A while back we brought you one of the first reports of Sony's ODO line of human-powered electronic devices. Well, now Sony has a working (though substantially altered) prototype of a human-powered digital camera. The device has a big ol' rubber wheel on the top that you push across any flat surface (or your forearm) to charge the batteries. About 15 pushes is enough for one shot, though presumably, you can push it a couple hundred times and then go off to the zoo.

It's fantastic to think that someday we'll be able to stop worrying about whether or not our batteries are dead, and I'd love to see this technology working its way into gadgets. For now, Sony is thinking about marketing the devices only to children. And as they're not going to compare with the slight size, ease of use, or any other feature of a modern digital camera, that's probably the right direction to go in.

There's no viewscreen (in order to save power), the pictures are fairly low quality, and there's no flash, of course. But I expect power usage to drop in all devices and for these kinds of elbow-grease chargers to start to make sense to consumers.

Via Engadget

Comments (5)

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written by czf , December 14, 2007

I suppose children would be less suspicious of something like this anyway. Maybe they can grow up without such an aggressive need for battery powered gizmos with an extremely narrowed purpose. But that would put Brookstone out of business.
Plus they have less hair on their arms to get yanked out.

Sony is great
written by Den , December 15, 2007

Sony is great. This is very usefull appliance when you are travelling in wild spaces.

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written by Adam Denison , December 17, 2007

"It's fantastic to think that someday we'll be able to stop worrying about whether or not our batteries are dead"

Wow, this is such an impressive technology. Now the trick is to make it affordable enough for the average Joe. Thanks for the info!

Awesome!
written by Lynn , January 17, 2008

Wow, this sounds cool! I would rather have a low-quality camera that is guarenteed to work than a high-quality camera that runs out of batteries, anway! Thanks for the info, this will be my next current event for SS.

New Technology
written by WhirlPool Parts , February 11, 2008

Lots of new technology is available on the market but the problem is that only big companies have the real power to market them and obtain a great success out of it.

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