Category Archives: Gadgets and Tech
And if you’ve been under the impression that dollar bills are the nearest an ATM machine can ever get to having anything to do with “green”, think again! Expert Group, Inc. will now begin setting up green solar powered ATM machines across Miami, particularly in high traffic areas, giving other Automated Teller Machines an inspiration of eco-friendliness to feed on. These machines will make use of energy from the sun and boast solar panels connected to a circuit breaker board, which feeds a power controller which stores part of the energy collected for use during the darker hours. The firm plans to set up about a 100 of these sparkling green ATM machines in Miami soon.
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Every time you crumple up a page of paper and toss it into the dust-bin, you’ve got to realize that a tree was sacrificed to provide you with that sheet of writing material. Designer Kim Su Yeon has come up with a concept we just can’t keep our eyes off! The Ink Remover Printer as its known, does just what its name suggests i.e. erases ink fro printed sheets, spitting out clean and blank pages for re-use. Using a printer as such, you probably would never need to toss another ball of paper into the bin ever again!
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If you’ve been trying to figure out just how much juice your three-bedroom terraced house has been sucking out of the grid every year, here’s an entertaining and informative way to do the same. Called the Interactive Carbon Calculator House, this little model contraption uses animatronic and light-up parts and two live displays that throw up information, changing according to the energy-saving systems you add and deduct from your home-grid. Powered by rechargeable batteries, this model home includes a thermostat dial, a washing machine dial, an energy saving bulbs switch and a load of similar features that you can add and remove from the home energy systems, subsequently making changes in what your real-time energy usage will be like!
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For the uninitiated, 3D printing is just what it’s name suggests; printing out 3D objects, with machines to chisel and shape the object to perfection. Markus Kayser took 3D printing to new heights, with a contraption of his own, that not only comes up with some pretty detailed objects, but also functions in a green way, using the sun to power up. Kayser took his 3D printer out in the Sahara desert and using the sun shining down bright, came up with some pretty sound 3D prints. And that’s not all. Kayser also used materials found right out of the desert for this, including sand.
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If you spend the better half of your life visiting uproarious rock concerts and the like, here’s the perfect apparel for you. The next time you step out to watch the Prodigy or Slipknot for instance, chuck your old band T-shirt away and done this awesome one, that converts all the sound energy being blasted out of those speakers into usable electricity, that you could charge your phone with! Using an A4 panel with a modified film that works like a giant microphone of sorts, the T-shirt absorbs the sound energy and converts it into electricity using compressing interlacing quartz crystals. The electricity created is then stored in a battery which in turn is capable of juicing up your portable devices!
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Afghanistan, a land that has suffered multiple punches from war, is now being hooked on to the internet, in an eco-friendly and innovative way. United States aide workers are working on a pilot project in Afghanistan called the FabFi, the project is essentially an inexpensive internet setup that costs just about $60, and makes use of everyday items enabling Afghanis to connect to the internet with substantially high speeds. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation and funds chipped in by the group members themselves, the project uses homemade RF reflectors made from wood, metal, plastics, stone, clay, or any other locally available product and can be juiced up with an automobile battery, making it sustainable and less grid-reliant!
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With the rate at which fossil fuels are slowly depleting bowels of the earth, humankind sure as hell needs to find newer ways to power up, and is seemingly doing so on a respectable scale these days. Researchers at the RMIT University in Melbourne have come up with a fantastic way to keep you powered up, on the go. These brainy folk are busy sculpting shoes that could, if all goes as planned that is, generate energy as you move, making use of piezoelectricity coupled with a thin film microchip coating, perfect to generate energy that could turn your gym-time more fruitful than ever.
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Laptops tend to waste a whole lot of space on the backsides of their screen-panels. Putting this space to constructive use, Samsung has come up with a solar-powered laptop that besides using pre-filled energy from the grid, also charges up with energy from the sun. With two hours of sunlight exposure generating enough charge to keep this one running for one additional hour, the NC215S solar-powered netbook comes with a 10.1″ 1024 x 600 matte display, 1GB of RAM, and a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N570 dual-core processor, enough to get your work done on the go in a jiffy in an eco-friendly way!
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Green workout machines have always left us grinning. Besides burning those calories away and giving your body a more human-like and a less-snowman like figure, these machines also generate electricity. To add to the bandwagon, we’ve brought to you the Wattbike. This one replicates a true cycling experience as far as possible, and allows for bicyclists to train hard, at the saying time showing just how much energy they’ve created by cycling. In short, the Wattbike tells users just how much energy they’ve expelled and produced while training. Also, this one makes notes of just about everything, like the time you spend on it, your heart rate and such which can then be accessed via a computer or a smartphone.
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If you’ve got your facts right, might have noticed how amplifying a bamboo can really be. Using just these simple principals, designer Anatoliy Omelchenko came up with a green non-electricity using speaker for the iPhone 4. Using the natural resonance of a bamboo to amplify sound, the bamboo-speaker simply intensifies the stereo effect of the iPhone 4’s speakers. Measuring a foot long, these bamboo speakers are laser cut and finished by hand and are as eco-friendly as ever, given that bamboo grows fast unlike other sources of timber.
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