HydroSTICK - Hand Held Fuel Cell

     So it seems like Horizon have finally got their hand held fuel cell to market.  I like the system that these guys have come up with, basically instead of batteries you plug in little "Solid Hydrogen" cartridges.  Ok, I'm absolutely sure that's marketing guff and the cartridges only contain "Solid Hydrogen" in the loosest sense, but it's still a neat idea.  And ok, so the cartridges aren't really equivalent to batteries - though I'm sure Horizon loves that comparison.  Batteries are completely self contained, hook them into a circuit and electricity flows.  Attach a wire to either end of a HydroSTIK and nothing much will happen, it's just a fuel tank.  The hydrogen needs to be recombined with oxygen in another unit (the fuel cell) to get anything useful from it.
     Horizon make a couple of different fuel cells for use with their HydroSTIK, one designed for RC cars (Ok, that's kinda neat...) and one designed to be useful, providing power for usb devices - the MiniPAK.  Everything looks pretty slick, however there's a few shortcomings.
     Firstly there's the energy density, the HydroSTIK is quoted as having 12 Watt hours of energy.  Probably this doesn't mean much to you?  It's about the same amount of energy as you get in a C size battery, or about 3 AA's.  Volume of the HydroSTIK is a little larger than a C cell though, it's a little narrower & a fair bit longer.  Overall it's got about an extra 10% volume.  So the energy density is down on your standard garden variety batteries, but not by _that_ much.  An extra 10% bulk to feel good about my green ways?  I might live with that.
     But...  Ooops, I forgot - the HydroSTIK doesn't do anything without its fuel cell.  Hmm, the extra bulk is starting to add up quite a bit now.  Looking at the size of the Horizon fuel cells, I'd guess the overall package is only going to have around half the energy density of current batteries.  Not really ready for prime time yet.

     Now looking at the MiniPAK device charger they're quoting a maximum output of 400mA.  This is also just a little underwhelming - the USB spec is meant to be able to provide up to 500mA at maximum capacity.  I think there's some devices (I'm looking at you iPhone - I know it won't charge from only 300mA) which may not like only getting 400mA.  It seems a little random that they've only designed the MiniPAK to put out 400mA, but maybe that's the best they could get with the technology they're using.  So keep in mind if you're using your MiniPAK to charge something, it'll likely go slower than it would plugged into a USB port.

     So while I think that the whole HydroSTIK ecosystem is a neat idea, to my mind it's really just proof of concept stuff at the minute.  I hope that Horizon is successful enough to be able to get generations two and three of their products to market though, then I think I'd really be interested.