Control Battery-Operated devices from your Smartphone with “Tethercell’

CES is not just about gadgets but also about technology. Considering the sheer range of the devices at our disposal on a day to day basis, it would be a great idea to connect our devices and technology and make both work, more, for us. One such technology is Tethercell which lets you operate and control any of your AA battery operated devices through your smartphone. Silence painfully loud toys and electronics, control most anything through Bluetooth and ‘re-imagine your batteries’. Here’s how it works.

What the Tethercell is essentially an adapter that draws its power from an AAA battery. Use it instead of an AA battery, connect it via Bluetooth to your smartphone and control your device. You can do all sorts of simple tasks starting from a simple switch on and off, setting timers for starting your device and shutting it down or to find out if the device is running on low battery. The device, as we’ve mentioned runs on AAA battery and when the phone or tablet communicates with Tethercell, power is cut off. You’ll need just one Tethercell per device. 

Brought to you from Indiegogo, the project created some buzz at CES in Las Vegas for the novelty that it brought to the trouble. Tethercell is a tiny little thing and you can decide how many hours you want the device to run. This brings us to one of its uses, battery saving capabilities. The battery runs the phone rather than the other way around and helps to conserve battery life.

There’s another use. Consider the possibility for parents creating strict play or learning times for children. You can now decide how long young Timmy needs to play with his battery operated car or how long the robot can do its tasks. Yes, this may not be a use for everyone, something Tethercell will need to think about.

But here’s another thing to think about. Remember we mentioned that you needed only one Tethercell per device? So what you need to do is remove a single AA battery and replace it with a Tethercell. It doesn’t matter how many AA batteries your device needs- when it comes to Tethercell, it will always be just one. Download the Tetherboard app from the store and connect to an iOS device that has Bluetooth Smart compatibility. Tethercell supports AA batteries and iOS right now. 

The Tethercell is a simple design- it is the size of an AA battery and has wireless circuitry. The electronics are based on TI microcontroller that has temperature sensors, boost convertors and a current sensing comparator. 

Tethercell uses a low power Bluetooth protocol which is Bluetooth 4.0. With Bluetooth Smart Ready, the range will increase even further to about 60 feet. In open spaces, there’s every possibility that it could go up to 100 feet. If plans work out, Tethercell should be commercially available from June.

This is a great way to give your old devices a new lease of life and make them more current. And isn’t it great if you had more power in your hands to switch off the endless drum playing monkey? Or disable that channel surfing remote? Pretty neat, wouldn’t you say? 

This is a guest post by Tina Reeves of Buycox.com, a site that offers good savings and current information on cox tv.