Macroware Technology
Christmas Gadgets 2005
posted Sunday, 1 January 2006
I love gadgets and tools. I received some interesting gadgets for Christmas this year that are described in this entry.
Excalibur Forever Flashlight III
This is a flashlight from Excalibur Electronics that does not need batteries. It is powered from a capacitor that is charged by shaking the flashlight back and forth. It appears that it uses the concept of electromagnetism to generate an electrical current by passing a magnetic cylinder through a coil of wire when it is shaken. The flashlight uses an LED bulb for high efficiency light generation, and the lifetime of the bulb is also very long and will never need to be replaced.
Overall, this is a cool gadget concept. It could use a little improvement though. The light bulb is not very bright compared to traditional battery powered flashlights even with a full charge, but it is sufficient. The Excalibur specs claim that it can provide 10 minutes of light from 30 seconds of shaking. Technically this is true, but from my testing with 1 minute of shaking you get about 5 minutes worth of usable light. After that it becomes so dim as to not be very useful. Definately a cool device, but look for it on sale - don't pay the full $29.95 for this one!
Brookstone Smartset Alarm Clock
This is an alarm clock from Brookstone that sets itself. The time and date setting in the device is programmed in the factory and maintained by the internal computer which is powered by a lithium battery. The main clock functions (alarm and display) are powered by AC when the unit is plugged into the wall. The unit automatically displays the correct time and date when you plug it in. All you have to set are the alarm times and the time zone. Even these settings are remembered in internal memory if there is a loss of power. You can replace the battery while the unit is powered by AC, so there is no loss of memory. The manual says that the battery should last at least 5 years. Daylight savings time adjustments are made automatically through the year 2097. You can manually adjust the time and date, and this will be the new default time and override the factory setting. When I plugged it in, the time matched very closely with another clock that I have that is set by the nationally broadcast atomic clock time. The alarm clock has 2 alarm settings that can be set and used independently. This is kind of a cool device, but the one problem I could see with it is that if the power goes out during the time when the alarm clock is supposed to go off, it will not work. For this reason I have always used a battery operated alarm clock. I will definately give this one a try though. So what if I'm late to work in the rare event of a power failure - in fact I think I'll just take a vacation day if that ever happens.
The only other issue is that the display is kind of bright even in dim mode; in bright mode you can practially light a room with the thing. It annoys my wife if I place it in the current location of my alarm clock, which is across from the bed and requires me to get out of bed to turn off to prevent the snooze button syndrome. So we're going to have to find a new location for it.
Excalibur Forever Flashlight III
This is a flashlight from Excalibur Electronics that does not need batteries. It is powered from a capacitor that is charged by shaking the flashlight back and forth. It appears that it uses the concept of electromagnetism to generate an electrical current by passing a magnetic cylinder through a coil of wire when it is shaken. The flashlight uses an LED bulb for high efficiency light generation, and the lifetime of the bulb is also very long and will never need to be replaced.
Overall, this is a cool gadget concept. It could use a little improvement though. The light bulb is not very bright compared to traditional battery powered flashlights even with a full charge, but it is sufficient. The Excalibur specs claim that it can provide 10 minutes of light from 30 seconds of shaking. Technically this is true, but from my testing with 1 minute of shaking you get about 5 minutes worth of usable light. After that it becomes so dim as to not be very useful. Definately a cool device, but look for it on sale - don't pay the full $29.95 for this one!
Brookstone Smartset Alarm Clock
This is an alarm clock from Brookstone that sets itself. The time and date setting in the device is programmed in the factory and maintained by the internal computer which is powered by a lithium battery. The main clock functions (alarm and display) are powered by AC when the unit is plugged into the wall. The unit automatically displays the correct time and date when you plug it in. All you have to set are the alarm times and the time zone. Even these settings are remembered in internal memory if there is a loss of power. You can replace the battery while the unit is powered by AC, so there is no loss of memory. The manual says that the battery should last at least 5 years. Daylight savings time adjustments are made automatically through the year 2097. You can manually adjust the time and date, and this will be the new default time and override the factory setting. When I plugged it in, the time matched very closely with another clock that I have that is set by the nationally broadcast atomic clock time. The alarm clock has 2 alarm settings that can be set and used independently. This is kind of a cool device, but the one problem I could see with it is that if the power goes out during the time when the alarm clock is supposed to go off, it will not work. For this reason I have always used a battery operated alarm clock. I will definately give this one a try though. So what if I'm late to work in the rare event of a power failure - in fact I think I'll just take a vacation day if that ever happens.
The only other issue is that the display is kind of bright even in dim mode; in bright mode you can practially light a room with the thing. It annoys my wife if I place it in the current location of my alarm clock, which is across from the bed and requires me to get out of bed to turn off to prevent the snooze button syndrome. So we're going to have to find a new location for it.
comments (1)