A while back we brought you one of the first reports of Sony's ODO line of human-powered electronic devices. Well, now Sony has a working (though substantially altered) prototype of a human-powered digital camera. The device has a big ol' rubber wheel on the top that you push across any flat surface (or your forearm) to charge the batteries. About 15 pushes is enough for one shot, though presumably, you can push it a couple hundred times and then go off to the zoo.

It's fantastic to think that someday we'll be able to stop worrying about whether or not our batteries are dead, and I'd love to see this technology working its way into gadgets. For now, Sony is thinking about marketing the devices only to children. And as they're not going to compare with the slight size, ease of use, or any other feature of a modern digital camera, that's probably the right direction to go in.

There's no viewscreen (in order to save power), the pictures are fairly low quality, and there's no flash, of course. But I expect power usage to drop in all devices and for these kinds of elbow-grease chargers to start to make sense to consumers.





 

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