Friday, October 19, 2007

Fireflies to the rescue

I mentioned yesterday that Ethan Zuckerman, a friend and former colleague of mine, not to mention cofounder of Global Voices, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and a sometime contributor to Ideas, is currently blogging from Pop!Tech, the annual three-day gathering of scientists, inventors, geeks, philosophers, and thinkers in coastal Maine.

One presenter at Pop!Tech this year is Boston-based architect and product designer Sheila Kennedy, who is working on simple, reliable, durable, lightweight, and adaptable lighting for the developing world. Her inspiration? The firefly, which might be thought of as a portable, self-sustained "light engine."

Kennedy, who grew up in Woods Hole, is trying to adapt existing technologies to serve her purpose. Zuckerman reports: "The system she's created uses white LEDs, like those found in traffic signs; sealed plastic switches from dishwashers; Lithium ion batteries from mobile phones. The power source for the lights is a flexible solar cell, more similar to a non-woven fabric than a traditional solar panel.... Wrapped around the light is a soft fabric shell that diffuses and reflects the light."

The prototype device, pictured above, produces 100 lumens (more than enough to read by), using a 3.7 volt battery at 1.8 amps. It takes about three hours to charge in full sunlight, and provides 10 hours of light, or 5-6 hours with two lights. The devices currently cost about $40-50 to build in batches of 500.

"Kennedy wonders whether these devices could revolutionize education and the mobile phone industry in the developing world," Zuckerman notes, before concluding on a rather snarky note: "I wonder whether a team of hackers and makers could make a slightly less visually impressive version of this for about a quarter of the price."

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 10:31 AM

Print | E-mail to a friend | Permalink | Subscribe via rss