GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

With their brand-new Google TV Blu-ray Players and much-loved universal remotes, you might think Logitech would let their well-established business in keyboard and mice coast a little bit. Instead, they’re coming out with a new wireless keyboard with a new wireless charger: the sun.

Actually, that’s not quite true either. The Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 may have solar in its name, but let’s face it: how much typing on a full-sized keyboard do most of us do in bright sunlight? Thankfully, “solar” here are a shorthand for “powered by any light source whatsover,” including the bare-incandescent bulb in your dank basement office.

Disclosure: I have a Logitech DiNovo wireless keyboard that I love — although I’m indifferent towards its plug-in charging cradle, which always seems to get unplugged when someone else in my house needs an outlet. I also have a solar-powered calculator from elementary school that I’ve loved since before puberty. So even though I have neither seen or used this keyboard, I am predisposed to be enthusiastic about it, in the hope that those solar cells across the top can keep the keyboard charged at least as well as my old solar-powered calculator.

Logitech says that the keyboard “can operate for up to three months in total darkness,” and they’re not shipping it with a separate plug-in charger, so they seem pretty confident. They’re also shipping a desktop app that helps “measure ambient light in the room, gives at-a-glance information about battery levels, and even alerts you when you need more power.”

So that covers the wireless charging. For wireless connection to your computer, the K750 doesn’t use Bluetooth, but 2.4 gHz wireless, meaning that you’ll need a plug-in USB receiver. I knew it! I knew you’d have to plug something in! Oh, well. For better connectivity, I guess I’ll take it.

Below, I’ve got the Logitech promotional video, which tauts its super-thin frame, $80 price and one of the better tech catchphrases I’ve heard in a while: “If you’ve got light, you’ve got power.”

H/T: Navneet Alang.

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Limor Fried’s MintyBoost project is a great example of DIY and commercial tech working together. Take an Altoids tin, a couple of AA batteries, and some very smart hackery, and you’ve got a lightweight USB charger that you can use to charge/run your handheld iWhatever, or almost any other phone, camera, or small device that can take a charge off USB power.

Reverse engineering Apple’s secret charging methods from adafruit industries on Vimeo.

Clive Thompson profiled Fried and her company Adafruit Industries as part of a 2008 feature in Wired on “open source hardware.” The idea is that hackers like Fried can use what they find out about consumer devices to make and sell their own products, but also to produce DIY kits and share information with others who then build their own projects.

As a case study in the value of sharing this information, consider Rob Scott. Before he took his son on a week-long bike trip, he used Fried’s schematic to hack together what turns out to be a really striking-looking solar charger for his son’s iPod.

It’s always nice to see what the maker community is doing to accessorize their retail gadgets; the results aren’t always super-polished, but they generally solve real problems in important use cases that don’t get addressed by manufacturers, either because they’re too unusual or they can’t be easily solved by more plugs, more peripherals, more complex devices that cost a lot of money. And in turn, we all find out a little bit more about how these magical devices get put together and how they work.

See Also:

• DIY Graphing Calculator Is Built From Open Source Hardware
• Why Arduino Is a Hit With Hardware Hackers
• Beautifully Hypnotic Video Details Canon Macro Lens Hack
• Hacker Stuffs MiFi Inside iPad, Ruins it in the Process

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Avoid dead camera batteries by putting a strip of solar panels on your camera strap. Simple, and rather clever, right? That’s exactly what Weng Jie’s Solar Camera Strap does, although in coming up with the design he forgot an important point: you can’t charge batteries while they are in the camera.

While some cameras come with charging docks or have their chargers built in so you just have to plug in a cable, most require a separate charger into which you pop the battery: a far better solution which doesn’t put your camera out of action as it juices up. Weng’s device runs the power generated by the strap into the camera’s DC-in socket via cable. This would let you use the camera as long as the light is bright, but there’d be no buffer if the Sun were to dip behind a cloud (there are a pair of batteries within the strap, but that’s not really ideal).

Still, those are mere details. Give me a way to use my camera all day without having to worry about running out of power and you’d have my cash. If you ever sell this strap, Weng, get in touch. And please, please make it in a darker color so it doesn’t pick up my neck-dirt.

Power Around My Neck [Yanko]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews