An Italian engineer came up with a unique and stylish piece of tech that unfortunately appears to be struggling its way out of development hell, which is a shame because it looks supremely strange and fun.
The Pelty is (was?) a bluetooth device housed in simple black or white ceramic which uses the heat from a single candle to generate power for a speaker. According to the product’s biography, it was conceived when designer Gianluca Gamba had a dinner guest but realized his normal bluetooth speaker was out of power. Gamba eventually drew on an engineering concept from his days at university, the Peltier Effect, which states that electric energy passing through two metals generates a difference in heat. Using this, he came up with the minimal Pelty. The resulting development team launched an online fundraising campaign to bankroll the project.
But there appeared to be problems, not the least of which was the campaign raising about $40,000 of their $100,000 goal. A message posted to the campaign during the summer stated that the Pelty was experiencing engineering difficulties. Among them was a supplier for key components going out of business and the inability of the device to run for longer than 40 minutes. The developers posted a message saying that backers could ask for their money back and that the project was in a “long and semi-permanent delay.”
The developers haven’t given up, however. A message posted to their Facebook page last month states that Pelty was competing in a startup competition in Dublin. An earlier message states that the company was taking pre-orders. The strange little speaker may not be sunk just yet.
As unique as this is, its difficult to imagine the speaker having much of a life beyond being a dinnertime conversation piece. Battery-powered electronics such as bluetooth speakers are useful because they’re mobile, fire less so. The candle generator is still a fertile concept and we hope it can resurface in some form because it would be fun to rock a party in the middle of a blackout.
Bill Rodgers is a Contributing Editor at CFile.
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