When people claim the best inventions are the most important, they are wrong.
The best inventions are those which we have been able to survive without for ages, but which make things much, much easier for our lazy selves.
This is why so many people care about things like this device, which helps you prevent people from stealing your phone charger.
It’s also why another new creation, the charger with a built-in electricity-spotting torch, will soon be the only thing you care about.
As reported by Gizmodo, TenOneDesign’s ‘Stella’ cable has the power (geddit) to identify nearby electricity and switch on an inbuilt torch to make it easier for you to see where you need to plug in - so no more blindly scrabbling around trying to - oh, the irony - plug your lamp in.
“It looks like a perfectly normal electrical plug, but inside the Stella is additional hardware similar to what you’d find inside a non-contact voltage tester, tools electricians use to detect the presence of a live wire without actually having to touch it by detecting the surrounding electrical field,” Gizmodo’s Andrew Liszewski writes, having tested the product.
“The Stella incorporates a simplified version of this technology to automatically activate an LED when power is detected. It’s not quite as sensitive as the tool an electrician would use, but I found it was able to detect a power outlet from as far as a couple of inches.”
The Stella cable costs $34.95 (£26.58), though at present it’s only available in the US and, by extension (geddit? No? okay, I’ll stop), only currently works for US sockets.
We’re hoping a UK-ready version comes along sooner rather than later, because we can already see this coming in handy when working from cafes and needing to plug in your laptop under the table.
More importantly, though, it can ensure you don’t fall foul of that mischievous plug socket trick: no light means no electricity, so you’re one up on those pranksters.
(Images: Pixabay/Pexels)
