Hasta La Gadget!

You generate a tremendous amount of energy as you pump the pedals on a bike to get from point A to point B. Energy that can now be easily harnessed and also used to charge your small electronics with the BikeCharge dynamo. More »

It’s all about power when you’re on the go. Depending on your usage, it doesn’t take long for the battery of your tablet or smartphone to run out. It’s happened to everyone, stranded with no way to juice up your gear. The Exovolt Plus stackable batteries might help you out in these situations.

Exogear’s Exovolt Plus is different from most external batteries, because you can simply stack up modules to add more battery power. The main unit, which sells for $89.95(USD), has got a 5,200 mAh battery. You can add as many subunits as you want at $49.95 a pop. Each of these also has a 5,200 mAh capacity. The batteries have double circuit protection, overheating protection, and short-circuit protection so they won’t explode in your face.

I guess these batteries would be good for camping and outdoor trips. The batteries aren’t that big, about twice the size of an iPhone, so they should be pretty easy to carry around in your pack. Exogear hasn’t yet confirmed a release date for the Exovolt Plus, but they should be coming soon.

[via DVice]

GE and Nissan had previously ruled out GE’s WattStation as the cause of a few Leaf charging failures, and that story of EV tragedy looks to be winding to a close with a more definitive explanation. As the two tell us, a bug in the Leaf’s on-board charging software can damage the relevant hardware under a perfect storm of conditions: if a drivers uses a specific (but not necessarily GE) charger, an undervoltage or similar power crisis can bring the Leaf to its knees. Nissan says it’s hurrying towards a remedy, although we’re working to confirm just what that entails. In the meantime, the automaker is asking owners to be cautious and avoid plugging in when there’s lightning or brownouts in the making.

Filed under: Transportation

Nissan pins Leaf’s WattStation charging woes on a software bug, works on a fix originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The battle between Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 has only recently begun in earnest, what with mobo’s finally emerging to give non-Mac computers access to the 10Gbps interface. While USB 3.0 can’t match Thunderbolt in terms of data throughput, it now has the upper hand in power capabilities, as last week the 100W Power Delivery spec was approved for both USB 2.0 and 3.0. That’s ten times what Thunderbolt can do, and it means that you can charge up your laptop or power most any peripheral via Universal Serial Bus. Naturally, the new specification relies on beefier cables to deliver maximum juice, but we won’t have to go replacing all our old wires — it includes a means to check attached cables and devices and set the voltage and amperage accordingly. Perfect, that means we won’t have to carry around bundle of proprietary power cords when we travel, and we get peace of mind that charging via USB won’t have any, ahem, unpleasant side effects.

Continue reading USB Power Delivery spec upped to 100W, aims to make proprietary power connectors obsolete

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

USB Power Delivery spec upped to 100W, aims to make proprietary power connectors obsolete originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hopefully, you haven’t paired up your Nissan Leaf with a GE WattStation for charging; if you have, you might want to power up with Ye Olde Wall Outlet for a short while. GE has confirmed to the New York Times that some Leaf drivers have encountered “problems” after charging up their EVs from WattStations. What problems? GE isn’t going into detail, but a Nissan regional manager claims that the the charging systems of 11 Leafs have been damaged after plugging into a WattStation. Whether or not there’s a crisis or a coincidence is still up in the air at this stage. Nissan isn’t issuing any warnings or recalls, and GE will only say that it’s “actively working” with the automaker to find the root cause. All the same, we’ll be cautious until the companies turn a new… you guessed it.

Update: GE reached out to us with the full statement, which you’ll find in the comments below. The company is mostly touching on what it mentioned earlier, but it’s adding that the WattStation meets the needed SAE and UL standards. Other EVs haven’t encountered problems to date.

Filed under: Transportation

Nissan Leaf, GE WattStation embroiled in charging damage shocker, invite other EV puns (update: full GE statement) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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