The Dutch fashion designer Pauline van Dongen is clearly thinking out of the box when designing new collections of dresses. Her new prototype collection Wearable Solar is a step in new direction, experimenting with additional functionality of clothes, traditionally limited to keeping us warm and dry.
As she points out, her inspiration is the fact, that nowadays we are highly dependent on connectivity, addicted to sharing moments of our life every second at the time on social platforms using our smartphones, tablets and other electronics. We want our smartphones to be constantly powered to capture that special moment we can brag about. Unfortunately the batteries usually can’t keep up with our demands so Pauline came to an idea to power phone utilizing the thing we usually always have on us, our clothes.
Her prototype coat and dress, which she loaded with enough solar panels to power a smartphone, puts esthetics and wearability first, while providing the technology to charge a typical smartphone to 50% in one hour of full sun exposure. There are 72 flexible solar panels on the dress and 48 rigid crystalline solar cells on the coat to harvest enough sunrays to keep charging our phone while enjoying sun. Both prototypes have a modular element enabling to reveal the solar panels when the sun shines or hide them and wear them close to your body.
I purchased a FreePlay self powered energy crank type radio in 1999 I want to know if it is a repairable when we Crank It Up it unwinds itself and makes a loud noise thank you
Hi Alice. As we are not the manufacturer I can’t advise you how to repair it. I would suggest you contact the manufacturer FreePlay who should answer your question though I think they will need some more info/pictures about the problem.