Orange goes green for festival phone-fuelling

Eco-warriors planning to head down to the Glastonbury mud festival - sorry, music festival - later this month will be able to re-charge their mobile phones in an almost entirely carbon-neutral fashion. Orange's wind-powered phone charger Orange's wind-powered phone charger: UK climate friendly Orange today launched a …

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm

Surely, like the old white earphones, having that stuck to the top of your tent while you're off moshing is going to tell all and sundry, 'Hey! I've got my phone on charge! Help yourself. You might want to remove the simlock though, it's on Orange.'

[Jamie]

I want one!!

where can you get hold of one of these genius devices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Green my arse

And how is this in any way efficient? What about the manufacturing overhead which will be amortised over, what, a day and a half until someone sits on the thing or it gets nicked?

Far better to plug into mains power. Probably still better to charge off disposable alkalines.

[Anonymous Coward]

And when you return..

.. Somebody has nicked your lovely orange windmill.. Maybe it could be attached to a helmet to prevent theft?

[Silas]

Please tell me

1. When can I get one of those?

2. How much it will be?

3. Why you're telling me about things I can't buy yet?

[Jeff Jenkins]

So where do I get one?

Can you order these yet? I can't find anything on the Orange site.

[Rob]

strong gusts

I'd be more concerned that it was capable of being anchored against strong theives personally.

[Brett Brennan]

Can we get this in "Cash 'n' Carrion?

This is a swell little accessory! Can El Reg offer it up through Cash 'n' Carrion for those of us Colonists that aren't Orange subscribers?

[A J Stiles]

They're taking WHAT?!

You mean to tell me people actually take mobile phones to pot fest ..... er ..... pop festivals?

I despair of this generation, really I do.

In my day, we may well have dreamed that some sort of two-way radio might be a useful thing to take to a festival. No doubt there were even some folk resourceful enough to have improvised devices for senselessly wasting 9-volt batteries using naught but old tobacco tins, Veroboard, coils painstakingly wound on ferrite cores with the aid of a Qualcast Clipper Double Pinion hand-drill and parts scavenged out of broken wireless sets. Some of which might even have succeeded in propagating a signal further than the unassisted voice -- for just a few seconds before the batteries became irretrievably spent.

Besides which, all decent festival frolics used to involve getting naked. And where on earth would you put a mobile phone then, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah.

You want a powermonkey, pocket-sized and able to charge just about anything under the sun.

www.powermonkey.co.uk

Got mine and a friend's mobile through download festival last weekend, and is considerably smaller and less conspicuous than a windmill on top of your tent.

[Dale]

What else can it power!

I like to backpack and would love to be able to bring one of these things around with me. If only it could power some sort of cooling device, oh to have a cold drink while miles away from civilization would be great!!!!

[Ben]

More info here

Thanks for the comments.

I designed and made this prototype for Orange.

You can view more details on my website

www.gotwind.org

[Silas]

So

A J Stiles; not wishing to sound like I'm down wiv ver kids, but these new mobile things are so small and light, you can wear them around your neck on a lanyard. With the added benefit that you can take photos of the people you get naked with. And publish them on t'interweb or do live streaming.

Ben; how can I get one if I'm not intending to go to Glastonbury but to the much more divine Roskilde one instead? I can't see anything on your site about how to get one!

[Steve]

The Future is Green,

get wind of it.

LOL, was on your site before or after getting involved with Orange? Nice ideas Ben!