FlameStower - USB charger powered by fire

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flamestower/flamestower-charge-your-gear-with-fire

by pisarzp • 13 years ago

109 82 13 years ago

Of limited practical use, but I can see it being a hot present for outdoorsy people.

orenB2• 13 years ago

I don't agree. In Africa where not all ppl have access to the electricity grid it have practical use. Together with google internet balloons plan it might be a game changer.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

BioLite is making a generator/stove for daily home use in 3rd World conditions: http://www.biolitestove.com/homestove/overview/

They also have a camping version: http://www.biolitestove.com/campstove/camp-overview/features...

eulerphi• 13 years ago

People in Africa aren't going to be using a USB generator. They will generate to a battery and then use that battery later. This device will _waste_ the output of the fire for the most part, it's open..not closed like a calorimeter. It's a joke of a device.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

Where people don't have access to the grid they also use fire and water for other stuff. Cooking food comes to mind. It will have some limited use if it is just a thermocouple plate that sits below the pot.

goshx2• 13 years ago

sure! they'll be able to use their fire charged phones, with google's internet to see what the world is eating across the ocean on instagram.

malandrew4• 13 years ago

From my understanding fuel cells are already in some limited use in Africa. At a VMWorld partners conference several years ago I spoke to a South African guy working for Wyse and he said that they had a bunch of small installations powered by fuel cells.

hfsktr• 13 years ago

Great for the post-apocalyptic world!

Maybe good for short term natural disasters or outdoorsy types who want to stay connected.

I find some humor in that having a cell phone on and charged is still 'off the grid' (I know they meant electrical grid).

mpapi2• 13 years ago

I brought a BioLite stove with me on a recent camping trip and loved it. That had other advantages: easy to get a fire going during a very rainy week, no fuel to carry (in the White Mountain National Forest, anyway) and it was pretty easy to cook with.

USB charging didn't seem all that useful at first, but with a USB-rechargeable LED lantern it ended up being great. If that's all you really needed, you could get it from the FlameStower without the battery + fan machinery of the BioLite, I guess.

hellopat• 13 years ago

I've been having an internal struggle regarding the purchase of a BioLite stove. The primary reason I haven't is because of it's weight. As a backpacker, the stove is just way too heavy to carry on a trip (weekend trips, fine - but anything longer it would have to stay behind).

The FlameStower seems much more practical for longer trips because of it's weight / bulk.

jeffreyg• 13 years ago

Agreed. I saw the BioLite setup at Maker Faire this weekend. They have some cool products but at 33oz the stove is too heavy for my pack. This one is only 7oz.

Edvik• 13 years ago

Same - been on the fence about the biolite because it's only paying for the weight if you're 100% wood based on your trip.

This kind of makes that decision easy I think. The design seems nice, and the fact that it folds is doubly so. In backpacking your limits are in both weight and volume.

I'd like to see some reviews of ruggedness - the main thing I'm concerned about is what happens to the part of my USB cord that's plugged into the unit - it may be designed for high heat, but an average apple plug probably isn't.

mpapi2• 13 years ago

Yeah, I won't argue that it's heavy.

I haven't done any backpacking with it yet -- though if I did, I probably wouldn't be taking anything I could charge via USB anyway. (The aforementioned USB lantern isn't exactly light either.)

killerpopiller• 13 years ago

https://www.globetrotter.de/outdoor-kueche/sturmkocher-spiri...

well the Biolite seems to be a top notch stove plus it charges your devices. The link above are comments of buyers, nearly all positive. For a stove you prefer gas?

lefrancaiz• 13 years ago

I recently bought a Biolite. It's a really great product and I love it, but you are right, it isn't the lightest things. I think it's perfect for those shorter trips where weight doesn't matter as much. However, it won't fully replace a good gas/gasoline stove.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

Mongolians will love this.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

Last year there was the PowerPot, which is the same principle on the bottom of a cooking pot http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/david-toledo/the-powerpo...

zokier• 13 years ago

I must say the powerpot looks far more sensible design.

malandrew4• 13 years ago

Totally agree. One less thing to carry.

positivejam• 13 years ago

My buddy is the VP of Web/Marketing there (Power Practical). Their Kickstarter last year went really well. Here's a link to their current product page: http://www.thepowerpot.com/

queeerkopf• 13 years ago

another similiar project: http://www.biolitestove.com/

freshhawk• 13 years ago

I own one of these and it is fantastic, even if you don't use it to charge your phone (which I do) you get to scavenge fuel instead of carrying it and that vortex of flame boils water only slightly slower than most normal portable camp stoves and it is just damn cool to look at.

nobodysfool• 13 years ago

There's also the tPOD1 which would be less expensive, it operates off tea candles...

http://www.buytpod.com/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tpod1/tpod1-thermoelectr...

$50

The tPOD5 can charge a smartphone, it's a bit more expensive, and doesn't run on tea candles, you put it over a camp stove.

Point is, these things exist, this kickstarter doesn't seem to improve on any of them except perhaps make the designs cheaper, but they cost more. I'm sure they can make a nice profit on these devices if they sell, and if they can handle their manufacturing costs. If not, it would be cheaper to buy one of the alternatives and ship it to people instead of running your factory.

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

2-3W? That means it's only a 0.5A, right? A lot of devices don't even charge properly off of a 0.5A USB source.

pudquick• 13 years ago

While they may not fast charge, many of the devices will trickle charge - simply because the original USB 2.0 spec didn't require high amperage. In fact, 2.0 spec allowed for a max of 5 'unit loads' with a unit load of 100 mA (5x 100 mA = 0.5A). Putting out more than that was against spec unless the port was specifically marked as a 'charging port' per the Battery Charging specification (you may have noticed USB ports with battery icons next to them).

It wasn't until USB 3.0 that the limits were increased. Additionally the Battery Charging spec was re-written to increase limits for charging ports.

If you can plug your device into any single USB jack on a computer (not just ones with a battery icon next to them) and it will charge, it will likely charge with this project.

Pxtl2• 13 years ago

In my experience, 0.5A chargers (and PC USB ports) are functionally useless for charging many modern smartphones and tablets, especially after a deep discharge. There has been many times I've put on a device to charge on a 0.5A source and come back to find its battery completely depleted. The charging will fail to keep up with the device's idle energy consumption.

malandrew4• 13 years ago

I think they got the idea right, but designed it around the wrong source first. Using fuel to power my devices means I need to carry more fuel with me. Why do that when I can just carry cell phone backup batteries like this one: http://mylimeade.com/

Instead this should have been designed around something I can throw in a campfire with some sort of protective spiral metal cabling to snake out of the fire to a box with a USB connector. The metal cabling could be similar to those used on high temperature oven thermometers.

pstuart• 13 years ago

You need a temperature delta to generate the electricity. Where is the cool sink in your proposal?

csense• 13 years ago

The cold sink is the water. Water has a specific heat capacity of 4.2 J/g/K, so its temperature isn't going to rise nearly as fast as the hot side of the device, and you need to provide even more energy to get the cold side past 100F...

shabble3• 13 years ago

The cable isn't likely to be the limiting feature here. The method of energy conversion doesn't just require heat, it requires a temperature gradient across the device. Here they're putting the tip in the fire to heat it, and the little bowl at the back full of water is used to cool the other end, thus getting a good temperature difference.

In contrast, throwing hte whole thing into the fire might work briefly while the heating was uneven, and the water hadn't all boiled off, but as soon as it reaches the same temp all over, no more power. And if it's all in the fire, even the water evaporative cooling isn't going to help much, vs when it's out of the direct flame/hot air stream at the edge.

I imagine you could design a in-fire version using a heatpipe to transfer energy out to a radiator/cooler somewhere, but that would be much more fragile and/or expensive.

What we really need is MEMS (or at least, really teeny, zero-maintenance) Stirling engines :)

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

What we really need is MEMS (or at least, really teeny, zero-maintenance) Stirling engines :)

Really teeny:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-12/worlds-smalles...

ori_b• 13 years ago

MEMS (or stirling engines) don't help you there either -- as long as it's all in the fire, you have trouble extracting energy.

All heat engines run off of a temperature gradient, which is limited by Carnot's theorem to a maximum efficiency of (1 - Hot/Cold). If your heat source temperature is the same as your heat sink temperature, you get zero energy out of it.

The bigger the difference between the heat source and heat sink in your engine, the more energy you can extract.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

I would still be concerned about the cable though. If it uses a rugged metal cable, then the worse case scenario is that it stops generating power when your fire gets a little out of control. If you're just using the standard rubber insulated cable, then you might ruin your cable and be SOL.

malandrew4• 13 years ago

Thanks for the correction. I'm wondering if it can be two sides where you can put one side in a bucket of water (fetched from a nearby river or lake or created from melted snow water)

ZoFreX• 13 years ago

For a given weight/volume surely a gas canister works out as more energy than a backup battery?

wtallis• 13 years ago

Liquid fuels are even better than compressed butane and propane, but whether they beat lithium-ion batteries depends a lot on how efficient the conversion is to electricity.

nnash• 13 years ago

Wait I'm confused, where does fuel come into this? All you need to start a campfire is a bit of flint and kindling.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

Instead this should have been designed around something I can throw in a campfire with some sort of protective spiral metal cabling to snake out of the fire to a box with a USB connector.

That won't work, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency

Your problem is that the sink capacity of your device is closely related to its mass so unless you let something change phase (for instance, water evaporation) you're going to run out of capacity to store the heat before you have your phone charged. This will result in a lack-of-temperature-gradient which means you will no longer produce power. Compare with a Peltier element that is kept equally hot on both sides or equally cold.

jlebrech• 13 years ago

could have something you put in the fire, with copper pipes coming out to a water turbine outside of the fire.

nollidge• 13 years ago

You don't need to bring fuel, assuming there's wood around you to burn.

sgwil• 13 years ago

And here I was hoping I could finally buy a USB powered flamethrower.

goshx2• 13 years ago

Does anyone bother to create something similar that would help 3rd world electricity problems? oh, I forgot... they don't have smartphones.

c-oreills• 13 years ago

Biolite does this. Traditional stoves produce a huge amount of smoke which is bad for people breathing it. BioLite reduces the smoke, but they found that men were usually in charge of purchasing decisions and weren't around when cooking was being done, so had no incentive to invest in the smokeless stoves. Adding electricity to the stove meant that men were more likely to buy, thus helping their family's health.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24116000

timthorn• 13 years ago

Mobile phones are quite widespread though.

fudgy73• 13 years ago

This, to me, isn't very novel. Why can't you just wait for the sun to come up and carry a 140g solar panel? I suppose this may be useful in a very rare emergency situation, but otherwise, nahhh.

$ don't lie, though, and it looks like they have almost reached their goal.

rom16384• 13 years ago

It's not new at all, see this 1956 kerosene radio: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/kerosene-radio/

jpalomaki2• 13 years ago

Some people are traveling in places where you don't get that much sun shine. Or you might what to charge your devices in some shelter where you just have a fireplace.

jpalomaki2• 13 years ago

A DIY version by Timo Noko [1]. The same guy has been tinkering also with some other interesting stuff [2].

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1A5qc872Ks [2] http://koti.welho.com/tnoko/

nlh• 13 years ago

First thought: "Awesome - power for phone if everything goes to hell."

Second thought: "Wait, if everything goes to hell, there's not going to be any cell service."

Third thought: "Oh well, at least I'll have Candy Crush."

tesseractive• 13 years ago

Perfect for using your offline cached copy of Wikipedia to recreate civilization after the apocalypse?

bentcorner• 13 years ago

Maybe? It'd probably harder than you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVxOb8-d7Ic

orblivion• 13 years ago

Or your cached copy of OpenStreetMap to find your way around.

baddox• 13 years ago

Get into amateur radio and you'll be one of the most useful people around with everything goes to hell.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 13 years ago

I'm going to get one so I can carry coal instead of batteries.

wavesounds• 13 years ago

I like it but I'm curious how this compares to a hand crank like on one laptop per child

diydsp• 13 years ago

Handpower delivers about max 20W per hand to a bike with both hands. With electromechanical efficiency, 20W per hand comes out to around 1-10W per hand, depending on hand speed and generator efficiency. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Bicycling-Science-David-Gordon-Wilson/... [2] http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/69801

jebblue• 13 years ago

It looks like something one could craft in Minecraft so I like it, seriously though, I've been shopping for a solar charger just in case there is some unforseeable disaster and I need to be able to keep the GPS and compass working at least. This looks like a good alternative, I looked at two of the competing products in the comments here but this one seems to me to keep the most distance between the heat source and the electrical cord while still staying out of the way of my cooking. The collapsible design seems like a good idea too.

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

Congrats to Adam (and Andy) -- went to elementary/middle/high school with him, been neat to watch this product evolve over the past year on facebook.

lafar6502• 13 years ago

a superior technology is known for several years, but still can't make ends meet

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2013/01/31/why-a...

mfonda• 13 years ago

Stoves with built-in USB chargers already exist as a commerical product. For example, check out http://www.rei.com/product/846334/biolite-wood-burning-camps...

jrochkind1• 13 years ago

Oh man, I do and don't want to see the efficiency and carbon-output per joule generated of this device compared to actual grid energy. Not to mention particulate air pollution.

Although it will depend on what you are using for the source of your 'fire', it's not gonna look good.

This is a weird idea.

NathanKP• 13 years ago

It's not intended to be an efficient clean power source. It's intended for people who want to do something like hike the Appalachian Trail and want to be able to charge their devices using the same fire they use for cooking / heat.

brandon272• 13 years ago

I see this product as having two target markets:

1) Outdoorsy people who carry fuel and find themselvea away from electricity.

2) People who are going to burn their homes down trying to recharge their iPhones during power outages.

sbierwagen• 13 years ago

I wrote about something very similar last year, the BioLite camp stove: https://bbot.org/blog/archives/2012/06/13/biolite_camp_stove... (I'd argue that the BioLite is a better product, despite being twice as expensive, since it can run on wood.)

A problem with both products that they use the thermoelectric effect, which is miserably inefficient: The BioLite generated 2 watts from a thermal power of 5500W, for a thermodynamic efficiency of 0.036%

Solar panels, on the other hand, don't need to burn anything at all.

FlameStower - USB charger powered by fire

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