Are you winding me up? (Freeplay S 360)

Member Name: BizzyB

Product:	Freeplay S 360
Date:	14/10/01 (1074 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No batteries, The use in the third world

Disadvantages: Expensive, Poorer recpetion quality

I remember when the posh girl at school first got a gramophone. We all piled round to her parents shop and looked on aghast at this wonderful technology. Just a few winds and as if by magic music would emerge from the trumpet.

Hang on. That's not my memory. Ah, I'm having another 'Little House on the Prairie' flashback.

Nevermind, what it does bring to light is the history of winding things up is old enough to feature in period dramas.

But life moved on and oh so quickly. Without the luxury of predicting the future the human race ransacked Mother Earth's assets and found they could create all sorts of labour saving devices and luxuries. It has, and remains (Bizzy points to the computer), so fascinating and exciting. I don't think it is at all an accident that wired is an anagram of weird.

So when I took delivery of a prize package (I refer the reader to the opinion on competitions I gave earlier M'lud) I was over-joyed to find it contained a gadget. Oh I can see some of you twitching in your seats, 'did she say gadget?' I did in deed for in the box was...

a wind up radio though they like to call themselves 'self powered energy', Yep and I'm vertically challenged.

The radio I've won is a Self Powered S360 Radio from Freeplay, and it's a snazzy looking affair. Powered by winding, solar or rechargeable battery this is the radio that will never have you scavenging batteries from around the household appliances.

Approx. 20cm long, 9.5cm high, 7cm at its widest point and weighs just 1kg so it certainly isn't a cumbersome affair. The casing is see through and with that I can see the gadgetphiles fall off their cars - yes, you can see all the working bits inside, exciting huh?

The clear casing of my radio is an attractive peacock blue but it also comes in clear purple, clear and matte olive. For an eighties child like myself I th
ink its rather stylish though I wonder what the hi-tech 'yoof' of today make of it.

On the front is an 8cm diameter winding dial with a retractable lever (was that the sound of a gadgetphile fainting?). Also on the front of is a small speaker and the volume and tuning knobs. On the right hand side is the AM/FM switch, tuning dial, headphones socket and DC adaptor socket. On top is a neat telescopic antenna and there's also a wrist strap for easy carrying.

Let there be music...

To power the radio off to start with means flexing those muscles and turning the spring. It is said 60 turns will provide 20-25 minutes of radio playtime so in the name of dooyoo I had an experiment.

Sixty turns, turn on and it played for...28 minutes. Woohoo, 2 minutes more than promised you don't often get that...

So you have to wind it up every half an hour - sounds naff...

Well no. The rechargeable battery can store much more energy than that so when you first get the radio it is recommended you give the radio 3 lots of 60 winds and let it unwind without the radio on. Everytime you wind up and let it unwind the battery is charged.

When unwinding it makes a small whirring sound for a few minutes - nothing major and I don't find it interferes with the radio signal.

So you can wind and let it unwind to build the battery or up, or I find I just give it a wind every now and then throughout the day - any excuse to keep my hands away from either the computer keyboard of feral kittens in my care.

And go on - for you technical lot I'll give you the low down on the wind mechanism. It's a B-motor textured carbon steel spring that drives a DC generator through a transmission. Oh it's like being in a physics lesson again.

And that's not the only way to energize the Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeable battery. Along the top of the radio is an amorphous solar panel.
Now excuse my ignorance but I'm not sure what amorphous mean apart from the fact it's not amphibious - the radio isn't water proof.

The solar panel needs direct sunlight to power it and I've found it really means direct. In soggy Britain this is proving a problem of late and even on the brightest days recently if sat on the windowsill the radio only comes to life for a fleeting second which can be scary if you've forgotten it was there and one of those 'DJ voices' resounds from nowhere. Even when the radio is off, if in sunlight the battery will charge up. Hopefully next Summer we will have some sun to experiment with.

And the battery can be charged by an AC/DC adaptor with an output of 4.5 volts. At full charge the battery can power the radio for up to 13-15 hours so there's no need to think this radio is a short term player. An adaptor is not provided with the radio but it is possible to buy them separately.

So we're powered up and so let's turn on.

At first I thought it was broken as Kylie seemed to be on loop but then I realised that was just the local radio station's limited play list. The AM range is 500-1700 Khz, FM 88-108 Mhz.

Now the reception is fair to good. The tuning dial isn't minutely detailed, the Mhz marks go up in 2Mhz. And the tuning is strange. When twiddling the knob (stop giggling at the back) radio stations seem to be in tune for quite a while according to the dial. Not that I'm complaining. Once tuned in the FM is good though as the website says this depends on the topography of were you are at, same applies to AM reception.

Now the reception is where I show my age yet again. I remember when (and this really is me not Laura Ingles) when all radios sounded as if the DJ was encased in a giant tin can. And in all honesty I'm not fussed. If I can hear the radio without crackling I'm not out for Nicam Full Digital Surrou
nd Sound or whatever it is people get excited by. I just want a bit of company and in my view the S360 has the reception to keep me happy. I would understand though if people with a greater interest in radio and sound technology found the quality tinny and disappointing. My tip - if considering buying the S360, listen to one first, get it out in the shop and wind it up!

Another memory of my own going back to my youth perched on a hillside in the middle of nowhere was how amazing it was to have portable sound and I suppose that wonderment stays with me still. I remember when walkmans first arrived on our shores. One of the most exciting things I remember from my childhood was when my grandparents bought a new tractor - honestly. Why was this tractor so wonderful? It was the first one we had with a radio in. I could sit on the tractor and ride all over the moorland and hayfield singing along to the radio - it seemed like the greatest technological breakthrough of the century. A few weeks later whilst going along the top of hill which was so steep in places you couldn't stand, up the muck spreader lead broke swung round and the spreader and tractor went flying down the hill to the valley below off loading my step-grandfather, thankfully and miraculously unhurt, on the way. The largest piece intact was a couple of feet square by the time it landed in the beck. When I was told of the accident instead of asking how my grandfather was the first thing I asked after was the radio and could it be mended. This demonstrates just what an impact portable music had on me, as well as what a totally foul child I was to think of it first!

Sorry for the diversion but to come back to the point one of the greatest selling pitches for the S360 is its portable nature and it certainly is that. And like the tractor radio one thing come with being portable - wear and tear often severe. This radio is one I can see getting abuse. It'll be knocked ar
ound the garage, the garden and taken to the beach. It'll be perched precariously on wall taps and I wonder if it will take the knocks. My radio has been sent flying once by a cat and the band played on and whilst I will do many things in the name of dooyoo I am not about to ritually abuse my new toy in for the sake of an opinion. However, I will say this, for all its clear plastic casing it feels strong and the construction is excellent. Maybe the question is whether manufacturers should make their products stronger, maybe we should learn to respect our products more.

The instruction booklet that came with the radio was very disappointing, with little information and it left with me with more questions than it answered. The booklet was very basic with a radio 'map' and very basic instructions - no word of the maximum battery charge time etc. For this extra information I went hunting on the internet (I could see no URL on the box or booklet) and found the company has a website and a pretty good one at that. www.freeplay.net has product information including other wind-up, sorry, self powered products including flashlights, company information and links to on-line merchandiser - they do not appear to sell direct.

The best price I could find (after free of course - go win one!) was £49.95. And here we have the major bug bearer of the equation. That is a lot of money for a radio especially in these days of mass production and cheap basic electrical goods. You're going to save money on not buying batteries but you are not going to save that much. Cheaper radios may die quickly but are cheaply replaced and we have yet to see the lifespan of these self powered radios.

Of course there is the environmental argument. A world full of batteries is not a great option and there is good argument that we should be looking to greener and more sustainable power sources even in the humble radio.

And it is with this
in mind I would like to take my hat off to the Freeplay's inventor Trevor Bayliss, a regular television guest OBE recipient. He designed the radio after seeing a programme on the AIDS academic in Africa. His idea was that a wind-up radio would be perfect for distribution in Africa to help the all important educational programme. When you sit back and look at it this puts the radio into perspective. It seems a little banal for me to sit writing on dooyoo on whether the sound quality is up to much when I have the good fortune to live in a society where such luxuries pass as problems. It is not so much a reinvention but a return to clockwork technology which has a very real place in the world, and all the world at that. That is why I would like to see this product supported - heck if we don't buy them for ourselves lets ensure they get to the people who will really benefit from them, who will look at the with the same wonder as me and that damn tractor radio!

For us, I shall wind <groan> the opinion up by saying it is an ingenius product. It is expensive and as such I only see it being bought in this country by the gadget hungry and environmental enthusiasts.

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