The PhoneBoy Blog


Simplifying Telecom, Mobile Phones, Gadgets, Health, and More!

Inflight Power Recharger

The one problem I have with traveling is that most of the airlines don’t put power jacks at the seat. You might get lucky on a cross-country flight, but on short-hop flights like I usually take, you’re lucky if they give you peanuts and a drink, let alone power.

Enter the Inflight Power Recharger. The theory behind this gadget is that you can use the power that comes from a headset jack to charge your gear that charges with a USB cable. Historically, planes have had headset jacks in them, and at least one loud audio channel–the louder, the better for the charging process. I’ve found plenty of planes that didn’t have them recently, so even this is not a guarantee.

How does this work? Capacitors. They store the energy captured from the audio system and when it gets enough, pumps it through the USB port. It takes a few minutes to store up enough energy to actually charge anything. To help keep things consistent, you can also seed the device with 2 AAA batteries, which quite honestly, will do more to charge your USB devices than capturing the power from audio signals will.

Take a look at this video, where I demonstrate the product in action:

Zemanta Pixie
Play

#Cybersecurity Evangelist, Podcaster, #noagenda Producer, Frequenter of shiny metal tubes, Expressor of personal opinions, and of course, a coffee achiever.