Bosavi LLC is a Berkeley, Calif., startup company launching a headlamp “designed to be charged from almost any power supply.” On a Kickstarter video company founder Dan Freschl is shown recharging the little white headlamp using a solar unit, a USB computer cord, and some kind of whizzing, cord-pull electro generator that serves as a mini power station in the outdoors.
The company’s namesake headlamp was made, Freschl says, to stop wasteful battery usage. It was a design “borne out of years of frustration at the inconvenience and environmental impact of AAA-powered headlamps,” he wrote.
Instead of disposable batteries, the Bosavi has a built-in lithium polymer battery that sits inside a machined aluminum heat-sink that doubles as a reflector for the light. Its beam comes from a 110-lumen LED, which is bright enough for use while hiking or rolling in a city on a bike at night.
Freschl’s project was self-funded and it “relied entirely on low cost tools such as open-source software, salvaged manufacturing equipment and community resources,” he wrote. Work on the headlamp began two years ago, and now this year after a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $20,000 Freschl is looking at a manufacturing schedule that will start soon.
“Bosavi’s story isn’t just about a headlamp,” Freschl wrote me. “But it’s about a new way of creating a business — I have done everything on this project by myself, including the design, development, programming, sourcing, branding, web-site creation, videography, and photography.”
To see Freschl’s neat new headlamp concept, go to Bosavi.com. Or fund the startup via Kickstarter at this link. —Stephen Regenold
