GadgetReview

So sometimes, you’re out in the middle of nowhere, your car is dead and so is your cell phone.  At times like that you start to wish you were carrying a little lightning in your pocket.  But the next best thing just might be the Power HotSpot from Solis.

The Power HotSpot is, basically, what it says it is, like a WiFi hotspot, only for power.  It’s a portable solar panel attached to a base unit that comprises a twelve volt power supply.  Anything with a car cigarette lighter–from a cell phone charger to a portable car fridge–can draw power from the unit.

Anyone calling this a portable unit is clearly stretching the definition of the term “portable”–it’s portable in the same way a car’s spare tire is.  That is, it fits in your trunk and can actually be carried for a while, but I wouldn’t try a mile walk with one.

Anything that generates solar power is pricey, of course, but this one isn’t too bad at $375.

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With Solar Power being about the greenest energy around, it still takes way too long.  These new bags from Mascotte Industrial Associates of Hong Kong use DSSC (Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells) technology to effectively store and convert solar power so your can charge your gadgets on your own time.

I really like the utilitarian approach to these bags but can’t help but think about the restless anxiety of waiting around for this bag to fully charge.  No word yet on pricing or availability but if your looking for a new bag anyway you may want to wait on these.

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If the ReNu solar powered iPhone docking system piqued your interest then listen up, because Regen is at it again.   The REVERB is a giant speaker that stands 35-inches high and can be powered by, you guessed it, the sun’s solar rays.  Up top is an Apple 30-pin dock, 2x USB ports, 1x USB input for charging the unit and a 4-inch LCD to display all the track info your eco heart desires.  Speaker wise were looking at a set of stereo drivers and a 6-inch subwoofer.  A full charge in direct sunlight outdoors takes 20 hours, while inside takes 40, which produces 4.5 hours of play time at full volume or 12 hours at ‘normal’ volume.

The REVERB will be available this coming April for a mere $2,299, but you can preorder one now for $500 down.

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The folks out at Dell have given us a pretty sweet gadget to check out.  Now, chances are, you’ve heard about a LOT of solar powered whatnot, especially right here.  And some of it is pretty strange.  Solar powered jackets, solar powered cars…well, now Dell’s going to bring you what may be the strangest solar powered device of all.

The solar powered parking lot.

I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen–Dell has put together a series of solar panel-laden paviliions in its parking lot designed to provide not only shade to the cars beneath in the hot sun, but also to take that sun and convert it into electrical energy by which employees can charge, at no cost to them, their plug-in hybrids and full-on electric vehicles.

The equivalent of free gas is a pretty nifty perk, and the crew out at Dell has to be feeling some love off of this one.

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If you’ve ever found yourself out hiking in the back end of beyond and come up against an emergency–a broken leg, a lost map, a witch chasing you and your friends, a family of inbred mountain people who think your girlfriend looks tastier than a twelve-course buffet, you know what I’m getting at–without a charged cell phone, then you’re going to love what I’ve got here.

It’s called the Solio Emergency Charger, and for $60, it’ll give you a little extra punch of power that fits in a backpack.  It’s a slightly downsized for travel version of the Solio charger, and though it takes twenty hours in direct sunlight to achieve maximum charge, it still offers that little extra spark of juice when you need it most.  It comes with USB adapter, charging cable, 12v adapter and universal tip cable to make sure all your gadgets get their bump.

It’s a pretty smart idea, even if twenty hours is a pretty long time and represents almost two full days you’d have to spend in the woods waiting for it to get full charge.  By then, the inbred mountain people will have already finished your girlfriend and have started wondering if you served with mint would make a better dessert or appetizer.

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Hey ladies–got a question specifically for you today.  How do you feel about the thought of a solar powered purse?

This isn’t some weird environmentalist joke–this is actually a purse that generates electricity from a layer of dye-sensitized solar cells.  Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin, cheap solar cells that can be built into most any article of clothing relatively inexpensively.

It’s not that they work really well, though–you’ll have to leave your handbag in the sun for four to five hours before you can generate juice sufficient to recharge your cell phone, but this is one of those cases where you can just sort of shrug and say, hey, free power.

The bags are a little on the pricey side, though.  They’re looking to bow in the $100-300 range, which is only slightly more expensive than your typical handbag. Plus it offers the whole solar-power option, which is awesome no matter how you slice it.

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Solar powered house, anyone?

Anyone looking for the house of the future should take note of the Solar Decathalon currently taking place at the National Mall in Washington DC.  This event brings together college students from around the world to build a house, no larger than eight hundred square feet, that runs entirely on solar power.  Everything from hot water heaters to power had to come from the sun, and the resulting houses are downright impressive.

Team Ontario, for instance, built what amounts to a giant glass cube that produces fully double its own power needs, allowing the homeowner to make a little extra cash selling the power back to the grid.  And frankly, they’ll need that little extra cash; these houses have an approximate street value of between $300,000 and $500,000.

If you’re out in the area, check it out.  The show runs through Saturday.

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LG is coming out with an amazing new gadget that’ll quite possibly change the way you think about summer: the solar-powered e-reader.

This is actually a whole lot of amazing in one sentence, so I’ll try and break it down into more manageable chunklets for you.  One, an e-reader that runs entirely on solar power is an exciting development.  Reading a book outside in the spring–or in some cases, summer–sun has long been a popular activity, but now you can take a library outside with you and have your choice when you finally settle in under that tree and set out to read.

Two, this is one of the first e-readers to be powered by the sun, thus every other e-reader is now going to have a significant bit of competition on its hands.  None of the other e-readers are powered by free sunlight, you know.  And buying batteries over and over, or paying the power company to recharge batteries, will always lose out to free recharge.  Every time.

Three, a solar panel capable of powering a gadget by itself, and still be portable?  This might be the start of something new and different in the whole solar panel industry.  It might take an entire roof’s worth of solar panels to make a five thousand watt generator, but one panel running an e-reader?  That’s interesting.

The LG solar e-reader represents several significant strides forward, and hopefully, we can get our hands on them fairly soon.

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Brando has made a “why didn’t I think of that” gadget in the form of their solar powered bluetooth headset.  Providing infinite standby time under direct sunlight, you can also charge it via USB through your computer or AC wall plug.  You can even buy two of them and use them simultaneously thanks to their stereo matching capabilities.  Why would you want to do that I wonder?  It would definitely look weird, but you’d at least have sides of your head displaying a bluetooth headset so you don’t look like you’re talking to yourself.  On sale now for $67 a piece.

[via Ubergizmo]

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It might sound hard to believe, but one of the best sources on earth for solar power is located right in your backyard.  Or possibly your front yard.

It sounds outlandish, but the more you think about it, the more you realize it has more truth than you think.  The object in question? A tree.

Trees, as it turns out, generate as much as 200 mV of power and do so reliably.  This is, of course, orders of magnitude less than your standard double AA battery, meaning you’d need the equivalent of an entire old-growth forest to power up a small flashlight.

However, there is a device called a boost converter that collects these ultra small voltages, and converts them into usable power.  This isn’t a very efficient process, and it won’t run a household current anytime soon.  A few hundred trees might be able to continuously pump juice into, say, a battery while you sleep for use in the morning.  But it does represent significant possibilities, and maybe even a really good reason to cut back on some logging operations.

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