NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Sustainably Smart Bamboo Mobile Phone

Earlier this year, the U.K. tech company ADzero announced that they would be releasing a bamboo mobile phone sometime in 2012. Well, sometime just came. At Droidcon, an Android event in London, the company released full specifications on the phone as well as a Kickstarter campaign.

The phone is made from treated organic bamboo and has 16 GBs of storage as well as an 8-megapixel camera with a shadow-minimizing feature. It will run on Android Ice Cream Sandwich and has a 1.4 GHz Samsung Exynos quad-core processor. From laptops to bicycles, bamboo is becoming a trend. It's has been a pretty popular choice among designers looking for a sustainable, yet durable choice for creating new things.

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However popular the material, the ADzero phone still needs funding. Which is why they mentioned a soon-to-be started Kickstarter campaign. To get a phone, donors must give at least $500, which is apparently an "Early Bird Special" of $200 off of the original retail price.

This announcement was made on Friday, but there was no specific release date announced for the phone or when the actual campaign would start. If you're in the market for a sustainable phone and have the extra dough to spend, keep an eye out.

Credit: ADzero

A Household of Wi-Fi Bulbs Controlled By Remote

In one of the older "Treehouse of Horror" episodes from The Simpsons, Pierce Brosnan voiced a murderous home automation system. Back then, the idea of home automation was practically a dream (or a nightmare) to average folks, but now it's becoming an attainable reality. This set of Wi-Fi-controlled lightbulbs from Greenwave Reality will give homeowners control over their home's entire lighting system with a remote control.

The wireless LED lighting kit consists of four 40-watt equivalent bulbs, a remote control and a gateway box that connects to any home router. They won't be readily available at your local home improvement store -- instead the company plans to sell the sets through utility and lighting companies for around $200, with each new bulb costing under $20.

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Each bulb has its own IP address and once installed, automatically pairs with the gateway. Once all of the bulbs are paired and the gateway is connected to the router, lighting in the home can be controlled through the remote, which will be able to control up to 500 bulbs at one time.

An app downloaded to a smartphone or tablet controls brightness, timers or a large section of lights. Controlling lights through your mobile device might just seem like a novelty but it does serve a purpose. Setting up schedules and timers for when the lights need to come on, or setting dimmers is pretty easy and provides the same piece of mind that persnickety timers do.

via Technology Review

Credit: Greenwave Reality

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Go On Vacation In a Shipping Container

The possibilities for vacationing are endless. You can go on a cruise, take a nature hike or visit a luxurious spa. And the places to sleep are even more abundant. If you want to try something out of the ordinary when it comes to hotel accommodations, how about a B&B apartment built from shipping containers?

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The Container House is a vacation apartment in Majorca, Spain, that has an open floor plan, a rooftop bedroom, outdoor deck, swimming pool and BBQ area all inside the 70 sq ft (7 sq meter) wooden boxes. The modules come together to create an apartment that can comfortably house three people even though it only has one bedroom and one bath. It's also got typical vacation home amenities like a full kitchen and a washer and dyer and is about 10 minutes away from the airport in the middle of the action in the center city Palma.

The shipping container modular homes are available at $1,259 per week or around $113 a day. Ok, not everyone can jump on a plane and go to Spain, but if you think your apartment is too small to have style and be comfortable, take a look at this place.

Credit: AirBNB

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6,000 Light Bulbs Make Cloud Art

Earlier this month in Alberta, Canada, at the Nuit Blanche Calgary, an exhibit called CLOUD showed how even the simplest inventions still inspire awe and wonder. The art installation, which was set up in Olympic Plaza park,was made up of 6,000 light bulbs: 1,000 working and 5,000 burnt out.

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Hanging from the cloud were thousands of chains, each of them attached to a single bulb. Visitors stood underneath the cloud and pulled at the chains. The cloud would brighten and dim as this happened, and judging by the video, it was a beautiful sight to see. The incandescent bulbs for the interactive sculpture were collected through donations from local homes and businesses. In an email to Discovery News, Caitlind r.c. Brown, the designer of the CLOUD said that, "The idea was to create an informal collaboration between the community and the artists, reduce costs and experiment with the potential of items post-use."

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Brown described the arduous process of putting up the structure, saying it required "a small team of strong men and heavy machinery." After transporting the sculpture to the park, a base was build on-site, hoisted up with a fork lift and bolted in place. The CLOUD's parts all together weight over 1,500 pounds, and because of its asymmetrical shape, the weight was not evenly balanced. While this seems like a difficult task, Brown says the take down was even harder. Probably because the exhibit lasted from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Check out the video below to see the CLOUD in action.

via DVICE

Credit: Caitlind r.c. Brown 

via DVICE

Credit: Caitlin r.c. Brown

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Shower Doubles as a Washing Machine

 

You do all you can to help the environment. You recycle, use compact fluorescent bulbs and even keep your home slightly balmier than you'd like on a hot summer day. The one thing that's really hard to tone down? The nice long shower at the end of a hard day. Four Industrial Design students from Turkey feel your pain, so they developed Washit.

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Washit is a shower and washing machine all in one. Two waters pumps, three different kinds of filters (carbon, organic and chemical), UV filters and a water heater make up this double-use appliance. Don't get weirded out, here's how it works: The shower stall takes gray water that collects at the bottom during a shower, filters it, puts it through a UV cleaning phase and then sends it to a water tank. When a user wants to do laundry, she can access the washing machine from outside of the stall and use the filtered water to clean her clothes.

The Washit is still in design mode, but it did win the IF Concept Design Award. After such a big win, the creators are now working on a usable prototype.

via DVICE

Credit: Ahmet Burak Aktas, Salih Berk Ilhan, Adem Onalan, Burak Soylemez

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Glowing Driveway Sparkles Like a Galaxy

I grew up in a semi-rural town, where people had long gravel driveways spanning the massive acreage up to their homes. These driveways were almost never well lit, and sometimes if you weren't paying attention, you would trample the grass and possibly end up in a ditch. A batch of photo luminescent stones mixed in with the gravel would come in handy on those nights.

That's what Core Glow pebbles are. The pebbles are made of an aggregate of synthetic materials (basically a mashup of a bunch of different elements), resin and a hint of photo luminescent pigments. When exposed to sunlight, the pigments in the stone perk up and get excited. As day turns into night, the rocks emit an afterglow. They naturally illuminate a driveway to create a sparkling pathway that requires absolutely no electricity.

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Because there are no wires and no bulbs needed for this source of light, these rocks, that seem better suited for an aquarium than a driveway, are completely carbon emission-free. The glow lasts for 10 to 20 hours and slowly fades as the charge wanes. The photo luminescent pigments on the rocks have been engineered to be waterproof, so even if a nighttime shower pops up, driveways will still be easy to find.

Completely necessary? No. Cool and extremely helpful in an area otherwise hard to light? Yes. Also, great conversation starter for out-of-town visitors.

Credit: COREglow

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DIY Furniture Delivered in Bytes Not Boxes

Do-it-yourself stores like Ikea are wildly popular among assemble-it-yourselfers. But now instead of supplying boxes containing planks of wood and funny-looking screws, one design firm is offering DIYers a greener way to get their furniture: open-source digital files. The project, called AtFAB, comes from the Lexington, Ky.-based design firm Filson and Rohrbacher. Hat tip to Christopher Mims, who described the AtFAB plans in a recent Grist post.

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I'm no fabricator (yet!), but here's my understanding of how this works: First, find a piece of furniture you like online from AtFAB's modern, prefab furniture series. Next, following the instructions on their website, request the digital "cut file" directly from the designers. Their Creative Commons licensed design file will start downloading to your computer.

A cut file contains all the information needed to make your own version of the furniture by cutting it yourself on a CNC milling machine, short for computer numerical control. CNC machines work sort of like printers, in that a computer delivers a command and the machine responds. In this case, the machines cut instead of print materials to exact 3-D specifications.

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Or, if you don't have your own CNC machine, a local fabricator should be able to make the pieces from the files. Googling revealed a fabricator near me that could probably help, but the designers also suggest looking on 100kGarages.com and at DIY workspaces like TechShop.

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Filson and Rohrbacher's furniture pieces are intended to be cut easily from whatever material you want, whether that's metal or wood, or something wackier. Instead of wondering where your furniture actually came from, and how the people who produced it were treated, you could recycle wood into a cabinet.

Maybe one day CNC files will go mainstream and we'll be able to download whatever furniture we want and have a range of local machinists to pick from. An open-minded international retailer should get on that.

Photo: Open-source cut files for furniture like this enables do-it-yourselfers to fabricate the pieces themselves. Credit: Filson and Rohrbacher.

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Plant Powers Air Purifier

Andrea Air Purifier: $199.99

The air purifying effect of houseplants is no secret, but an air filter by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur called Andrea takes this natural event to a whole new level. The air filter enhances an indoor plant’s filtering capabilities by housing it in a capsule. A fan pulls in air from the top of the capsule and allows the plant to filter out contaminants through its natural pollutant-zapping photosynthetic process. The fan then blows the clean air out into the room.

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When the filter was still in its concept phases, the creators looked at NASA’s research of “space gardens” to clean re-circulating air for inspiration. Any plant can be used with the filter, but aloe vera, red-edged dragon trees and spider plants are the best performers and most recommended varieties.  

via: Inhabitat

Credit: Andrea

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Garbage Glitters In Kaleidoscope Trash Can

Despite the best efforts of government and non-government organizations, litter bugs still toss garbage where it doesn't belong. In India, two designers, Nishant Jethi and Aalap Deasi, decided to take this problem into their own hands by creating a waste bin that turns garbage into art.

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The designers took their inspiration for the Cleanoscope trash can from a kaleidoscope. Three mirrors on the inside of the triangular-shaped bin reflect garbage into fantastical designs. Peeking in from the top, passersby see a glittering view of items previously thought as useless. According to the creators, the bin can hold 131 kilos (288 lbs) which is almost double the amount typical trash cans in the area. 

via: Inhabitat

Credit: Nishant Jethi

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Swap Old Junk for Cooler Junk

 

A lot of things grow in Brooklyn, trees, beards and socially concious vending machines. Swap-o-matics are popping up around town, taking the bartering system to a whole new (and much more interesting) level. The vending machine lets users trade items they don’t want for more desirable items someone else doesn't want. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say. The creators of the machine claim that it’s intended to serve as a solution to the “consumer, corporate lifestyle” and to support the reuse and recycling movement.

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The touch screen on the front of the vending machine is fairly simple. If a user donates an item to the machine they receive “credits.” These credits go toward the retrieval of items other people have donated. When swapping, users must include an e-mail for confirmation. The system is outfitted with a digital interface that uses a flagging system to prevent misuse and tampering. The Swap-o-matic has made an appearance in artsy funky neighborhood spots in New York City such as the Launch Pad and the Blue Stockings Cafe in Brooklyn. It’s currently hanging out at Apple Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, so if you live nearby and have a stock pile of old stuff you don’t want, check it out.

 

Via: DVICE

Credit: Lina Fenequito

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