my moving words have finally persuaded you to consider switching to a reusable metal bottle, and as a gadget fan you’d prefer something with a little thought and engineering behind it, you’ll want to check out my full review of the S’well bottle after the jump.
Related Tags: Concepts, Eco-friendly
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