I challenge Transistor Sister

[OpenMike]

A challenge to TS to come up with five reasons why you need a crank
up radio....or a crank up light... or a crank up doll

ENLIGHTENED SHOPPER


Crank up the music


Freeplay radios and other products tuned-in to our `wind-up' world where we've seen the light

Nov 17, 2007 04:30 AM
David Rider
Toronto Star

Everybody be cool and put your hands in the air – this is a wind-up!

Relax. This strong-arming will actually fatten your wallet – with money you don't spend on batteries – and poses only the danger of a sore shoulder, should you need to quickly power up your radio, flashlight and cell phone.

A small range of crank-powered appliances are now popular enough to line the shelves of Home Depot and Canadian Tire, adding to an established and more varied presence at green-minded stores.

The devices are the everyday-consumer edge of a muscle-power movement regularly explored on the mega-blog boingboing.net, in Make Magazine (makezine.com) and on the HGTV reality show Living with Ed, where actor/environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. uses a stationary bike to power his toaster.

Trevor Baylis, a Briton who later licensed the technology to Freeplay Energy, which improved and expanded it to other devices, invented the wind-up radio in 1991 for use in developing countries. Today, Freeplay (freeplayenergy.com) and California-based Etón (etoncorp.com) lead a cranky pack, chased by cheaper copycats.

Freeplay products can be bought directly through the company's website, at Grassroots (two stores, grassrootsstores.com) and at Mountain Equipment Co-op (mec.ca). Etón products are sold at MEC and The Source by Circuit City (thesourcecc.com).

Freeplay's Kito flashlight ($22 to $30) has a single bright LED and promises one hour of light for every minute of cranking. It's the only Freeplay light that can't also be plugged in to juice it up.

A step up is the rugged but bulky Freeplay Sherpa Xray ($32 to $50), which has an LED cluster and high- and low-beam settings. One minute of winding is supposed to get you 30 minutes of low-beam light.

The company also sells a camping lantern, the Indigo ($35 to $45). A minute of cranking generates only six minutes at maximum brightness (and three hours at "nightlight" dim) but campers with small children will be happy not to worry about fuel and a flame.

The multi-purpose award has to go to the sleek Etón FR350 (around $60) packing an AM/FM/shortwave radio, a flashlight/red emergency light and a siren. Crank, direct current or AA batteries can power it. It also has a cell phone charger – but get ready to sweat a lot for precious little airtime.

Freeplay's similarly priced competitor is the Eye Max WB. Yellow and chunky, it doesn't have shortwave but one button takes you to the government weather channel. It gets some energy from a solar panel, has an LED beam and is water resistant.

A 30-second spin gets you 30 minutes of radio.

Simpler, and much cheaper, are wind-up flashlights and radios at Home Depot for between $10 and $15. Experts say cheaper mechanisms require more winding.

Other crankables out there include clock radios, bike lights and dedicated cell phone chargers.

The cranks aren't hard to turn but they're not effortless, either. Freeplay's foldout handles are bigger and sturdier than Etón's, making the physically awkward task of cranking a non-anchored object a little easier.

Electricity from elbow grease holds great promise for developing countries but it's too early to say if the technology will move beyond niche status in our outlet-filled world. You could ponder the point sipping Mexican-style hot chocolate at ChocoSol (6 St. Joseph St., 416-923-6675), which uses bicycle power to grind cacao beans, while reading Haruki Murakami's excellent 1997 novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.



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David Rider is an editor at the Star and can be reached at drider@thestar.com.

[jon]

I only have one (reason).

I managed to get a free crank flashlight for my car glove compartment. My experience is that car flashlights are the most likely to have dead batteries when you need them, and have no access to new batteries.

Mine has batteries and a crank. Backup, if you will.