engadget.com — Modding an innocent alarm clock to provide five fine volts of USB juice right on the nightstand. Perfect for a bed-side USB fan on those steamy summer nights, a cheeky USB lava lamp, or, erm, a USB massager. Check it out.
Jun 13, 2006 View in Crawl 4
desertedJun 14, 2006
To those of you who are saying this is useless:iPod nanos do not come with wall chargers. You can either charge it through USB on your PC, or buy a wall adapter. I would rather do this, so I can charge in my bedroom and not have to keep my laptop on just to charge a bloody iPod.
darkmuleJun 14, 2006
Kind of a neat story. All I need now is an Alarm Clock.. :
nekoJun 14, 2006
My computer is my alarm clock, and it has... one, two,.... ten USB ports already. Cool mod though, I'd like to see more USB knicknacks in my house =)
welshieJun 14, 2006
I think you'll find that the iPods that charge over USB will attempt to negotiate with the USB host a large amount of current according to the USB specs. This cheap mod to an alarm clock will not have the intelligence to tell the iPod "Go on, draw up to x00 milliamps", and it probably will not charge it. It will happily power "dumb" USB devices.
floamJun 21, 2006
This is dangerous, these devices that just spit out the five volts without a host can cause damage to some accessories. The amperage is /negotiated/ between the device and the usb host. Things that break the specification such as this are dangerous and not the most useful.