A couple years ago, Signal Snowboards started an outlandish new video series called Every Third Thursday — the premise being that on the third Thursday of each month, they’d design a crazy new snowboard from the ground up and take it to the slopes for a test ride.
Long story short, they took this simple concept and went absolutely nuts with it, producing some of the craziest snowboards you could ever imagine. There was one made entirely out of cardboard, one with a fully-functional turntable built into it, and even one that had flexible photovoltaic panels on top that could charge your gadgets as you rode.
Most of these boards were either destroyed or abandoned after being tested on the hill, but the solar panel board was different. It actually worked so well that the company decided to put it into production, and now it’s available for purchase in their online store.
The Signal Solar Hybrid‘s flexible photovoltaic cells can produce about 440mA at 4.8V, and stores power in an embedded 2,000mAh battery. In full sunlight, it can gather up a full charge in about 5 hours, and can juice up anything that’s USB powered — your cell phone, action camera, active anti-fogging goggles, and just about any other gizmo you might bring with you on the slopes.
