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Wind-Up Battery Concept: My Fingers Hurt Just Thinking About It

Technabob — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:23:46 +0000

Someday, engineers will figure out a way to make gadgets that never need to be recharged. But until they do, you always run the risk of running out of juice while you’re on the road away from a charger. There are lots of solutions out there, ranging from solar to secondary storage to kinetic chargers, but this concept is one I’ve not seen before.

Designers Yeon Kyeong Hwang & Mieong Ho Kang have come up with a concept design for a battery that can be recharged simply by twisting the battery itself. The Charge Battery would have a built-in spiral spring, wrapped around a generator, which creates friction and turns that into energy for the built-in Ni-mH battery to juice up.

While the concept looks good on paper, I can’t imagine how many times you’d have to turn the battery with your fingers before it had enough charge to do anything meaningful. For now, I’ll just keep a spare set of batteries in my bag.

[via Yanko Design]

Pac-Man Wind-Up Toys Scurry Across Desks

Technabob — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:19:18 +0000

Who says Pac-Man and Blinky need to be confined to the pixel-bound walls of their maze?

These fun wind-up Pac-Man racers are the perfect desktop toy for the retro gamer geek. No quarters or batteries are required to play with these authentic Namco-endorsed wind-ups.

Pac-Man and Blinky the red ghost are available over at Red5 for £8 (appx. $13 USD) for the set. Unfortunately, Inky, Pinky and Clyde are nowhere to be found. I can only imagine they were already gobbled up.

Kikkerland Wind-Up Bots have More Legs Than You

Technabob — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:44:04 +0000

These fun wind-up desktop critters from Kikkerland are the perfect addition to any cubicle toy collection.

Designer Chico Bicalho’s MxyKikker crawler is my personal favorite, what with its dozen or so spinny elbow macaroni looking legs which help it move along your floor. Each of these unique creations has a slightly different way of ambling around, but they all are about as whimsical as can be.

Here’s a brief video clip showing off MxyKikker and his pal Bonga in action…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can find these guys, along with Kikkerland’s entire collection of creepy, crawly automatons over at their online shop. Prices range from $6 to $40 (USD), depending on the size and mechanical complexity of the critter you select.

Crank Up This Mp3 Player

Technabob — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:08:41 +0000

This unique MP3 player never needs batteries. That’s because it runs on your own hand-cranked power.

It may not be the prettiest media player ever made, but that’s because it needs room for the mechanical device that converts your energy into power. One minute of winding will give you about forty minutes of play time.

It’s not the fanciest player either, but it does offer a 1.8-inch color screen, and can play both audio and video clips. There’s even an FM radio and an emergency LED flashlight on board. It comes with 2GB of internal memory, but is expandable using an SD memory card.

Designed to be both eco-friendly and pragmatic for situations like camping and hiking, the crank powered Baylis MP3 player will set you back a pricey £170 (about $345 USD) from the Ethical Superstore. I guess that being environmentally-correct isn’t always economically-correct.

[via Hippyshopper via Tech Digest]