Challenge: a pillow thats always cool

There are actually several pillow-cooling items on the market and they do mostly involve gels, pads, and basically ice packs.

We took a stab at an air cooled one but hit a wall - will probably revisit in Season 3.

-Ben

Gorammit! I don't know why I didn't think to check on that. Never seen anything like that in sale in the UK - not that it ever gets that warm here!

Maybe subconsciously I didn't google it because I knew I'd be disappointed. They even already use the name I would have chosen! I'm glad I didn't go on Dragon's Den with the idea...

Liquid cooling is a good idea... Maybe using something like a fish tank pump? They run almost silently and are safe electrically. Tubes running through the pillow, to a tank pump... Then possibly through a mini fridge or Peltier system to chill the return water? All these devices run very quietly.

My tought is that the presence of these other (existing) products doesn't preclude this as a fun maker project. These other products simply mean that we couldn't easily scale-up, manufacture, and sell our chilled pillow, but that's ok -- that's not the goal of this forum or Ben's cool show. Of course the existing products do take away some of the 'coolness' (pardon the pun) - i.e., the idea is less novel. The builds I like the best are typically those that don't already exist or which might be more fun/easy for someone to build rather than buy. Thus if you could charge a cell phone from the pillow heat that would be cool (none of the current products do that), what about charging your cell from the heat emitted from the bottom of a laptop? Or what about a laptop heat powered laptop cooling pad. Probably not enough energy there.

Good ideas.

My tought is that the presence of these other (existing) products doesn't preclude this as a fun maker project. These other products simply mean that we couldn't easily scale-up, manufacture, and sell our chilled pillow, but that's ok -- that's not the goal of this forum or Ben's cool show. Of course the existing products do take away some of the 'coolness' (pardon the pun) - i.e., the idea is less novel. The builds I like the best are typically those that don't already exist or which might be more fun/easy for someone to build rather than buy. Thus if you could charge a cell phone from the pillow heat that would be cool (none of the current products do that), what about charging your cell from the heat emitted from the bottom of a laptop? Or what about a laptop heat powered laptop cooling pad. Probably not enough energy there.

Good ideas.