Gadget of the Week: Charger of the Light Brigade

A charger cable as gadget of the week? Hold your horses, you might say. What is there to change or improve in any way about a simple cable? Well, there is one thing, small but significant: the visuals.

The Light Pulse from Pilot Electronics really is an eyecatcher: the USB “charge and sync” cable for smartphones and consoles is no run of the mill piece of wiring in black, grey, white, or even the odd red or yellow or other colourful cable you might encounter. The Light Pulse does what it says on the tin – it lights up while it loads your phone up with a pulsating stream of light.

And the appeal extends beyond the merely aesthetic. Light Pulse shows you how much your device has charged: if the pulses of light move quickly along the cable, then your battery is nearly empty; if they move slowly, charging is almost complete.

The development team have already achieved international recognition for their lightbulb moment, winning the prestigious Red Dot Design Award for 2015 in the product design category. The pulsing design won out over nearly 5,000 competing products entered by 1,994 participants from 56 different countries.

The ‘hi-vis’ micro-USB cable is currently on Kickstarter with an option to pledge and receive an Apple Lightning adapter. The Light Pulse is available in a variety of colours: aurora green, galaxy blue, and cosmic pink. The developers plan to introduce an additional colour once they hit 750 shares on Facebook or receive $45,000 in pledges on Kickstarter. A standard micro-USB cable comes in at $30, with backers needing to add $5 to that to receive an Apple Lightning adapter suitable for charging an iPhone as well.