This compact device called the YoGen Max from a company called Easy Energy allows you to charge up your laptop anywhere in the world with the power of your foot. If you are at an airport with no outlets in sight or on a plane and you don’t mind looking a bit silly and getting weird looks this could be perfect for you. More importantly this can keep your laptop going in rural parts of the world where you won’t look silly at all foot pumping your laptop.
Folded up it is small enough to fit into most laptop cases and easily go with you anywhere. The YoGen Max produces 60-80 watts of power when in operation and when your foot and leg cramp up it can also hold 12 rechargeable AA batteries to keep the power flowing. Easy Energy claims this is enough to keep a typical laptop going.
This isn’t for sale quite yet, but they say they have a working protype and are starting to take orders from distributors. I also don’t see any information about how much this retail for, but hopefully it will be reasonably affordable. This portable charger could help many people that need power on the go.
For more information head over to Easy Energy’s site.
Here’s a video demonstration of the YoGen Max.
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James Towner | Posted in 
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January 25th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
this is a great product. something like a pedal would be even more easy i guess. who says you can be a couch potato while computing
January 25th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Pretty cheap looking device. Its clear they dont intend for it to last any reasonable amount of time. You could hear the plastic rubbing which would wear out really quick.. cheap plastic.
January 25th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Mike, #2 poster:
It’s just a prototype! They don’t have a final product yet.
Don’t trash what’s in the video just because it isn’t refined. Think of it more as a proof of concept than the exact thing that they’d sell.
January 25th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Mike: its a prototype. What is shown in the video is not the finished product, it is not yet available for sale. Most prototypes are made of cheap plastic, some are made with a 3d printer which is often a substandard plastic housing. This is something that gets corrected in the final, not the initial, stages of development. Once they have other issues, like the underlying technology worked out, figured out exactly how it should be shaped to hold the components, etc they then make proper housings. Its quite common.
So basically hold off on judgment until the final product is out, it may still be cheap plastic and not last long, but at least then it would be fair to say that.
In a sense what you are saying is like saying a beta release of some software title has bugs so the final release will have the same problems.
January 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am
i guess i might convert my old cry baby (that’s a wah-wah pedal incase you didn’t know) into a generator! the idea never crossed my mind… guess i’m not the inventor type
January 26th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Awesome. Do want.
January 26th, 2009 at 2:44 am
Seems like a lot of manual effort is wasted between cycles. Why not introduce a flywheel into the device to store the mechanical energy?
January 26th, 2009 at 5:21 am
[...] Source [Az Sustainability] [...]
January 26th, 2009 at 5:27 am
Too bad i’m too tall for moving my legs in planes and other means of transportation.
January 26th, 2009 at 7:13 am
This looks like one of 15 methods OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) has been using for quite a while. See laptop.org for details.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals
January 26th, 2009 at 8:27 am
a human pedaling a bicycle fitted with a generator at a sustainable speed can roughly produce 60W of power. i don’t think that foot paddle think can do the same.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I hope its rechargeable batteries in the thing and I hope it ALSO recharges those batteries while your pumping. I like this idea. The other thing it needs is to shut up. They need to make this thing as SILENT as possible. You could not use that prototype ANYWHERE as it the people around you would lynch you.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:59 am
This is fake. Look at any instructions for bicycle generators and to generate 60 watts, you need to go pretty fast. 60 Watts is too much energy for something this size and at most could charge a cell phone. Most likely it is fake since it looks like a prank and most info does not look verifiable
January 26th, 2009 at 11:04 am
This is great, not to mention that if you just buy any good Atom-based or Transmeta/Crusoe laptops, these only take around 10 Watt of power.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
[...] میتوانید به وب سایت شرکت Easy Energy مراجعه کنید و یک ویدیو از این محصول [...]
January 26th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
[...] Source [Az Sustainability] [...]
January 26th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
if they didn’t think that was going to be pretty close to the final product, they wouldn’t have put this video up.
I think that this foot pedal would be a better sell if it didn’t make so much noise. With this level of noise there is no way I’d use it on an airplane or any other sort of quiet place where I could disturb someone.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
[...] New device allows you to charge your laptop with foot pedal. | AzSustainability.com [...]
January 27th, 2009 at 3:05 am
This is great, not to mention that if you just buy any good Atom-based or Transmeta/Crusoe laptops, these only take around 10 Watt of power..
January 28th, 2009 at 3:00 am
good job for one million one legged Chinese to light up a small city ^^
January 28th, 2009 at 5:00 am
[...] | AZSustainability. Más información | YoGen [...]
January 29th, 2009 at 3:01 am
a human pedaling a bicycle fitted with a generator at a sustainable speed can roughly produce 60W of power. i don’t think that foot paddle think can do the same..
January 30th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
lol they should market this as providing you with exercise
February 1st, 2009 at 11:44 am
[...] Gefunden bei azsustainability. [...]
February 4th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
[...] [YoGen Max via Azsustainability] [...]