Get-cher green gadgets here: New universal power adapter, spec for low-power remote controls
OK, boys and girls who love gadgets, it's time to get ready for the blitz of pre-announcements associated with the Consumer Electronics Show. I'm sure it won't shock you to hear that green tech will be a major theme with those vendors intrepid enough to make it out to Las Vegas. I've come across two products so far that warrant some coverage. I'm sure I'll be subjected to more, but these intrigued me.
The first, a collaboration of Innergie and Green Plug, is a universal power adapter that uses Greentalk, an open systems intelligent power interface that is supposed to make it possible for you to use just one adapter, yes one, to charge all of your different electronics devices. It's called the mCube 90G.
Here's what the Innergie mCube 90G looks like:
The charger can simultaneously charge up different devices, even if they have different voltage needs. It comes in two pieces so that you can also use it with a DC power source, like the kind you would find on an airplane or in your car. If you look at the compatibility list, the device can be used with many tier one notebooks. Sadly, though, it appears that my Apple laptop wouldn't be supported. The gadget carries a suggested retail price of $129.99.
The other technology that's sorta interesting for the multiple remote control crowd is a new reference design from GreenPeak, a company based in the Netherlands, that is for a radio frequency remote controller that can basically run its entire lifetime off a single watch battery. The big deal on radio frequency versus infrared is that it doesn't require line of sight to work, which means you could control the television in your living room from your kitchen if the mood moved you. OK, if remote controls don't excite you, the design is an interesting development because it can be applied across lots of other wireless applications that need to run in low-power environments that can't be serviced all that often. It is 2.4 GHz, IEEE 802.14.4-compliant. Here's more about the reference design.