New Hand-Crank Media Player goes on sale!
by Jorge Chapa, 03/17/08
We love our kinetic energy here at Inhabitat, and we are excited to announce inventive use of human kinetic power: The brandnew 2 GB Eco Media Player is hand-crank portable media player can play music, video, and even charge your cellphone, all from a few seconds of cranking! What’s more renewable than human power? We love that someone finally had the brilliant idea to mix renewable energy generation with music & video – all the best things in life in one cute little package.
Created by well-known British inventor Trevor Baylis, (the inventor of the hand-crank radio), the Eco Media Player does pretty much everything that you would expect from a modern media device, and makes it ten times better with green renewable energy. It lets you play music, tune into the radio, and view photos and video. The Eco Media Player also can charge through USB plugged into your computer (though sadly, for Windows users only) and comes with it’s own software. It even comes with a LED torch! It’ll give you about 40 minutes of power per every minute of cranking, which may not seem like a lot – but it is pretty good for a small hand-crank device. The Eco Media Player will even allow you to charge your cell-phone, not something that is not commonly see as a feature in other players.
While we cannot attest to the usability of the player, we prefer to think of devices such as these more of a proof of a great concept. The thought that if these small companies can create devices that require no real electricity input, well then, isn’t it time for the big boys to step up to the plate?
Love the idea of using human-generated kinetic energy, but I’m curious about the materials and processes used to make it. Hopefully those are green too.