Freeplay Indigo Flashlight: Self-Powered LED Illumination
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 06. 8.07
We’re big fans of Freeplay, the innovative developers of self-powered communications and lighting devices. We’ve previously covered their fantastic Lifeline Radio, which was specifically designed for humanitarian relief and development work. We’ve also written about their Jonta Flashlight before too. Now we bring news of yet another super-efficient, potentially self-powered lighting device, the Indigo LED Lantern. The unit can be powered either by using the hand crank on the back, or by using the mains adaptor, and can provide 2.5 hours of light at full power, 35 hours of torch light (which apparently is good enough for reading by), and 70 hours of illumination in night-light mode. The makers claim that the LED bulbs provide anywhere up to 100,000 hours of useful life. That’s a lot of reading! ::Freeplay Energy::
I love Freeplay too, but I wish they'd make their products easily fixable. I have one of the crank/solar radios in which the rechargable batteries died after a couple of years of use. I bought some replacement batteries, but when I open the radio up the dynamo spring unsprung and broke. It seems like such a waste of a really good idea.
Freeplay has updated its technology and no longer uses the spring based system you mention. Try out their new alternator-based product.
I thought about buying one of these torches in the past but was put off by the fact that the rechargeable battery is non-removable. Does this not make the product obsolete when the battery eventually needs replacing?