There’s nothing quite like renewable energy on-the-go, and Voltaic makes solar power a stylish accessory with a hot lineup of solar powered bags to charge your mobile gadgets. We’ve been impressed with Voltaic’s products from the get go, and with their ongoing efforts to amp up the sustainability factor in their bags like boosting the power in their Generator laptop bag and going to 100% post-consumer recycled PET plastic based fabrics. One of our all-time favorite bags is the durable Voltaic Backpack which just may be the ultimate sustainable summertime sidekick and a must have for the eco-geek on the go. And this week, you can win a free Voltaic solar backpack, just for reading Inhabitat!
The emergence of hot summer weather and sun-worshiping has inspired the latest and greatest Inhabitat contest: Summer Green Gadget Giveway. Over the next two weeks, we are giving away a bunch of great prizes to Inhabitat readers, all in the spirit of summer fun. And unlike some of the other competitions we’ve run in the past - this one is pretty easy to enter and open to everyone, regardless of design talent or time. All you need to do is register and signup to subscribe to Inhabitat through our weekly newsletter!
CherryPal is taking cloud computing mainstream in a big way with a soon to be released green personal computer. This green PC comes in a small, affordable package weighing just 10.5 ounces and consuming no more than two watts of power. The triple-core processor only has one fifth of the components of traditional computers, boots-up in 20 seconds, and promises to be faster than Vista and mac’s OS-X.
Summer is finally well under way and we are looking forward to getting a chance to appreciate the great outdoors and soaking up some summer rays. Any of you who have been reading Inhabitat for awhile probably know that we love to run contests here on this website, and now its time for a new one - in honor of summer!
The OSP robot is an ingenious solution to something that has devastling effects on wildlife and the environment: oil spills. The faster a spill can be dealt with - the better the outcome. With this in mind, product designer Ji-hoon Kim has come up with a set of modular oil-cleaning robots that can be quickly transported to the scene of an oil spill by helicopter or boat. Once deployed, the little oil-busting robots connect and contain the spill with an inflatable barrier, after which point cleanup teams can come in and manage a less severe disaster.
It’s something that could happen to us all - accruing so many USB-bound gadgets that there’s no way to keep them all charged. They clutter the desk and drawers, constantly vying for attention from the laptop, which is plugged into an outlet, which supplies a current, which despite PG&E’s best intentions has a long way to go before it’s clean and green. This trusty hand-cranked superbattery stands in where the grid falls short, instantly providing any USB gizmo with a renewable energy source - one embedded deep within your biceps.
If only plants could speak, it would be so much easier to take care of them. Thats why our faces lit up when we spotted this awesome Digital Pot by Junyi Heo. Designed to relay the needs of individual plants through an interactive display of simulated plant ‘facial expressions’, this idea just might make green thumbs out of the most challenged window gardeners. Trying to make plants speak might be a bit challenging, but with such a cute face on this design, we couldn’t resist learning more.
Clearly a design better suited to sunny Italy than our native London, Toshiyuki Kita’s Sunplant, which we spotted in Milan this year, is an elaborate outdoor energy installation that fuses art with environmentally friendly gadget power. It’s a lovely metaphor: energy from the sun hits one of the plant’s eight PV panel ‘leaves’, which is then used to recharge up to 48 AA batteries that sit at the installation’s centre.
If you read Inhabitat with any frequency, you know we are always on the lookout for greener gadgets that will reduce the amount of energy and waste associated with wireless mobility. Well, we just spotted some breaking greener gadget news that are sure to get Apple fans excited! Drumroll please..
Apple just filed a patent to infuse their hand-helds and computers with a thin film of solar cells, paving the way for a new generation of gadgets with battery life boosted by the sun. The patent approaches the prospect from every angle, with schematics to stack photovoltaic cells beneath the entire surface of their portables - including the screen!
Solar power is taking the world by storm, and these days its easy to find solar powered chargers, solar powered lights and solar powered laptop bags. So you know it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a solar power work table. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense - what better place to charge your gadgets with renewable energy than the table you are working at. The SOLo Lounge Table, by Intelligent Forms, is a sleek, chic outdoor table that not only looks fantastic, but comes with a built-in solar panel surface in order to power all of your electronic gadgets!
Imagine if R2D2 didn’t project images of Princess Leia, but rather an assessment of local superfund sites. Objectively, it’s nothing like the very adorable R2D2, but the Environmental Risk Assessment Rover (ERAR) by EcoArtTech is proving to be a very useful and devoted robot friend. Solar powered and GPS-oriented, the ERAR analyzes data from its surroundings, including air quality, local traffic accidents, and current terrorist warning levels. The rover breaks its findings down into fourteen unique (and pretty funny) categories, everything from “Plastic Bags” to “Regis and Kelly”, and projects them onto nearby natural surfaces. Just like the Princess Leia projection, right? Okay, not really, nor with the cute little meeps and whistles, but this thought-provoking rover sends a more urgent and critical message.
We love our green fashion here at Inhabitat, but ‘green gadget couture’ is something for us to really get charged up about! This white (hot) tiled frock (think Paco Rabanne circa mid-1960’s) is the quintessential Day-For-Night eco-fashion number, as it passively soaks up the sun’s rays during the daytime so that you can be a flashy fashion power pack at night. Showcased at Siggraph some time ago, we thought that we would resuscitate this eco-chic modular dress for another groovy go around on the sustainable style circuit.
High-end watchmaker Urwerk is bringing new meaning to the term “small wind” by replacing the traditional self-winding mechanism in their UR-202 watch with miniature wind turbines. While this small scale turbine installation isn’t solving any energy crisis, it is a step towards better design, and a wind-driven move that extends the life of this distinctive timepiece. While we’ve seen wind turbine technology in many forms, from large, powerful designs that can power neighborhoods, to small hand-held devices that can charge your mobile gadgets, we can’t recall any innovation that used wind power in such a small (yet significant) detail.
Office Workers rejoice! No longer shall sweet Spring breezes and the splendid Summer sun tempt thy shade-drawn domain! Shirk off thy cubicles, thy mouse and keyboard manacles! Too dramatic? Well, at any rate, this solar powered outdoor workspace by Mathias Schnyder offers an attractive office alternative for desk-bound drones seeking to brighten their work environment.
We have seen mobile media players go green by utilizing the wind, the sun and our own muscles, what about when we use those gadgets in our home? Vers Audio has taken on the task to provide our homes with a more sustainable sound, with a more sustainable design. Vers Audio’s Vers 2x uses a sustainably harvested cherry wood veneer, providing your mp3 players with a sleek green home.
Imagine your next summer backyard party: the sun has just gone down, the music is playing, and, as the breeze picks up, the lights come on from a string of solar powered, wind-lit LED lights. This innovative design for enchanting outdoor lighting is from Yoshihiro Shimomura, a circuit designer design lecturer at Chiba University in Japan. Shimomura first used battery powered prototypes for his wind-lit creations but has since upgraded to tap into the sun’s energy to light up summer nights.
Portable green power sources are steadily gaining momentum as alternative energy tech gears up to help shoulder the strain of our overloaded energy grids. This recently released generator, dubbed the PowerCube 6000, is showing plenty of potential as an all-inclusive clean energy system. Whether you’re greening your home’s energy sources, preparing for an emergency, or opening up a Black Rock smoothie stand, the PowerCube offers an enticing (if expensive) way to break free from the grid.
Today’s microchips, while tiny, still use a fair ammount of power. This means that batteries have to be large and don’t usually last very long. But what if microchips were just a little bit more efficient? That’s what a team of engineers at MIT was thinking when they set out to redesign the microchip to make it even more efficient. The result is a microchip with a power consumption that is so low it can be recharged by your very own body heat.
It’s no secret that we’re fans of greener gadgets here at Inhabitat. When you want all the functionality of your favorite gadget and can enjoy it in a more environmentally-friendly manner, it’s the best of both worlds. And on that note, we are excited to announce that now there’s a new environmentally-friendly, solar-powered option for portable media players! The eMotion Solar PMP, a solar powered mp3 and video player, just hit the market for all your off-the-grid, green energy powered media needs.
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.
Here’s a great idea for a cell-phone that is thoroughly green in every way: from its biodegradable bamboo materials, to its thoughtfully considered lifecycle, to its ingenious use of kinetic human power to charge the battery with renewable energy. The ‘Bamboo’ phone, by Dutch designer Gert-Jan van Breugel was one of the finalists shortlisted at this year’s 2008 Greener Gadgets Design Competition (and Jill’s personal favorite). Although this design didn’t end up winning one of the coveted top three prizes in the competition, it certainly caught our kinetic-energy-loving eye.
Ever wished you could charge your cell phones and laptop on the go - in your car, on a train, or just walking around? There are many new gadgets for mobile renewable energy: from solar gadget chargers, to kinetic energy chargers, to mini portable wind turbines. Check out this video to learn a bit more about some of the companies behind the most future-forward new mobile renewable energy devices.
If you thought rechargeable batteries were a good green idea, the USBCELL rechargeable battery will blow your mind- it plugs into any computer’s USB port to recharge. It’s a standard AA battery which will fit into all your every day uses. We’re not the only ones amped up about USBCELL- today at CEBIT, the green battery was awarded a Gold award at the IF Product Design ceremony. Produced by Moixa Energy, has a flip cap top that houses the USB port, and can be used like any regular AA battery. Not to mention, it cuts back on the nearly 15 billion Alkaline batteries made and thrown away each year.
Gravia, a gravity based kinetic energy lamp concept, wowed our panel judges and the crowd at the Greener Gadgets Conference, earning a second place accolade in the design competition. Created by Clay Moulton, Gravia evokes the lines of a classic timepiece in a modern aesthetic and uses human powered kinetic energy to light an ambient LED floorlamp. It’s a fantastic concept - but one that has stirred up some debate across the blogosphere recently in regards to whether or not it is possible to build such a lamp right now with the technology that exists today.
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