
Energy-generating soccer ball wins Popular Mechanics prize - robg
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/09/energy-generati_1.html?p1=Upbox_links
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gregable
I'm not an expert, but this sounds like useless crap. The comment in the
article mentions that this "could come in handy in sub-Saharan Africa, where
less than 25 percent of the population has reliable electricity". My best
understanding of this statement, from limited experience in africa, is that
grid electricity is available but a little unreliable - it goes down
frequently. This soccer ball will have expensive electronics for capturing
energy and an expensive battery. Of course, if I have intermittent grid power
and a battery, I'm already all set. I don't need the electronics to capture
the kinetic energy. Worse, if this thing breaks in any way - and it's
literally getting kicked around - to repair the innards probably requires
cutting the soccer ball in half, which makes it pretty unlikely to be
repairable.

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dandelany
I know it's just a prototype, but would it kill a mainstream news outlet to
report an actual wattage number instead of "enough energy to do X for Y
hours"?

Assuming (conservatively) three wicked-bright LED's at a quarter-watt a piece,
that's .75 * 3 = 2.25 watt hours. This is in the range of a rechargeable AA
battery (2000 mAh * 1.2v = 2.4 Wh)

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CrazedGeek
Official site: <http://www.soccket.com/>

Can't buy one yet, though. Looks very promising.

