Ready for the most fun way yet to charge your phone… and lights?
Take the community spirit that soccer generates, combine it with the need to create cheap and renewable energy and you get…a football that becomes a device to provide light. That’s Soccket, the innovative product created by tech startup Uncharted Play.
We’ve talked before about the challenge of providing light in parts of the world that are off grid and have shared the impact of the Philips Community Light Centers. This latest innovation is looking at the same challenge and coming up with a hugely fun and incredibly practical solution.
By taking the community spirit that soccer generates, and combining it with the abilities offered by cheap, renewable energy, Uncharted Play has created a device with huge potential for light provision. The fact it also needs you to have fun playing the beautiful game in order to work is just a bonus.
As you might imagine from the name, Soccket is simply an energy-storing soccer ball that incorporates a plug socket, allowing it to be used as an immediate, portable power source. By storing the kinetic energy generated during a soccer match, or even a kick-about, the football can produce enough electricity to power several small appliances. Think a reading light, for example, or even your mobile phone.
Because LED uses a smaller amount of power in comparison to other lighting sources, the potential benefits of Soccket can stretch even further. One half-hour game can generate as much as three hours’ worth of LED light, so the Soccket provides a significant return on a little bit of exercise. School soccer matches could lead to being able to do homework after dark.
This portable, cheap power source can provide huge benefits to communities that might otherwise struggle to obtain adequate levels of electricity to power lighting.It also provides some exciting food for thought for future innovations.
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