14 DAY TRIAL // The sun is an essentially inexhaustible source of energy, and now that solar panel technology has become good enough to implement at a small scale, Sparkle Labs has invented a kit that can turn battery-based devices into solar-powered.
The invention is called the SunMod kit and can take any device powered by AA or AAA batteries and enable it to use sunlight instead.
That means that pretty much all children's toys, remote controls, computer mice and portable speakers, as well as various gadgets, can be thus modified.
You just need to make sure that the solar panel is exposed to sunlight as much as possible and the energy in your device will constantly replenish.
No NiMH rechargeable batteries are included in the Sparkle Lab SunMod Solar Hacking Kit, but that shouldn't matter since all of them are supported anyway. The price is of $20, or €14.41.
And to think that, not too many years back, there were no solar panels small enough to enable something like this. Technology really has become much more efficient over the past decade. One has to wonder if the same progress would have been achieved if the dwindling of fossil fuels had started to make itself felt half a century sooner.
