How often have you been on your mobile phone making an important call to clinch a deal when the phone dies on you because the battery has just run out? The answer is probably that it has happened on more than one occasion.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a solution could be found for this problem thus negating the need to get back to your car, office or home to plug your mobile phone or tablet into your battery charger. Well, it looks like it will not be long before that happens!
Having just had Andy Murray from Scotland become the first British man to win the men’s single title at Wimbledon in over 70 years we now have another Scotsman that may have come up with something that will eradicate the above mobile phone problem.
A gentleman by the name of Andrew Anderson, who is an audio engineer, has designed a set of headphones that incorporates a solar panel that charges a couple of batteries that can charge up your mobile phone or tablet by the use of solar power and you can still continue to listen to music through the headphones.
The OnBeat headphones incorporate within their headband a poly-crystalline silicone solar panel that is flexible. It covers an area of 55cm3 and has a capacity of around 0.55W. This solar panel will capture the sun’s energy just as solar panels do on the roof of a house and will then store this energy in a couple of rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries that are located in the ear pieces. Your mobile phone or tablet can be connected to the headphones to be charged up when required by using a USB port. This means that if it were raining outside the headphones could be charged before leaving home in the morning.
It is hoped that the headphones, that are also expected to have excellent sound quality, will be available to buy around February 2014.
