The Faucher Family in Delaware have built extravagant Christmas lights setups for 25 years now. How extravagant? They use 1,000,000 lights. So how much does it cost them to run the lights for a month? $82,320. Gulp. More »
Japanese researchers have cooked up a minuscule kinetic battery capable of generating more energy than anything of its kind. Through only the slightest vibrations, the tiny device cranks out 22 milliwatts—20 times more than anything similar before it. More »
No one’s going to be calling Nokero out for falling behind. Just a few short months after revealing its first commercial light bulb for developing nations, the outfit has now rolled out a second version, the predictably titled N200. This guy strikes a vastly different pose compared to the original, with the LED enclosure hanging on a swivel that enables it to be positioned in a way that would optimally catch light. When night falls, users can flip the light north to create a lantern. Nokero claims that this edition is just as rugged and rainproof as the original, but it’s 60 percent brighter and lasts three times as long. A single NiMH battery is included, and that’s what is rejuvenated by the sun — once charged, it’ll provide between 2.5 and 6 hours of light, depending on the mode. It’s on sale now for $20 apiece (bulk prices are less), representing a modest $5 premium over the (still available) N100. Can’t say the Yankees will be looking to decorate their outdoor patio with lighting right about now, but for the nomads trekking to Panama to escape Old Man Winter… well, you know what to do. Vid’s after the break.
[Images courtesy of Larry Bollig]
Gallery: Nokero N200 solar-powered light bulb
Nokero’s solar-powered, rainproof N200 light bulb: brighter, stronger, more flexible originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | 
Nokero | Email this | Comments
It’s taken quite awhile to go from christening to shipping, but Qi looks just about ready to make its mark on the public. And on Powermat’s bottom line. We’ve known all along that Energizer was a huge proponent of the protocol, and now we’re finding that review units are making their way out to the media. YouTube user akaTRENT seems to have gotten his earlier than most, and he’s been so kind as to offer up an unboxing of the inductive charging station as well as a sleeve for the iPhone 4. We’re planning on giving this same setup a whirl in due time, but if you’re interested to see how this guy looks in the flesh, there’s a play button with your name on it just beyond the break.
Continue reading Energizer Qi wireless charging base station spotted in the wild
Energizer Qi wireless charging base station spotted in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Oct 2010 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We’re sure if you asked Powercast nicely it’d tell you a whale of a tale, about how the “more than 100 companies” who allegedly signed up to develop products that seemingly pull energy from the ether materialized into this light-up Christmas tree. Still, we’d be happy to forgive and forget if meaningful products emerged instead, and that’s why we’re moderately happy the company’s announced a nice big development kit. $1,250 buys your firm or deep-pocketed hobbyist the spread pictured above, with a wireless transmitter to throw three watts and a pair of receiver boards to catch them from over 40 feet away, plus a low-power development board from Microchip equipped with that company’s proprietary short-range wireless protocols and ZigBee functionality. We can’t wait to see what people build, but we won’t be snapping one up ourselves — we’re still holding out for the firm to go open-source and build an Arduino version. PR after the break.
Powercast and Microchip fire up interest at a distance with wireless power development kit originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
A solar-powered cell site? In Pennsylvania? Say it ain’t so! Rather than heading to Death Valley or southern Nevada, T-Mobile USA has selected the bustling metropolis of Chalfont, Pennsylvania for its first US-based solar cell site. According to a report over at GigaOM, the carrier isn’t dishing any real details on the new development, only saying that it generates enough power to take the site “off-the-grid” and occasionally feed extra power back into said grid. It’s likely that the site is primarily being built for positive PR and as a test for future rollouts, as the actual cost for installing this versus a standard grid-powered site is “around two to three times more.” But hey, there’s nothing like looking forward to the karma that comes with giving Ma Earth a kiss this big, right?
T-Mobile USA fires up first solar-powered cell site in Pennsylvania originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | GigaOM | Email this | Comments
You’re a kid, and therefore you like to shoot things. But what if the catapult and the air-rifle just aren’t cutting it anymore? Then you, like Jason (aka Larsplatoon) make your own coil-gun.
The styling is straight out of a video-game, but inside the engineering is very real, and very lethal. A coil-gun uses a magnetic field to accelerate a bullet up to projectile speed. Jason’s uses a bank of recycled rechargeable laptop batteries to provide the juice, and various bits of circuitry to step up the voltage, prevent overloading and charge the array of capacitors. These capacitors are what you see in the cylinders at the back.
To use, flip the switch, hit the charge button and wait 30 seconds for the capacitors to fill up. Slot in the slug and take aim, and pull the trigger to fire. One charge is good for around 15 shots. As you see in the video, it looks like a lot of fun, but it’s no .457 Magnum. Jason’s gun will put holes in his various toys (and what looks like his mother’s toaster oven) but the fact that just a couple of cardboard boxes are need to protect the fence is a giveaway.
The gun uses 1.25kJ of energy to fire the bullet into the model-airplane (shooting commences at around the 2:50 mark), TV-remote or Mom’s best glassware, but doesn’t have enough force to kill anyone. If you want to do that, you’d do better converting this into a taser and sending the stored potential of those four 3900uF, 400-volt straight down a wire into some poor-schmuck’s body.
The project took Jason two years to complete. We say it was worth every geeky, blood-crazed moment. If I’d had the skills to put one of these together back in school, then those bullying jocks would have, well, they’d all have had broken TV-remotes, that’s for sure.
Portable 1.25kJ coilgun finally done [4HV]
Portable 1.25kJ Coilgun [Larsplatoon / YouTube via Hacked Gadgets]
See Also:
Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.
They stretch up to two and a half times the height of Nelson’s Column at Trafalgar Square, their number is close to a hundred, and their mission is to bring clean, renewable energy into British homes. Yes, we’re talking about turbines. The latest wind farm to be erected near the Queen’s most sovereign isles is said to be the largest in the world (for now) and promises to produce enough energy to keep 240,000 homes going — the equivalent of half the county of Kent. It’s part of the UK’s grand plan to generate at least 20 percent of all its power needs through the taming of the winds and cost the Kingdom a cool £780 million ($1.2b) to build. That’s admittedly a big bill to swallow, but there are worse things to blow your billions on… such as, say, the Millennium Dome.
Continue reading World’s largest offshore wind farm spins into action off the coast of Britain
World’s largest offshore wind farm spins into action off the coast of Britain originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | BBC | Email this | Comments
Solar farms are swell and all, but they aren’t exactly fit for laboratories or studio apartments. Thanks to new discoveries by gurus at the University of Birmingham, though, we could be on our way to a far more diminutive method of creating clean energy. As the story goes, we could soon be using microbes to transform wastes in metals into energy. The team managed to pinpoint Hydrogenase enzymes and BioPd in their research, which they believe can be used as catalysts for the treatment of persistent pollutants. The overriding goal, however, is to “develop a one-step technology that allows for the conversion of metallic wastes into high value catalysts for green chemistry and clean energy generation,” but it’s difficult to say at this point how close they are to realizing it. The best news? This is bound to start a new rash of Cash 4 Gold commercials.
Scientists using metallic wastes to generate clean energy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Electricity might not grow on trees, but it is freely available in the air — provided you know how to catch it. Such is the contention presented by Dr. Francesco Galembeck of Brazil’s University of Campinas at the 240th annual American Chemical Society shindig. He and his crew have shown how tiny particles of silica and aluminum phosphate become electrically charged when water vapor is passed over them. This aims to prove two things: firstly, that airborne water droplets do carry an electric charge, and secondly, that metals can be used to collect that charge. Detractors have pointed out that Dr. Galembeck’s team may be generating the droplets’ electrical charge by the act of pumping the air over the metals — which might imply you couldn’t practice this technique with still, humid air — while there’s also the rather large caveat that the little electricity they were able to collect from vapor was a hundred million times less than what you could obtain from a solar cell of equivalent size. Still, it’s another new door unto a potential alternative energy source and we don’t ever like having to close those.
Continue reading Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers
Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
PhysOrg | BBC | Email this | Comments
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
