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Hardware

Mouse Recharges Laptops 54

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hardware-I-wish-I-owned dept.
shogun writes "Compaq Australia has come up with a new mouse that integrates a miniature dynamo to recharge your laptops batterys from the movement of the mouse. You can find more information here. "
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Mouse Recharges Laptops More

Mouse Recharges Laptops

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  • Just Testing some Stuff
    Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
    Pants are Optional
  • Once againn Linux users are left out in the cold. Us CLI guys could really benefit from a kinetic superconducting keyboard generator ... hehe, something like that anyway? Just think of all the keystrokes that you make in the average minute ... we could recharge our laptops and perhaps power small kitchen appliances :-)

  • Heh. (Score:1)

    by drwiii ( 434 )
    Cute [compaq.com.au].
  • I didn't know a mere 45 seconds of mouse movement could give a battery 5 minutes worth of charge. This new technology means that we could play Quake for unlimited amounts of time!
  • I used a real hamster on a wheel instead to upgrade mine. It charges in HALF the time now! :)
  • Hehehe.

  • :-) (Score:1)

    by tzanger ( 1575 )
    I'm sorry but I can't help thinking that my stepson is gonna walk up to it, drag it backwards and then let go...

    ... and like so many McDonald's toys, the mouse will go screeching off towards my computer at Mach 1, the sound of plastic gears complaining bitterly from such violent movement. :-)

    ... and happy 01 Apr 1999 :-)
  • I suspect this is a joke, BUT. Given the actual possabilities for mobile computing....

    I remember the day when people were stuffing like 4 or more AA batteries into calculators and when no one ever thought solar power would be enough to be used for anything. Then the first few solar calculators that only worked in direct sunlight. Now, a dim flourecent light is enough to power them.

    A lightweight (power wise) laptop could potentially be powered by something other than a battery in the near future, it's a possability I don't write off so quickly. Technological challanges are more than power sources though, and a battery may always be nessessary for something similar to a UPS (save data before unexpected power failure).

    Solar is a serious consideration, and add to that this mouse consept... I think the mouse thing isn't so far fetched, during WWII I believe there were some "crank" powered radios... It could be a "supplemental" power source for a laptop in theory. The fact of the matter is, the thing holding it back would be that the resistance (physical resistance, not electrical) would have to be very high for a mouse. It would be a mouse you would have to put some serious physical energy into in order to move it. If users could deal with giving a trackball a good healthy push to move a pointer, or a mouse pad that was more like sandpaper, this might actually generate a small amount of power. The next steps though would be decreasing the power consumption of the hardware... Where I point back to the idea of calculators in the 70's, no one ever would have believed a "solar calculator" would be anything that could be taken seriously.

    Mind you, the first "adding machines" were just that, machines, not electrical devices. Physical power produced mathmatic results.

  • I'm really looking forward for tomorrow, so this stops again :)

    -- Jochen
  • No matter how credible the article, everyone's going to cry APRIL FOOlS. Announce linux kernel 2.2.6 and you'll get a slew of APRIL FOOLS responses. Aren't people paranoid these days... :-)

    -Eric
  • Annette Curtain and Sean Lam? Hoho!

    --


  • The headline, at least, is credible, considering the recent story about crankable laptops which mentioned a friction-based charging system whereby one would strike a `matchstick' against a strip of cells, thus providing power.

    As internal friction nubs angrily caress the mouse balls, we are energized.

    Har har.
  • Aren't we taking this April fools a little too far here.
  • Wait until you see our LICC -- Linux Internet Coffee Cooker(tm)!

    Sort of enjoy this. But good it's over tomorrow ;-)
  • Actually, the technology to do this exists now. Not enough to fully charge your batteries, but enough to slow down the discharge (how much? dunno, this is a back-of-envelope analysis).

    By attaching small magnets to the underside of the keys, and wires near the keys, then when you depress a key, a small electric current will be induced in the nearby wire. Of course, when you release the key, a reverse current is then induced -- we'd have to use itsy-bitsy rectifier bridges to maintain a positive voltage across the battery terminals, but with IC technology, that shouldn't be hard.

    Of course, you'll have to keep your floppies (and maybe hard drive) away from your keyboard now...

    cb
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • (no fooling)
    http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4549.html
    Christo pher A. Bohn
  • (prior art in my brain?)

    Would this be used on desktops? Do we have to stop every once in a while, pick up the mouse and give it a good shake? (I dont use the mouse, execpt for playing quake).

    Imagine is this built into your keyboard, now that would be something, evertime you type, something gets wound up inside your puter. Or you could always take the light emitting out of your monitor and convert it into engergy which could be reused by the computer.

    Hrm.
    --
  • Run blipverst in the lower right corner of the screen and use skin 'trodes to collect the electric potential released.

    keep up from blowing up too.

    people do just spontaneously... blow up sometimes, it does happen.
  • Sounds like they've found the answer to the world's energy problem.
    --
  • Not just The Age, but also The Advertiser (Adelaide) and suspect most major newspapers.
  • I've found my glycogen-based generator works much better. I took a heart-lung machine from a local hospital (they were auctioning off stuff like heart monitors, MRI equipment, ECG machines, type-AB blood, unused livers, &c.) and put in some mods so that it will extract glycogen/glucose from the blood and convert it to eletrical power. Hey--my heart does that, so why shouldn't I? The biggest problem sofar has been finding a way to eat 26,000 kJ worth of food each day (that's about 3500 food calories). OTOH, who else can have their beloved equipment so close to their heart?

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • If kernel 2.2.6 were announced, I wouldn't cry April Fool, because it would probably be for real. I'm just waiting for 2.2.5-ac1.

    What I really want is to get into the heavy stuff--the 2.3 kernel series. It's been too long between register panics!

    Ah, I feel good today. It's a lovely spring day, the kids are home from school, and the birds are singing.

  • ... harmless but funny ...

    That's what you think.

    There Is No Slashdot Conspiracy.

    <claps hand over mouth> I've said too much already.

    Cheers,
    Joshua "I just brushed my teeh five minutes ago after eating two bowls of Nutri-Grain" Rodd

  • I got rid of my hamster a long time ago (more accurately, the cat did). I just wired the Ctrl, Meta, and Delete keys on my neighbor's NT machine to a motor that charges a large flywheel. Whenever he/she (haven't figured out which he/she is yet) is installing, say, Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 Service Pack 1, I swear that the torque from my flywheel goes up by at least 12.500 N*m.
  • People who are unconvinced of the bogosity of this article could perhaps bear in mind a few novelties in the announcment. Firstly they claim to use a super-conducting dynamo. There is no mention of the mouse being immersed in a cryogen -- which would surely detract from its usefulness --, I would imagine that if anyone were to discover a room temperature superconductor, they would consider that more newsworthy than any application of it as a `kinetic' mouse. The energies involved just don't add up either. Consider that a mouse offers very little resistance to motion, if enough energy could be harvested from a dynamo attached to a mouse, and the mouse still be useable, then we wouldn't have the problems with laptop batteries we currently do.

    Can I suggest that Compaq investigate another source of power? Wind-ups. Something like a wind-up would do their PR department no end of good.
  • If you really want energy, why not use piezoelectric crystals? They are very sensitive to knocks, and they would work perfectly with my IBM "heavy -foot- touch" keyboard...


    (BTW very good design for the site, it took a long time to build it I guess... looks like there are some very good unemployed geeks out there... hire 'em!)
  • Last I heard Trevor Baylis - the inventor of the clockwork radio which can operate without batteries for 30mins after just 20secs of winding up ( http://www.durhamradio.ca/baygenb.htm [durhamradio.ca]) - was looking at using his wind up generator to power laptops for use in those places where electricity is scarce.
  • Now I just wish that I could order some of their racing stripes for my mouse.... wouldn't that be cool.
  • I for one am quite happy that Rob and Slashdot chose to celebrate April Fools Day. The Net has always been a rather jovial place and jokes and gags ae passed around everyday in e-mails, icqs, and web pages. If there is one place where fun hasen't been outlawed yet, it's the Internet. And I'm glad.

    Of course, a joke is a joke. Completely faked stories on a reputable news site (!) may actually cause some people to panic, seize up, explode, etc. Which is why I'm glad at least this story was included after the BeDope-UserFriendly-SegFault story. That story had no mention of April Fools Day and was more of a prank than a joke. At least this Compaq one took you on a ride and then let you in on the dirty little secret.

    Happy April Fools Day

  • /. (Score:1)

    by Ellis-D ( 19919 )
    Hmm. I'm suprised that /. hasn't done anything funny, like make the whole page upside down or something.....
  • The 'artical' failed to mention that it would take a 150lbs worth of force per minutes to use.. So basically that would equivlent to a running a mile. (I think)
  • Can change my darned options.. arggg
  • Even though this is joke, Apple (supposedly) is experimenting with wind-up power for educational laptops. The idea is to get a machine to run for 8 hours without needing to recharge the battery. You could twist a crank and recharge the battery with every revolution.

    Pretty goofy, huh?

    But kids might get a kick out of it.

    --
  • OK, since it is an out-there day, I'll go off topic for a moment....

    I want to purchase a DVD player for home, which I can also use with my computer (optimization of money spent)... but the dilemma... if I get a computer based DVD, then I don't have a remote... and the TV based DVD won't connect to my computer... so my solution?: DVD for computer with a cordless mouse! Logitech makes the cordless mouse with a 5-10 foot range (aaa batteries inside the mouse run the remote -- see the topic connection?).

    The mouse works perfectly in Linux being that the RF transmitters/recievers are independent of the OS. It only cost around $50(US) and I love it. You can view it at: Cordless Wheel Mouse [logitech.com]

    ...now I just need to save up the money for that DVD player... (by that time DVD-RW will be what I want)

    --The goal: A fully automated and customized home... (thank you DDC controls)
  • http://www.compaq.com.au/dynamouse/fool.html
  • Two legitimate (not April Fool's) projects are underway developing miniature fuel cells to power portable electronics. Robert Hockaday, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist on "entrepreneurial sabbatical," is developing a micro fuel cell for use in cellular phones. He's licensed the tech to Manhattan Scientifics (http://www.mhtx.com), and recently made a few calls on a cell phone with a pre-prototype device using alcohol as fuel. The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (http://www.ise.fhg.de/Press_Info/PI298.html) is developing a micro fuel cell specifically for notebook computer use. They demonstrated a prototype operating for 10 hours last fall.
  • Why don't companies use some of the empty space in mice to store batteries? Granted, the batteries wouldn't be that large, but some power is better than none in a pinch.
  • Did anyone else notice that the guy "driving" the mouse was giving us all the finger? As much as compaq hardware irritates me, I'm very happy to see that they have an indecent sense of humor. :-)
  • Sorry, not likely, until and unless the power requirements for computing go way down.

    A sedentary person, burning 2,000 calories per day, puts out about 100 watts. If you could harness all of that, you would barely have the power to keep a low end desktop computer running, much less its monitor. You can't harness anywhere near that; maybe ten, twenty watts tops. Of course, you can generate a whole lot more harnessable energy on an excercise bike, but that's a bit unwieldy for a laptop accessory.

    As far as harnessing the light from the monitor, there are two issues. The first one is, where is the energy from the monitor coming from? If it's coming from the computer, you have a perpetual motion machine--unlikely in the extreme. The second one is that, if you take the energy from the light of the monitor, you have no visible light left!
  • Can we say ERGONOMIC ISSUES? As if we weren't having problems already with CPS and the like, do we need to exert FORCE to move our mice? Somehow I think that there must be better solutions.

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