Last week we highlighted five clockwork gadgets that were perfect for anyone chasing electrical self-sufficiency. Trouble is, while they’re all practical, none of them is particularly entertaining. Even the mobile phone charger needs an adaptor before it can talk to your iPod.
That’s why the Hymini caught our eye. It’s a micro wind-power generator, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, that will charge any 5V gadget – a spec that covers a very broad gamut. Not only does it sound good in theory: it looks great, too. Here’s a grab from the maker’s site.
How does it work? Well, it has an internal battery, which can be charged using a conventional wall socket, a solar panel, a USB port in your computer or the integral turbine. Once fully charged, it can be plugged into whichever gadget you need to power, which then runs off its battery.
The turbine’s fans glow green when charging, and can top up the internal cell on a breeze of just 9mph. You’d easily achieve this while walking into a barely-noticable 4mph headwind, but if you use the optional adaptor to attach it to your bike – the creme de la creme of self-sufficient transport – you’re pretty much guaranteed a healthy charge.
Of course, it’s not a cure-all fix. 20 minutes of wind charging gives you 30 minutes of iPod playback, and then only if you’ve been stood out in a 19mph wind, but small, personal technologies like this could well be the future. Miniaturised turbines could be built into cars (perhaps behind the radiator) to charge the internal battery or, if engineered to maximum efficiency and installed in great enough numbers, to contribute to powering a hybrid vehicle entirely. The motion of the car would generate a wind to turn the blades, and the blades in turn would generate the power to keep the car in motion.
More exciting, though, would be the possibility of building micro generators of this sort in to new homes, doing away with the need for unattractive turbines in the back yard.
That’s still a long way off, and if it ever arrives, such technology is likely to be neither quite so small, nor quite so attractive. For the time being, though, we have the Hymini which, quite refreshingly, is a snip at $49 (£25). The bike adaptor is a bargain $8.99 (£4.59) through the online store.
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