Maven Mapper's

This afternoon I went to the movies to watch I am Legend with Will Smith.  It was a good movie, but that's irrelevant to the idea that I had while at the movies.  Let me just say that while watching the movie, the theater temperature probably dropped 5 degrees.

Heated Vests at CES

A few years back, I saw a company selling electrically heated vests at the Consumer electronics show.  These were simple looking fleece vests lined with heating element wire, like you would find in a heated blanked and powered with a  nine volt battery.  I've got a picture somewhere, but still digging for it, will share it here when I find it.  Anyway to the best of my knowledge this product didn't go anywhere.  The vests were nice, but they were not exactly volcom clothing grade stuff.

Plus it was a binary heating solution.  Either on or off.  Heating up or back to normal freezing conditions.

So while I was at the movie theater I had the thought.  One of those heated vests would come in handy right now.  I didn't need a parka in there, just something to counter the dropping temperature and the ingestion of 44 ounces of diet coke on ice.

Here's the things that I thought might tip that product over the edge:

• Solar powered cells to charge a battery - this wouldn't help in the movie theater but when you are outside and your battery runs out, you are kind of COL - Cold & Out of Luck
• A simple thermostat - Something to note decreases in temperature both air and maybe even skin or inside the vest temperature.  So when the thermostat noted a change in body heat or heat around the body, it would lightly kick in and compensate automatically.
• Sectional Heat sensors - the other thing is that I was not initially cold all over, just a few areas.  If had a little heat to those areas, then I might not need heat everywhere.  Adding additional heat sensors and a little logic to tell certain sections of the vest to heat up and let other ones remain inert could save energy on the battery and keep me warm enough to be happy.