Each week our friends atInhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
This week scientists took a step towards unlocking the holy grail of alternative energy as they unleashed a one megajoule test blast from the world’s largest laser. We were also excited to see the DOI give the green light for the first solar-thermal power tower in the United States, and we saw big things brewing beneath West Virginia as a project funded by Google discovered massive geothermal vents that could double the state’s energy generation capacity. Not to be outdone, Oregon announced plans for a 845 megawatt wind farm that stands to be the largest in the world.
Editor’s note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road on gadgets he’s field-testing.
Asia: the spiritual home of the gadget. After a month of reporting on the gadgets we have brought with us on the Fiesta World Tour, I figured it was time to hit the streets and see what new Asian toys I could get my hands on.
After Dubai, we leaped ahead to China for the next leg. India, sadly, was off limits. I flew into Hong Kong and snuck across the border to the Chinese gadget powerhouse of Shenzhen. This is where the iPod and iPad are made.
In China, any 21st century boy or girl is only as good as his/her gadgets, and the place to find those on Huaqiang Road in Shenzhen. To get a sense of what it’s like, imagine Tokyo’s liveliest retail locales, add a dash of Bladerunner on steroids, and flick on megawatts of neon.
This phone looks a bit like a McLaren and includes both Mercedes and Porsche trademarks.
An expeditious Google search reveals that there are 13 dedicated, multi-level and densely-utilized electronic and telecommunication markets on Huaqiang. They house 18,000 individual stores and directly employ more 50,000 people. When you the seething mass of shoppers, it is believable that the street attracts up to half a million shoppers each day, with the two largest markets pulling in 50,000 punters each, rising to 100,000 during holidays.
iPhones were being touted aggressively on our visit ($110 for the 16Gb iPhone 4 model; though it’s hard to tell whether it’s real or fake). But we had no interest in knock-offs, copies, or even discounts on ordinary gear. We were looking for weird stuff; for madcap stuff. And within minutes of entering the Shenzhen SEG Communications Market, we’d found much of interest.
I wanted garish. So I plumped for a keyring with a hidden micro-camera (from the instruction pamphlet: “Hope it can help your life safe and happiness.”), and another Bond-like piece of kit: a cigarette case with the ability to record video and 2Gb of memory secreted within. A mobile phone shaped like a racing car and decorated with the a hodge-podge of supercar logos completed the deal. I paid just 40 dollars for the lot.
Well if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. The keyring camera failed to charge and so ended up as a keyring with a large bit of plastic dangling on the end. At least the cigarette packet camera fired up immediately and the first video was pretty good. If I were spying on a cowboy builder or cheating spouse, it would do the job just great.
The MercPorsche SLarrera phone (with a mix of Porsche, Mercedes Carrera and Cayman styling and trademarks) was a great deal. Twin SIM sockets and Bluetooth almost made my iPhone 4 and Nokia backups redundant. But the big problem was language. The sole screen language is Chinese, so the minute I said goodbye to my guide the phone became useless to me.
The Huawei E5 mobile Wi-Fi unit was all but useless in China where 3G networks are mainly limited to the cities. But, by a stroke of luck, once we were across the border in Thailand we fitted it with a 2G SIM voice card. That made the unit just about as valuable as the Virgin MiFi was in the States. The pleasant difference is that Thailand’s Happy network clearly did not bank on such a use for their pay-as-you-go SIMs. As a result, I surfed for 5 days for just $6. I only hope for the same value in Malaysia and Australia as the global trip comes close to an end.
Finally, to the biggest gadget test of the trip. Two things Bangkok has plentiful amounts of are sunshine and smog. And those are two reasons for Thailand’s green transport guru, Air Marshal Morakot Charnsomruad, to take the tuk-tuk, the most iconic of Thai modes of transport, and make it solar powered.
Thailand's Air Marshal Morakot Charnsomruad with a solar-powered tuk-tuk and a fuel cell vehicle he is developing.
“Thailand is in the solar belt and so has lots of solar power,” says the 77-year-old Charnsomruad. “Houses, offices, trucks…you name it, there is no reason why they should not have some solar power.”
The canopy atop the bright yellow three-wheeled C-FEE is covered in solar panels. It is midday in the Thai capital and the sun is beating down through the thick tropical air to charge the tuk-tuk’s under-seat battery.
“There is not enough power from the panels yet to actually power the electric motor directly,” says the inventor. “But it increases the 60km range and saves carbon emissions by keeping the battery topped up.”
Jeremy Hart drives a solar-powered tuk-tuk at top speed through the streets of Bangkok.
Ironically, the solar tuk-tuk has sold more in less overtly sunny locales like London than it has in its native Thailand. Here it is twice the price of a smelly, two-stroke petrol version, which limits its appeal. The Air Marshal thinks the government should do more to support the three-wheeled green machine.
The tuk-tuk controls are simple. A rocker switch for forward, neutral and back. A stop and go pedal and a steering wheel. Oh, and a horn.
I stomp on the accelerator and the single nose wheel almost lifts off the road. The torque is supreme. And on streets where fury and noise reign, it runs almost silently. Only a little whine gives away the sense of drive beneath my flip-flopped feet. The tuk-tuk carries a little more weight than a petrol version but handles nimbly. And after 2 hours of play, there is no hint of the power running out.
I vow my next circumnavigation will be by tuk-tuk.
We hate to point out the obvious, but it’s about time you threw procrastination in the nearest dumpster and started thinking about your holiday shopping duties. For the budding guitarist in everyone’s life (admit it, there’s always one), Tascam has a cutesy new guitar tuner that’s both a) affordable and b) Stocking Stuffer-approved at just 3.77- x 0.71- x 1.57-inches. The TC-1S claims to be the world’s first solar-powered tuner, complete with a rugged silicon wrap, a USB port for cloudy days and shadowy clubs, a sweet carrying clip, integrated microphone and a quarter-inch input for guitar and bass tuning. It can even be calibrated to an external source, and it’ll be available in a half-dozen hues (black, pink, orange, green, blue, white) later this month.
Everybody know that the big money’s in pain rays and various other wargadgets, so we really like it when someone at least tries to do a little good in the world. Lifeline Energy is a UK-based NGO that works to bring folks in emerging markets (mostly sub-Saharan Africa) items like solar-powered radios and lights, and it has just announced the launch of the Lifeplayer self-powered MP3 player and AM/FM/SW radio. This device features 64GB storage, microSD card slot, 3G connectivity, audio recording capabilities, and the ability to act as a sort of PA system — according to the organization, groups of sixty can hear the thing clearly. It’s powered either by a hand-crank or through its solar panel, and contains a USB port for charging devices such as cell phones. At present, Lifeline Energy is distributing over a thousand of these bad boys in Haiti and it’s accepting donations to distribute them in Pakistan as well. Hit the source link to see how you can help. PR after the break.
The Solar-Breeze robot is the perfect companion to the Roomba, Scooba, and any other robot you have cleaning your house.
An intelligent swimming pool surface skimmer with an attached chlorine dispenser, this robot removes surface debris, including leaves, organic material, pollens, dust, and even suntan oils. As the name states, this robot runs on solar power. Just leave the robot in the pool and it will continuously swim around, cleaning, while the sun shines.
The internal Lithium Ion batteries are charged by the sun during the day, so it can run at night and cloudy days for several hours, as well.
The rear paddle wheel propels the robot through the water while the front paddle wheel scoops the surface debris and film into the collection tray, located underneath. Bumper wheels on the corners rotate the Solar Breeze to a new direction whenever it bumps into the wall. It is designed to stay near the edges of the pool where dirt and debris generally accummulate. It changes directions to get around obstacles or to get to the other end of the pool.
Removing the junk from the pool before it sinks to the pool means no bottom cleaning or filtering. That’s a savings because the pump doesn’t need to be run as much. It’s also a time-saver over the manual pool skimmer.
Tagged with a $500 price tag from Solar Pool Technologies, it’s a little pricey, but you don’t want to deny your cleaning robots a new friend, do you?
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.
