Irish power solutions manufacturer myVolts has launched a Kickstarter project to fund production of ReVolt, an alternative to using expensive batteries to power your portable synths, effects pedals and other music gadgets.
In a nutshell, the ReVolt Bridge is an adapter that lets you add USB power to any of your portable battery-powered devices.
One end is battery-shaped and goes into the battery compartment of the device you want to power. The other end has a power connector. The two are connected by a thin ribbon cable that’s flat enough to allow you to close the door on your device’s battery compartment.
To use it, you just take out your device’s batteries (AAA, AA, C or D), insert the ReVolt bridge cable and then connect a USB power cable. The USB cable can be plugged into a wall plug, a USB port on your laptop, a USB powerbank or a USB solar cell.
Features:
- Use with AAA, AA, C or D battery-powered devices.
- Use with any USB port or USB power bank.
- ReVolt can be safely used anywhere in the world.
- Economical – eliminates the need to purchase batteries, and you can reuse it with multiple devices.
- Remove it at any time to use your device with standard batteries.
- Environmentally friendly
- Modular system let you power multiple devices from a single USB connection
- No worry of running out of batteries.
- Eliminates the possibility of battery leaks in your devices.
Pricing and Availability
Production of ReVolts is being funded via a Kickstarter and it is available to project backers starting at about $36.
Note: Crowdfunded projects can involve risk, so see details at the project site.
Are there really that many devices which dont have a power jack and are used on a so much regular basis that changing rechargable batteries is too much work?
And how do they adjust the voltage in their ReVolt?
they are but it’s a good point, maybe they need to show examples to all the product this can benefit.
if you think about how much stuff was made than .. yes there are many many hundreds of thousands of devices floating around. also it will lessin the millioins of trillions of batteries in landfills.
Setting up a voltage regulator that converts the standard USB 5V down to 1.5V should be pretty trivial.
I like that this is not another rechargeable battery solution, but an actual battery adapter. Makes sense.
Even for devices with DC power options, this is just an alternative to wall-power. You can use a widely available USB power-bank as a power source.
This is one of those ideas where it is actually kind of surprising it hasn’t already been done.
to be fair, it has, just maybe not in the USB end , I’ve been using some wall wart to AA and AAA convertors for years that I actually found in a Christmas lights shop..they work great.
I was actually measuring batteries to build something like this myself for a 3D audio processor that munches AA cells. Then MyVolts sent me the AA/AAA version last week to check out. It’s pretty slick: The AA shells unscrew to house the AAA cores, the ribbon cable snakes around battery hatches, and the coaxial power socket comes with double-sided tape so you can plug and unplug without stressing the ribbon. There’s also an LED inside one cell to confirm power.
I did buy a similar system on Amazon, but it uses a wall wart and comes with only one battery size, so it’s not as useful for mobile music.
MyVolts makes good stuff. I sponsored their original Kickstarter for the Ripcord and it’s still working well. I covered some of my Ripcord setups in *Synth and Software:*
https://synthandsoftware.com/?s=ripcord+battino
This is great, my Dübreq Stylophone S-1 does not have a power input either and can normally only run on batteries 🙂
maybe not for everything or everyone but a very welcome option / solution, bravo.
How is the hum? I have several (probably cheap-ish) devices that you can run off a wall-wart, but it seems to introduce annoying hum that degrades the sound quality compared to running off batteries.