Having a gadget die in the field is a terrible thing to have happen. Sure, you could tote around some fancy charger with you to resuscitate you fallen comrade, but that doesn't seem strange enough for my tastes. What if you could somehow build a recharger yourself out of children's toys? That sounds good.

Aha, here we are! This hand crank USB charger is made out of Legos and is totally awesome. Using pieces from a Lego Mindstorms kit and a couple of cheap components from RadioShack, the enterprising builders at Instructables created this very useful doohickey. Simply plug your USB gadget in, give it a few cranks, and enjoy some free juice when you're away from an outlet. I'm a lazy man, so I probably won't actually make one of these for myself, but boy do I wish I had the energy to make one. Peep a video of the crank in action after the jump. — Adam Frucci

Instructables, via New Launches