Recycle your Handphone & Get Cash?

Remember seeing those plastic boxes at shopping complex where you can put your gadgets and batteries for recycling purposes? In the near future, we might be able to get some cash by just recycling our old gadgets like what we do with unused papers.

ecoATM or Automated Recycling Stations was recently launched to promote gadget or metal recycling to consumers. Li-Ion batteries in particular, commonly found in modern gadgets and handphones, cannot be discarded the same as normal rubbish. Batteries should always be recycled because they are harmful to the environment if discarded incorrectly.

So, what does this new ATM machine do? Once you dump in your item into its slot, it will examine the item and tells you how much your item is worth. Should you accept it, you'll get the cash. If the item is of no value at all, a "free item' will be issued and a tree will planted by your name. Sounds good?

Currently not available in Malaysia yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Hope the government will bring this fella in soon.

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Telling Your Oven to Start Cooking, With Your Mobile Phone!

Recently, there was a news report about an oven being turned on, and started cooking at the highest setting on its own. Its trigger? Its none other than your mobile phone. All you need to do is to leave your mobile phone near the oven, and dial it.

Recall that you leave your phone too near a computer speaker, there is this “bee-boo-bee-boo” sound emitting from the speakers, or your monitor screen gets distorted when a call comes in. This is caused by “electromagnetic Interference (or EMI to Electronic Engineers). This is also the reason why you should NOT place your mobile phone near your chest if you are using a pacemaker. This is the probably why how the mobile phone could turn on the circuitry is the oven, and then trigger it to cook without any human intervention.

On the bright side, you can now leave your turkey in the oven and place a mobile phone beside it before you go to work on Thanksgiving Day. After you have lunch, all you need to do is to dial to your mobile phone!

You can read the news article on the link here. Most ovens are safe from this though, I assume.

Rechargeable Battery Care

Nowadays, rechargeable batteries is a must for our gadgets and is commonly used in mobile phones, notebooks and home electrical appliances. Very often we take them for granted and provide the wrong battery care! Not taking care of your batteries properly not only shorten their lifespan dramatically, but can also cause harm and damage to you and your surroundings. Below, I would cover two commonly used battery types in our household, Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) and Lithium-Ion (Li-ion).

Nickel Cadmium (NiCd)

Charging / Discharging

NiCd batteries suffer from memory effect, if they are are recharged and discharged to the same level of charge regularly. This is usually obvious when the battery voltage suddenly drops dramatically. However, the capacity is not reduced substantially. To recover this lost capacity, perform a deep or full discharge to INDIVIDUAL CELLS once in a while by using the battery until its fully discharged (or even better, with your battery charger if it came with a deep discharge function). It is not recommended to discharge your battery pack as a whole, as some cells may be discharged earlier, and this will result in a cell reversal charge condition. If you do not have any of these dischargers at your disposal, just use your batteries with an electrical appliance until its near dead flat for the FIRST time (If you have a voltmeter, stop the discharging sequence when the battery pack voltage drops to 1.0 V). After that, recharge it like normal. Individual cells can be discharged to zero voltage without harm.

Do not perform deep discharge too often as it will shorten the lifespan of the battery. (Once a month should be fine)

Lifespan

Typically, 1000 charge cycles before its capacity drops below half of its original capacity.

Storage

If not used, the battery should be discharged to maximum 40% of its capacity and store it in a cool dry environment.

Other precaution measures

Do not mix old and new batteries together. Old batteries loses its capacity quicker and could be damaged due to cell reversal charging. It could also cause damage as hydrogen gas is produced when this occurs.

Lithium Ion (Li-Ion)

Charging / Discharging

Unlike NiCd batteries, Li-Ion batteries do not suffer from memory effect. In fact, they should be charged as often and regularly as much as possible and should NOT be fully discharged. Discharging it fully will damage the battery (below 2.4V) permanently. Good Li-Ion batteries will always self discharge slowly from time to time, since it has an internal safety circuit that will prevent a “dead” battery to be charged (recharging a dead Li-Ion battery can be very dangerous). Since its charging process is a non linear process, its therefore dangerous to charge a Li-Ion battery without any monitoring mechanism. The charging sequence usually consist of 3 parts as quoted from Wikipedia:

Part 1. Apply charging current limit until volt limit per cell is reached.

Part 2. Apply maximum volt per cell limit until the current declines below 0.03C

Part 3. Periodically apply a top-off charge about once per 500 hours.

Some devices may have optimization charging mode when you charge the battery “in-house” together with the device turned on. It is recommended that you turn your device on while charging so that the device is able to monitor and prevent overcharging from occurring. Most dedicated chargers have this circuitry as well. If you are to charge it unmonitored, do not charge it for more than 3 hours or manufacturer specified time.

Lifespan

Typically, 1200 charge cycles. However, it is important to note that Li-Ion batteries age with time, even if not used.

Storage

Charge/Discharge it to 40% and store in a cool place to reduce the aging effects. Do not store a Li-Ion battery at 100% charged.

Other precaution measure

Li-Ion batteries are sensitive to heat. You should consider removing the battery from your equipment like notebook if you are going to connect it to a direct power supply for long hours. You should also buy Li-Ion batteries only when you need it due to its aging effect.

Sources – BatteryUniversity, Wikipedia

Charging Your Mobile Phone Wirelessly

“Hello? Yes Ma, I want to tell you that I will be … *beep *beep *beep, dead battery.”

How many times have we encountered this surprisingly common scenario? As for me, I always end up searching for the nearest un-vandalized telephone booth. Sometimes I wish my phone came with solar cells so that I can recharge by leaving it under the sun or some portable battery mobile phone charger (I did see one which uses a 9V battery to charge, but its only for old Nokia phones).

Nokia did it. You can charge your phone anywhere, everywhere, even at night! How?

They developed a new prototype charging system, which collects the ambient and stray radio waves such as TV, radio and even mobile phone signals and convert them into electricity. The power currently harvested by the prototype is still quite far from the required power in order to keep the phone in standby indefinitely though, for now. Nevertheless, this is a good sign that it still has great potential.

---Geek mode started! Proceed if you like to know more ---

This conversion of wireless energy into an electrical form was actually demonstrated before by Nikon Tesla in 1893, in his attempt to build an intercontinental transmission tower to send power wirelessly across the Atlantic Ocean. Nokia’s version is a very simple version of it, with just a wide-band antenna and two circuits. The antenna and receiver circuits harvest signals from 500 MHZ to 10 GHZ and convert these EMG waves into electrical current and feed it into the second circuit. The feeder circuit will then feed the current to charge the battery of the mobile phone.

There is a problem though, these circuits have to use less power (power loss + consumption) compared to the amount of power harvested from the EMG waves. Currently, the amount that can be harvested is up to 5 mW. 20 mW is needed in order to charge the battery of the phone enough to keep it on standby mode indefinitely without doing any phone functions. However, for a meaningful charge, a power of 50 mW is needed.

--- Geek Mode End ---

Nokia expects these phones to be out in three to five years time.

By the way, Palm Pre can be charged wirelessly via electromagnetic induction through its “Touchstone”. However, this still requires you to “dock” it to charge it.

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