
Soccket: Kick a Ball, Light a Room - revorad
http://www.livetotry.com/2010/12/30/2-5-lin-matthews-silverman-thakkar-kick-a-ball-light-a-room-the-four-women-engineers-of-soccket/
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justin_vanw
It's patronizing shit like this, western world. 3rd world people can't be
bothered to turn a crank for 5 seconds to get hours of reading light from an
led, but you can trick them into it by sneaking it into a football?

Next we can make the goal-nets out of mosquito netting, so we can trick them
out of dying of milaria.

~~~
brianbreslin
i don't see anything wrong with "westerners" trying to figure out simple
solutions for real problems the third world is facing. Many are completely
impractical, but what if the tech from this device can inspire a more
practical kinetic energy capture device? why not?

~~~
justin_vanw
Why not indeed. I'm not saying we should ban people from making stupid
garbage, I'm merely pointing out that this particular thing is stupid garbage.

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sbierwagen
If you want to learn the merit of a product, look at how the inventors are
spinning it. Here you see they're playing up how it'll make the lives of
impoverished African orphan children better, and how it was created by a team
of women, rather than the evil terrible Patriarchy.

This is colloquially referred to as a "bad sign".

In all seriousness, though, this looks like a pretty crappy product. "Shake-
light" generators like these are already pretty miserably inefficient, and
you'll only be getting maximum power when a kick is perfectly aligned with the
axis of the coil, with the magnet at the far end. If you kick it at a right
angle to the coil, or with the magnet at the near end, then it won't generate
any power at all, and, even better, will react differently to the kick.

You could use three generators, for all three axises, but that would triple
the BOM, and the magnets will interfere with each other. And you _still_ have
the "magnet on the wrong end" problem, and the damn thing will _still_ wobble.

Additionally, electronics designed for use in adverse environments can either
be cheap, or they can be good. Soccket could make them cheap enough that the
target demographic could actually buy them, and get tons of bad press when
they break more or less instantly, or they can make them good, and have one
NGO buy a hundred of them... and have them break slightly less frequently.
Soccer balls are not terribly durable, (because they have to be light enough
to kick) and when your reputation rides on miraculously making them much more
so, you're in trouble.

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winfred
I've looked at this "product" a while back when it showed up on Reddit (It's
been around for about three years). If you look for at the background info of
the designers, you'll see they have a marketing background, not engineering.
And to construct their prototype, they actually took on those shake
flashlights apart and stuck it in a ball.

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alanh
Blaarghhh why is this invention framed in terms of “Look some women invented
something!” instead of letting the focus be on, you know, the invention?

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lwat
Cause frankly, the invention sucks.

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orls
Aside from any discussion of the spin, 1st-world do-gooding etc, the absolute
bottom line for whether this actually does any good is cost (closely followed
by distribution/organization).

There's a veritable glut of seriously awesome designs designed to bring
benefit in the developing world -- two of my favourites in the last decade are
ColaLife (<http://www.colalife.org/> ) and Josh Silver's liquid adjustable
glasses ([http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/22/diy-
adjustable...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/22/diy-adjustable-
glasses-josh-silver) ). While both are incredibly neat, both seem to have have
had poor traction (the glasses are, admittedly, doing well, but there's 20
years of work and still only a relative handful in the wild.

In the CNN interview they mention it's provisionally "Not that much more
expensive than a regular high-end soccer ball". Sounds like they plan to use
the XO get-one-give-one plan.

Unless they can lower the cost, and come up with a funding scheme that doesn't
rely on a few nice folk in rich companies buying what will essentially be a
useless novelty to them, I don't hold out too much hope for this changing any
lives very soon. Sadly.

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Encosia
Superficially, that seems like a great idea. I'd be concerned about wear and
weight though.

What happens when it's kicked into a pole, a car, a wall, etc? What happens
when someone directly kicks the output port? I can't imagine this _not_ being
quickly damaged in real use.

Would it weigh more than a regular ball? Seems like it would have to. Worse,
the internal movement would probably cause it to "wobble" through the air, at
least a bit. Wouldn't kids avoid a ball that played different than regulation?

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tommi
It does not have to be perfect. The children who are likely to play with this
have different standards than rich kids expecting to be professionals. As long
as it can take the wear and tear, it's just fine.

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Encosia
Using standardized gear doesn't really have much to do with expecting to go
pro. It's painfully frustrating to play most any sport or game when the
results of your actions aren't consistent.

Couple that frustration with the fact that regulation balls are common and
_cheaper_ , and I don't think you'll find these popular at all in practice.

I'd like to be wrong about that; it would be great if it worked out. I just
don't think there's much chance of it going anywhere in reality. Any money
behind this would be better spent on distributing small solar panels and
batteries to serve the same purpose.

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rmah
Inventions such as this give me hope for the future of humanity.

~~~
mhb
At least for the third world orthopedists who get to treat the kids' knees.

