InFlight USB Power Unit uses audio jack to give you juice

Unless you're one of the few, the proud who not only can manage to find a seat on an airplane with a power outlet, but can remember your adapter as well, you're probably like us and SOL when it comes to battery powered devices on long flights. That's why we're pretty stoked to see this InFlight USB Power Unit. The concept is pretty simple, but fairly ingenious. You just stick the mini jack of the Power Unit into your seat's headphone port and crank the volume. The device trickle charges for 3-5 minutes, and then can power a connected USB device for a minute, after which the cycle starts all over again. The $35 charger will work with small devices like an iPod, PDA or cellphone, and you can get the Power Gomadic TipExchange Bundle for $50, plus $5 for extra tips, to work with 700 different devices. We'd love to see if this thing can keep up with an iPod's rapid battery depletion, but you know the real reason we want this thing is to power our deco lights for a bit of home-away-from-home on those long flights.

[Via DailyTech]

[matt @ Jun 15th 2006 10:09PM]

first i think BUT what 3-5 min.... Thats not enough to start a song....... and still not at full power get an external battery for the same price

[stev @ Jun 15th 2006 10:13PM]

im gonna try chraging my mp3 player from its own headphone jack now

[mike @ Jun 15th 2006 10:31PM]

Wow, thats a really good idea. But i think people will use this more often to steal juice from other ipods rather then on an airplane.

[eric cumbee @ Jun 15th 2006 10:44PM]

interesting concept, it may not fully charge your ipod while it is on, but it would extend the run time.

[iDean @ Jun 15th 2006 10:49PM]

so...if you had two headphone splitters, you could listen to two out of juice iPods while they charge each other...

[Persian @ Jun 15th 2006 10:51PM]

umm... you guys said charge your cell phone, on an AIRPLANE. Last time i checked, that wasnt allowed. haha just kidding. This is a pretty cool device.

[chris @ Jun 15th 2006 10:56PM]

thats a really cool idea... hopefully someone can develope it more, cause the ipod drains so fast w/ videos etc... maybe have one that can run off some AA's or something for that extra boost.

[NeoteriX @ Jun 15th 2006 11:18PM]

Wow-- half the posters here have solved the world's energy crisis by coming up with an ingenious perpetual energy machine!

[JP @ Jun 16th 2006 12:15AM]

Now the real trick is to have multiple inputs so you can use the "power" from your row-mates' jacks as well.

And if you find one of the channels that is just static, that would maximize your input.

[Bryant @ Jun 16th 2006 12:34AM]

Probably want to switch to a channel that's playing AC/DC .

...

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week.

[slojohn @ Jun 16th 2006 12:39AM]

Find a splitter to use two seats headphone jack and your up twice as fast/long!

[Oddmanout @ Jun 16th 2006 1:14AM]

"half the posters here have solved the world's energy crisis by coming up with an ingenious perpetual energy machine!"

I'm guessing they know line loss will eventually expend all the energy. I doubt any of them are serious...

To be honest, I wish they had put actual power jacks of some type into all the seats instead of lcd's. True, I did enjoy 'Kingdom of Heaven' on my last trans-pacific flight, but other than that I think the movie choices are usually pretty abysmal. I say just give us the juice and let us furnish our own media. And for the less gadgety the big projection screen and cieling mount monitors could have been retained...

I don't know how effective this device would really be in practice, but the principle shows ingenuity I can respect.

But there's no way this thing will power my Pepper Pad...

[Jared @ Jun 16th 2006 3:31AM]

I didn't quite get it until I read the Support Page - http://www.inflightpower.com/support.asp - it trickle-charges ITSELF for 3-5 minutes, and then provides about 1 minute of current to the attached device. This means that if a device, such as an iPod is plugged in, it is going to go into charge mode for 1 minute every 5 minutes. It can't "recharge" a dead device while you're using it - it seems to me this device is just meant to prolong the amount of time a device has by adding just a little bit of juice.

I wonder how this device affects batteries like the iPod's - would it count as more cycles, lowering the batteries' life span?

[Sean @ Jun 16th 2006 4:46AM]

Last time I checked, battery cycles were counted in terms of a 100% cycle. i.e. 10x10% discharge is equivalent to a full discharge. The only thing that affected lifetime was discharge rate (faster giving a longer life, if I remember). This was for Lead-acid cells though.

[Oliver Southgate @ Jun 16th 2006 5:33AM]

.....Probably want to switch to a channel that's playing AC/DC .


Pure Genius, the best comment i have ever read.

[Tom @ Jun 16th 2006 8:08AM]

i agree with oliver, bryant is a living legend, and will unfortunately be leaving us next week, so lets give him a big hand before he goes.
*clap* etc

[Ugo @ Jun 16th 2006 8:24AM]

Are you guys sure the airles will allow this device remember SwissAir flight 111 that went down because of faulty wiring/overload of current from inflight entertainment system.

[DeadlySword @ Jun 16th 2006 9:23AM]

Perpetual energy machine! Good Idea, wait a minute!
No income for the energy companies... Sorry, my mistake.

"It's not economically feasible"

:)

[PeteC @ Jun 16th 2006 9:35AM]

Indeed finally Jared gets it. I don't think a lot of devices take kindly to going on and off charge every five minutes while being used, the battery keeps fluctuating so I don't know how useful this would be. What just about could be worthwhile is with a device with a good output through the audio jack to play a charging song (not AC/DC Bryant :-P) which I guess would be equivalent to a full volume constant tone so that the jack outputs the maximum power so theat it actually achieves the output of a USB port. I don't know if that is actually feasible but that way you could actually charge something properly off of it. Now how you can persuade air companis to play that sound constantly on a channel is another thing entirely!

[NNTPgrip @ Jun 16th 2006 9:41AM]

I wonder what the stats are comparing this thing with a solar panel that is roughly the size of the window. (Of course this would piss the other people off if you were in an aisle or middle seat, say nothing of the center row in the bigger jets)

[Bryan @ Jun 16th 2006 9:54AM]

Too bad it's not powerful. And it's so great plugging in your headphones when you sit down on a plane after someone used this gadget and you get blasted painfully.

[Mike @ Jun 16th 2006 11:11AM]

Nice innovation! I just wonder about $35 for this--if one had soldering skill, wouldn't the parts be maybe $5-10 from an electronics store? Although innovation needs to be rewarded, $20-25 would seem better ...

[DarrenJ @ Jun 16th 2006 12:34PM]

Mike-

You're forgetting the cost of a rechargeable battery. Price sounds pretty fair to me.

[ATT @ Jun 17th 2006 9:25AM]

lol good tool to shock people on the plane anyone know if walls are made of metal i think there plastic.


get arested for trying hijack the plane on USB power
hahahaha

[Aurelio @ Jan 14th 2008 10:17PM]

Terrible idea. I am guessing from the numbers that this device can draw roughly half a watt. In an 8 hour flight, half a watt comes to about 4 watt hours, so that's the net amount of energy you can "harvest" out of that jack. Do you know what else contains about 4 watt hours of energy? a single AA battery. For this price don't you think that you could get all the AA batteries you could ever need for all your flights in the next several years, and still have money left over for a device that adapts up AA power to USB? or better yet, get something like "PowerAid" a small, rechargeable USB power pack that holds about 11 watt hours, enough to charge your phone twice or more.

-arr

[zhonghuarising @ Jun 23rd 2006 7:14PM]

I agree with Oddmanout upthread. I take a lot of trans-pacific flights and I would much rather have a power outlet so that I can get some actual work done beyond the two-hour battery life of my laptop. That would be infinitely better than sitting through four or five movies that I've already seen before!

[Felly @ Aug 12th 2008 3:22AM]

This is great news!

http://www.chasetheglow.com