Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen fire harnessed to power a phone charger for the great outdoors, with the nifty FlameStower, now meet Hydrobee: another Kickstarter project aiming to provide an off-grid alternative for charging a battery you can then use to juice your phone. But, as its name suggests, Hydrobee is all about water.

There’s two parts to Hydrobee. When wearing its ‘Stream Body’, the gizmo can be placed in a river or dragged behind a boat – so long as the water is flowing faster than 1.8m/s (or 4mph+) – and two to four hours later its battery will be fully charged.

A smaller inner unit can also be attached directly to a flowing faucet to charge – so could be used as a back-up power generator for your phone during a power outage (so long as your taps don’t require electricity to pump the water to them).

Once Hydrobee’s battery is juiced, you can then plug in a USB device to charge it – a secondary charging process that presumably takes several more hours.

Hydrobee reminds me of a CDT project I worked on in school, where we stuck a dynamo on a paddle wheel-bearing rig designed to float in a river and stuck a micro bulb on top that we hoped would be powered by it… Long story short it didn’t work on demo day, but that’s technology demos for you.

Hydrobee has clearly perfected the hydroelectric tech better than a bunch of schoolkids managed to. The prototype consists of a tiny hydropowered turbine sited in a can with rechargeable batteries and waterproofed electronics, and a USB 2.0 port – so you can juice up your phone or other USB-powered device.

The internal batteries are 6 x 1.2V AA NiMH rechargeable cells of 2,500 mAh capacity, yielding a total of 15,000 mAh.

It is still a prototype for now. And Hydrobee’s U.S.-based creator has put a call out for Kickstarter users to give him feedback on the sorts of things they’d like to be able to use the device for to help shape the final product. The campaign is looking to raise $48,000 in crowdfunding, with 17 days left to run. If it hits its funding target, Hydrobees will be shipped to backers next March.

The Hydrobee turbine generator, which can be used to generate a charge from water from a running faucet or hose, is being offered to early Kickstarter backers for $24. Or it’s $78 for all the kit, including the floating Stream Body.

A brand new app called Goldee launches today, offering Phlips Hue users a new way to use their connected lighting system. The app provides dynamic “light scenes” which use artist-sourced photos as their palette, changing tones gradually to provide dynamic shifts in color, including gradual on/off sequences for waking up in the morning or going to sleep at night.

There are 10 different scenes included in the app at launch, each which a brief description and credits (citing the scene’s creator, the photographer of the source image and the location where it was taken). Tapping on any starts the dynamic lighting, with each bulb attached to your Philips Hue system taking part. You can specific if you have multiple rooms in a single home with Hue bulbs, too, and run a different scene for each. The first light scene also has an alarm feature, and the last one has a sleep timer for going to bed.

The app works well, but there are some caveats – you have to have the app running in the foreground to get the dynamic effect to work, and the screensaver built-in to keep your display from using too much juice is a little finicky when it comes to returning your display to full brightness once you activate the screen again. But on the whole, it’s a unique experience, and one that Hue owners are likely to appreciate.

“The Goldee team started innovating home lighting even before Philips hue was introduced,” Goldee CEO Tomas Baran explained in an interview. “We figured out right away that Philips hue is a very good tool to build upon [with lighting]. However, the Goldee App is only our first step towards changing how we perceive and interact with light.”

Baran says that there are plans in place to do “something much bigger,” which he expects to reveal more about later this year. He calls light “a new form of art,” hence sourcing its scenes from people with experience in that field, and notes that light is never static in nature. I asked whether this might be a bit narrow in terms of focus for a whole company, but Baran says Goldee is betting we’re just seeing the beginning of change in this space.

“Every new thing is risky in the beginning, but if we wait until it becomes popular it will already be too late,” he said. “We believe a revolution has started in the lighting sector with smart LEDs. We have no doubt this will be the future. We used to watch black-and-white TVs, nowadays we cannot imagine a display without colors. Obviously, it will take time, but we see the same thing happening with light. “

The app is free, and so far the only content that’s locked within the app can be made available via either rating the app or sharing via Twitter and Facebook. There is a “library” section that promises to add additional light scenes in future, and some of those may arrive as paid upgrades. For now, Goldee is a well-executed curiosity, but it’ll be interesting to see if smart lights really do herald the kinds of changes Baran envisions.

Looks like we have a final chapter for Better Place, the Israel-based electric car tech startup that raised $786 million plus $50 million in debt, only to then file for bankruptcy in May: it has now been acquired by a group called Sunrise, headed by green-technology entrepreneur Yosef Abramowitz and the Association for the Promotion of the Electric Car in Israel.

According to court filings, Sunrise is paying 18 million Israeli shekels ($5 million) for Better Place’s assets in Israel, and another 25 million shekels ($7 million) for its intellectual property, held by Better Place Switzerland. Sunrise was one of two bidders for the company, the other being a consortium including Success Parking Ltd. and U.S. electric car charging company Car Charging Group Inc.

It’s a whimper of an ending for a company that raised hundreds of millions, and many hopes, for its core business: a system that relied on smartgrid technology to create a network of battery swapping stations and other charging points for users of electric cars.

Speeding up battery charging, which typically can take anywhere from between 4 and 12 hours to charge on electric cars, could significantly spur the convenience factor of these vehicles, and help with consumer adoption. Better Place also had other ideas about how, with the rise of electric cars, power usage overall needed to be better managed.

But it seems that even if the vision was big, business was not. Creating a breakthrough technology that relies on industrial-scale overhauls is capital intensive. And there is the question of critical mass for electric car technology: apparently only 950 cars fitted with Better Place’s replaceable battery technology — the core of the business — were sold since 2012 (it looks like the only carmaker to sign on with Better Place was Renault).

Meanwhile, individual car companies like Tesla working on proprietary solutions are a sign that the space is perhaps still too fragmented and nascent for what Better Place had in mind.

Although the downward spiral from bankruptcy to bidding to eventual sale was swift, the writing was on the wall months before, when founder Shai Agassi was removed as CEO in October 2012.

New owners Sunrise are keeping 50 out of Better Place’s 85 remaining employees, and will operate 15 of its charging stations for a period of at least two years. It may not be complete curtains for all of Better Place’s efforts, depending on how Sunrise chooses to use the IP it purchased as well, but it’s not a great day for the wider ambition to move us away from fossil fuel consumption and towards more sustainable progress.

Here’s a neat gizmo for speeding up charging your smartphone over USB. The Practical Meter plugs into the USB socket you intend to use to charge your phone and has built-in indicator lights to show how fast the charging connection is. The problem its creators are attacking is the vast difference in charging rates over USB. Charge speed can vary depending on the device you’re charging and the USB port and charger cable you’re using. Yet this difference isn’t usually flagged up to the user.

The Practical Meter solves that problem by displaying the charging strength of the current combination — using signal bar style indicator lights — so it’s possible to figure out whether the phone is going to be fully charged in about an hour. Or require more like four hours to get juiced up. Here’s an example of the Practical Meter’s signal scale when charging an iPhone:

The Practical Meter has already passed its $10,000 funding goal on Kickstarter, with more than 3,200 backers and still more than 20 days to run on the campaign. Shipping date is pegged at September. Price per Meter is now $19, which also includes a three-in-one charger cable that’s designed to enhance charging performance. This cable has an Apple dock, Micro USB and Mini USB ends so it’s compatible with a range of phones.

Each of the three connectors has built-in circuits to maximise its charge rate — meaning the cable alone can speed up charging performance, according to its creators (the price for just the cable is $7).

Another possible use for the Practical Meter is in combination with a solar charging panel, as it allows the user to figure out the best position to place the panel to maximise its power output. The device can also be used for figuring out tablet charging rates too — although its creators note that it only meters the first 1000 mA (1 amp) of current, adding: “With our charging tips you will be able to draw 5 watts or 1000 mA of current into your ipad from your PC/Laptop! Stay tuned to learn about the possibility of a 10-watt version or stretch goal.”

If you’re anything like the average technology writer you’ll have a drawer full of old kit lying around the place, gathering dust. Well here’s what looks like a neat use for old smartphones that are still functional even if they’re no longer good enough to be your everyday device. Reusing tech kit so it gets a second life to extend its usefulness is obviously to be encouraged — and the plethora of sensors in the average smartphone mean there are plenty of options for use number 2.

U.S. startup, Xavage Technologies, has come up with one: it’s created a phone-housing-plus-app combo — which it’s calling Xentry — that turns an old iPhone or Galaxy S Fascinate into a door-mounted caller-display so you can see who’s at the door and communicate with them via the corresponding app on your own in play smartphone. The old phone is mounted on the inside of your front door, with a customised peephole attachment replacing an existing peephole lens, allowing the phone’s camera to spy on whoever’s outside.

The “smart door” system streams real-time video and audio over your home Wi-Fi network so no need to have a SIM in the door-mounted smartphone. Other features include the ability to disguise your voice when you respond to the caller at the door; door movement detection (using the phone’s gyroscope) so that you can set alerts if someone is trying to enter or exit the house; and a virtual receptionist feature to trigger a message when someone opens the door.

The app also lets you take still photos of the video of whoever is at the door, and supports zooming and exposure adjustment. Simultaneous connection to the door-mounted camera is also supported meaning multiple in-home smartphone owners can see who’s outside.

Xavage is looking to raise $200,000 via Indiegogo to fund production of the two Xentry models, one designed to house old iPhones (3GS/4/4S) and one for the Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate (chosen because it was a popular device in the U.S. market in 2010). The phone housing will be manufactured from either ABS or recycled ABS. The top housing may be aluminium in the shipping version of the product. Xavage added that it plans to expand the range to other “top selling smartphones”, and is working on a universal model for business applications that can be attached to glass surfaces, such as office doors.

Charging the Xentry sounds like it may be a bit of a chore. The housing is designed to incorporate the phone’s charging cable but Xavage adds: “Backers are expected to use their existing charging plug and USB cable while Xavage provides a 15 feet (3 meter) USB adaptor cable.”

So, in other words, you’re going to have to plug a charger cable into the device that’s mounted to your door for at least some of the time. Unless the phone can easily be removed from the housing for charging. Still, for a little inconvenience, you’re getting a low upfront cost video caller door display — and reusing your old phone to boot. The cost per Xentry looks to be around $55. The startup expects to be shipping its first batch in December, if it makes funding.

Update: Xavage said it’s looking at a couple of options to improve the charging scenario. “For the first Xentry model, our power solution is to have the unit connected to the wall outlet via a charging cable. This solution doesn’t impede the normal operation of the door. For next generations we are optimizing our software for power.  Additionally, we are looking at an extended battery or a retractable cable system inside the unit.”

It added that the current version of the app, which streams video only when a viewer is connected to the camera and viewing mode is selected, should support about two days of battery life.