Not too long ago, the great folks of Pepcom through one of their signature press events in NYC. There’s always a theme and this time was no different. Since it was April and Earth Day wasn’t too long ago, the theme was being green and impacting the environment as little as possible. Here’s a run down of the cool stuff that we came across and think you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for in the near future.

Let’s dive right in and start off witht he first thing we saw at the show. What you see above is Tremont Electric’s nPower PEG. If you’ve ever had to use a shake-up flashlight (or Shake Weight) then you instantly know how this works. The up and down motion causes a magnet to travel through an electrical coil and creates a charge. That charge is stored in a 2000 MAh battery inside the device. We were told that for smaller devices, like an iPod Nano, about a mintue’s worth of charging would generate about a minute worth of play-back time. For more power-hungry devices like smartphones, it’s going to take a signifcant amount of effort to get a good charge going. We were told that it would take approximately 25 minutes of walking to produce a  minute of talk time. We loved the idea of strapping this to our leg and riding all over the city. That way no matter where we went, we’d always be able to keep our electronics charged.

Of course, being always charged does come at a price. That price is the cost of the nPower PEG and it’s going to be $170. The PEG will be available later this year.

We also checked out Eco Geek Living and their line of new battery packs, the Fat Cat. We saw two version at the event, the smaller 4200 mAh pack for smartphones and the larger 9600 mAh pack for tablets. For those of you not sure on the math, the smaller pack will easily get 2 full charges to a smartphone. The same applies for the larger battery pack, just replace the smartphone with a tablet. Both packs have USB mini in and full-size USB out. Again, great products don’t come cheap, and the Fat Cat 4200 mAh is running a cool $70. The larger Fat Cat 9600 mAh is going to run $120. Both are available now on the Eco Geek Living .

 

Stepping a bit further away from traditional tech, SodaStream was at Eco-Focus in full effect. If you haven’t heard of them, you might want to check our head-honcho’s, Sean-Paul, thoughts of the system on The Other View. Needless to say, it takes water and carbonates it then just add syrup and you have instant soda. While SodaStream reps did make mention of a new, one-touch machine, the big news was the new partnership with Kraft. No, there won’t be mac ‘n cheese soda anytime soon, but there will be Crystal Light and Country Time coming in the next few months. I can’t say we’re too excited for Crystal Light ourselves, but Country Time lemonade/soda sounds very interesting and we’ll be picking up at least one bottle.

There was one idea that always permeates these eco-events and that’s reusability. One company that’s taking it to a new level is called Build It Green! NYC (BIG NYC). They’re a low-cost salvage surplus company that sells reclaimed building materials from demolished buildings in the NYC area. You can find almost any material there from raw lumber and marble to completely built furniture. We love the idea and will be heading up there to scavenge for materials for our media center project. We’re not sure about BIG NYC’s plans on expanding to other areas around the country, but in the mean time, you should definitely check in your area to see if there’s a comparable organization.

Lastly, on a more traditional tech side, Toshiba was in the house with some new toys. The most notable of these was the Excite 13, an upcoming tablet sporting a head-turning 13 inch display. We spent a a bit of time playing around with tablet and despite sounding  completely awkward, it was easy to handle and snappy to respond to input. There wasn’t any word on a release date or how badly it would leave our wallets hemorrhaging, but rest assured that when we get that info, we’ll pass it along to you.

 

That’s the best of what we saw at Pepcom: Eco-Focus and we can’t wait until the next Pepcom event!