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LAS VEGAS—Got excess, twitchy energy while you’re kicking around online or pondering spreadsheets? Your PC can harness it. At CES 2024, Lenovo showed off a keyboard and mouse set that lets you spin and wind your way to recharge your peripherals, and save the planet a smidge along the way.
(Credit: John Burek)
Lenovo dubs its creation its “Mechanical Energy Harvesting Solution.” While the name might suggest that it’s tapping into the velocity of your key typing or mouse-clicking and turning it into charge, it’s not quite like that. We got a demo of the input-device pair at the show, and it’s all about a different type of energy you generate: fidget power!Start with the keyboard. This is, at first glance, a plain wireless 68-key tenkeyless model, with standard-feeling keys with RGB backlighting. A strip along the top is a solar panel, which can passively recharge the keyboard when it’s under bright light. That’s not new; we’ve seen solar keyboards from Logitech and others in the (distant) past.
(Credit: John Burek)
What is new, though, is the dial at upper left. At first, it looks like it should be a volume control or some kind of macro scroll wheel. Instead, it just freely spins in place, and your spinning of the wheel is transformed from kinetic energy into battery charge. (The wheel serves no other purpose, alas, but as a charger and an outlet for your fidgety fingers.)
(Credit: John Burek)
Lenovo says that five minutes of spinning should equate to 30 minutes of charge on the keyboard’s lithium battery. There’s also a USB-C port on the back panel for a manual cable connection, and a three-position switch allows for switching the connection among the provided RF dongle, the wired USB, or Bluetooth.
(Credit: John Burek)
As for the mouse, you’ve got a handful of shortcut buttons and a sculpted design—and a different kinetic concept. On the underside of the mouse is an embedded ring, which is on a pivot and can be pried up and raised perpendicular to the mouse. You then use the ring as a winding key for the mouse’s battery.
(Credit: John Burek)
According to the specs, you should get 30 minutes of charge out of a minute of winding.
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(Credit: John Burek)
The mouse itself is software-programable to 12,800dpi and the button mix resembles that of a good productivity mouse, with the usual left/middle (scroll wheel)/right buttons, left and right scroll buttons, a side sniping button, a resolution switcher, two side shortcut buttons, and a toggle switch.As these are a prototype set of devices (augmented by a solar-chargeable headset, not discussed here), you can’t buy these products quite yet, but we’re looking forward to giving them a test drive if and when they come to market.
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