Thursday, September 22, 2011

Bonsai solar to recharge mobile devices

A few days ago the famous French designer Vivien Muller Electree announced it has developed an interesting device designed to recharge the batteries of mobile electronic devices. As expected, it is a device in which the design has been extremely careful and look beyond the strictly functional. Instead of building a nondescript rectangular solar charger, like the hundreds that can be found in stores, Vivien was "inspired" in the form of trees.

"The inspiration for design came to me while watching Electree trees. The leaves of the trees are real natural solar panels," explains Muller. "Therefore, the shape of the tree is the best way to harness solar energy." That was the reason that the charger looks like a small bonsai composed of 27 small solar panels that double-leaf. Mounted on supports (the "branches" of the tree), each panel can rotate freely, which allows the user to create an unlimited number of ways. "I wanted Electree is a product to be used inside, so that the aspect of bonsai that I thought was best," says the French designer.

The first 400 units sold will be numbered.

The Electree is about 40 inches high and provides a few hundred mAh if all its panels are directly illuminated by the Sun, which is quite difficult to get inside a home or office. The energy is stored in a battery that has at its base and sent to devices charged via a USB connector. Some of your gadgets require an adapter to be connected to this source of energy. Anyway, you still can not go to the store and take one home, they have not begun to be produced. The designer has enabled the option to make a "pre-purchase" online (paying 299 euros, by the way) and when production begins thousand orders. The first 400 units sold will be numbered and accompanied by a certificate signed by Vivien Muller, with shipping charges on account of the manufacturer.

While this is a pretty useful product and does not seem to be strictly "original". Not long ago we saw a young student as more than shocked to discover that a scientist if you have solar panels in the same way that the leaves of trees can significantly increase the production of electricity. Muller solar charger seems to be simply a nice implementation of this principle, but with the disadvantage of being thought of as an ornament for indoors, a site that usually sunlight often reach only a few hours . Despite these drawbacks, you may find 1000 interested in paying $299 for a home Electree. Are you aiming with one?

Source: http://www.electree.fr/vivien.muller/Electree-en.html