Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
Power outlets have always been the ones nourishing batteries in the past. A bottle of water seems just wrong, when it comes to battery charging. Well, not anymore. SiGNa Chemistry Inc. recently developed a hydrogen-producing cartridge that works with a pocket-sized fuel cell charging device. With the, your mobile phones and other similar devices will never run out of juice! All you need to do is add water to the power cells of the device called the mobile-H2™. The device then generates power and charges up your run-out batteries. And the best part, you do not need perfectly clean water to generate energy. Waste water or grey water works perfectly well too!
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We’ve heard of PepsiCo’s Dream Machines before. These machines swallow old cans and bottles and pop out some pretty interesting rewards, ensuring that consumers dispose of empty soft-drink containers in the right way. Now PepsiCo has joined hands with the capitol city, Washington D.C. and has set up a partnership that will bring in 363 Dream Machines into the downtown area. The kiosks offer rewards in the form of discount coupons for Dominos, Johnny Rockets, and Marriott hotels. Also, D.C. will receive normal-looking recycling bins by PepsiCo that, instead of giving out rewards, will donate cash to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities.
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Patio time will no longer be restricted to the warmer months. No longer do you need to tremble at the very thought of relaxing on your patio in winters. Not with the Patio Heater Table at hand to keep you warm! First up, it’s green since it conserves energy and effiently lends out heat to all those nearby. Also, it’s clever enough to turn on automatically the moment you’re close by. Walking away from it switches it off automatically. Stepping into the table’s 3 ft range triggers its motion sensors. Also, the table top won’t burn your hand the moment you touch it, if that’s what you’ve been skeptical about. With an 8ft power-chord, the Patio Heater Table uses 120V of energy and sure beats burning logs of wood to warm up. For $299, you can now enjoy a relaxing time on your patio all through the year!
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The ecoATM firm has had its share of attention owing to all the green technology it has been spawning all this while with some pretty innovative and practical eco-friendly kiosks that buy back and recycle consumer electronics. Now the firm has a lot more to offer with the technologically advanced fully automated eCycling Station with a built-in cash dispenser. This one’s more consumer-friendly and can be completely operated by the user himself. Unveiled at the DEMO Spring 2011, the kiosk gobbles up your electronics that need recycling in exchange for rewards.
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Here’s a battery that’ll never run dry and you’ll never need to toss in the bin so long as the sun shines up there in the sky. Designed by Yung-Hsaing Chang, Ming-Shien Lin and Chang-Ting Lu, the Light Catcher battery, (a catchy name for a battery) powers using energy from the sun. With AA and AAA variants, the body of this battery is transparent and coated with an antireflective layer. Inside lie the solar cells that soak in the sun’s energy. An entry for the 2011 IF concept design competition, the Light Catcher will catch on quickly when it hits store shelves.
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With Google at its back, start up company Transphorm has pulled the veil off a module that reduces 90% of the energy lost while converting currents in electronically powered devices. Inefficient power conversion in the United States wastes as much power as the output of 318 coal-fired power plants, costing the nation a whopping $40 billion on an annual basis. Transphorm’s module can be hooked into any electrical system that includes consumer gadgets like laptops, mobile phones and more as well as industrial motors and electric cars, saving all those precious drops of electricity from unnecessarily flowing away. Google Venture lent a helping hand by raising funds of $20 million for the company adding up to a total $38 million including all the funds put in by investors over tha last four years.
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Now before you go ahead and set up that wind turbine you just read about, it’s smart to check the power of the wind at your chosen spot. And no, you certainly don’t need to send up a kite to check that anymore. You could instead use Urban Green Energy’s First Step weather station. The company develops small, vertical-axis turbine systems for home installations, and this station tracks temperature, barometric pressure, humidity and rainfall and includes an anemometer, sending all the information you’d require, to a small hand-held device that can be attached to your computer via USB. Setting up this weather station is pretty easy. It requires just one person, a screwdriver and about 20 minutes off the clock!
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Sonelis Technology recently showed off a sleek, sophisticated, innovative and eco-friendly lighting solution. The company, known for its custom solar panels, is a distributor of Greendix, the creators of the Lumileaf solar LED lamp. The lamp draws inspiration from nature itself, and uses a 1.25W leaf-shaped solar panel snug in an aluminum body. Using an1800mA NiMH battery that juices six 1.2W high-brightness and energy efficient LEDs, this one sheds enough light to brighten up the gloomiest corners of your living space, with renewable energy.
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If those home energy management systems are a bit to sci-fi for you, here’s something a lot cuter that helps you keep a check on you energy use. Completely lovable and highly informative, this one was an entry for the Ecomagination challenge by GE. The toy keeps in touch with your home energy meter and accordingly changes its color depending on your energy use. As your home energy use gets worse, the little polar bear goes pink. Just perfect to have in your kid’s room, reminding them to switch off the fans and lights on their way out, the polar bear goes green when your home energy use stabilizes.
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When pen drives go old and suffer from memory losses, the best we can do with them is toss them in a bin, and they end up spending the rest of their lives in e-waste landfills. Well, some pen drives do not harm the environment as much as the one’s we use do when disposed off. These disposable pen drives by The Art Lebedev Studio are high capacity and disposable. Called the Flashkus, these pen drives are made of cardboard. The essential electric parts though remain the same, with a recyclable body. However, not a lot of people toss out their pen drives too often, using them repeatedly till they’re finally infected with some destructive viruses or meet some other inevitable fate.
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