Presenting.... the Juicebox (v1.0)
update 20080708: four years later, and all my charging woes have evaporated thanks to device convergence, ubiquitous USB charging, and a universal charger. See this page. That's evolution, baby.
"One bag to hold them all,
One bag to drag them,
One cord to power all,
And in the darkness charge them."
A couple of days ago I made this post about my 'Juice box', a set of adapters cleverly concealed in my backpack to resolve all my gadget-recharging needs. I promised to post some pics, so here you go.
Here you see my backpack. Nice and sturdy Samsonite, it has a special notebook enclosure with padding.
When the front flap is open, you can see the USB hub to which are connected a BT receiver, iPod sync cable, palm sync cable and webcam cable. Behind the cables sticking in the hub you see the BT gps receiver (from www.tomtom.com), to the right of the hub the webcam itself, beneath it a pen (with a little LED light, yay!). And below that my two toolkits, one containing often used tools (crosscable, various jeweller's screwdrivers,knife, PCMCIA HD, USB storage, and sticky notes) and the other containing various nuts and bolts, some PCMCIA network cards, some torque screwdrivers, and some electrician's tape)
The inside; here you can see the charging stations for the various gadgets (from left to right Dell Axim X3i, Jabra BT250 headset, Nokia 6310i, and apple iPod, and in front of them the guts of the juicebox, a plastic container with all the adapters. The juicebox needs 1 power cable to recharge all gadgets.
And a shot of the opened juicebox... I really need to work on those wires! (something for version 2.0, as you can see, there is lots of unused space so I think I might be able to build a more compact version. Also, some kind of autoretracting cable setup would be nice). At least all the adapters are rate 100-240 volt so I should be allright most everywhere. And the heating of the various chargers isn't as bad as I had expected.
UPDATE: After several months of use it is still working great! I removed the webcam because who the hell uses a webcam? I just plug my digital camera into the usb hub and off we go! I haven't been able to locate a custom autoretractable cable thingie (don't know the english word for it, really) where you can thread your own cable.I discovered that taking it through customs at the airport isn't really an issue (I was really worried about what they would think about a semi-opaque plastic box with lots of protruding wires; I saw it on the X-ray scanner, it looks just like a bunch of adapters. The box doesn't show (duh, it's just plastic. I should've thought of that).
UPDATE2: Upgrading turns out to be easy too. As I left my last job I had to turn in my IBM. In my new job I was given a Dell. I opened the plastic container, removed the IBM adapter and plonked in the Dell adapter. Done! Right now it supplies power to: Dell axim X3i PDA, Dell Latitude D400 notebook, Nokia 6310i, Bluetooth GPS device, Jabra Bluetooth headset and my ipod. I've taken it through customs many many many times, no official has even opened my bag, yet.
The configuration has changed somewhat (click the thumbnail above to see the guts of the juicebox with everything attached); I traded the IBM for a smaller Dell D400, with built-in wifi and bluetooth and removed the plain ipod charger in favor of a solio solar ipod charger that can also charge a pda or phone and can charge an ipod through the adapter as well a by the sun (built-in battery).
Tagged hardware,DIY,gadgets
7 reacties:
Great stuff! I wish i had one *hint hint*
Ever think of grabbing a patent and trying to get this thing into production? I think me and a few thousand other "extream geeks" would buy them!
ah, too late on that- http://www.apc.com/tools/travelpower/index.cfm
for cool factor, your's wins out hands down, tho. Ace work
So now we can dangle from wires Tom Cruise/Neo/Lone Gunmen style while we hack into the evil corporation/Matrix/FBI and don't worry about the batteries running low (assuming of course there's a plug next to where we're floating)... Cool gadgetry - is it anywhere near necessary though? Unless you're a spy or sth I can't see a reason. Embed everything under your skin and then we're in business... :)
Well, for my job I travel across Europe quite a lot; It's a drag to come into your hotel at night, and have to locate enough power points to plug in even the bare minumum, let alone all the crap I carry on a daily basis.
Therefore: the Juicebox. Cable > plug > done.
Of course, the embedding thing is the next move ;)
I would be worried about heat buildup in the box. Some of the wallwarts I have get quite warm... A flaming backpack would not look so cool [har!]
awesome rig! nice work.
although it looks like an airport security nightmare.
Let us know how you make out.
Just don't walk too close to a Federal building with that thing though, unless you want to spend several hours explaining yourself in a 6 x 9-foot room... "Really, officer, it's just to power my MP3 player..."
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