Collaborate Disseminate
Energy harvesting, the practice of scavenging ambient electromagnetic fields, light, or other energy sources, is a fascinating subject that we don’t see enough of here at Hackaday. It’s pleasing then …read more Continue reading Where This Xmas Card’s Going, We Don’t Need Batteries!
Back in 1956, Seiko created their “magic lever” as an integral part of self-winding mechanical watches, which were essentially mechanical energy harvesters. The magic lever is a type of ratcheting …read more Continue reading 3D Print Your Own Seiko-Style “Magic Lever” Energy Harvester
We were always amused that one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the recent past — graphene — was started with pencil lead and Scotch tape. Now, researchers at the …read more Continue reading Miracle of Science: Scotch Tape Improves Generator
We’re used to some pretty small batteries in miniaturized electronics, thanks to the manufacture of lithium-polymer pouch cells. But they’re still pretty big, and they’re hardly the most stable power …read more Continue reading New Part Day: The Smallest Batteries You Have Ever Seen
It used to be the cost of a microcontroller was a big inhibitor to putting brains in everything, but those days are long gone. Even 32-bit CPUs are now cheap …read more Continue reading Less is More When It Comes to Sensor Power
We will assume you’ve seen The Matrix — it was from 1999, after all. The surprise, at the end, was that humans were being used as human batteries to power …read more Continue reading Human Power, Past and Future
We all know that you can convert heat into electricity. Usually, you do that with some form of steam, but there are other methods, too, including thermocouples. If you’ve ever …read more Continue reading Power for Nothing and Your Kicks for Free
Generally speaking, we like our computing devices to remain on and active the whole time we’re using them. But there are situations, such as off-grid devices that run on small …read more Continue reading BFree Brings Intermittent Computing To Python
You don’t really create energy, you convert it from one form to another. For example, many ways that we generate electricity use heat from burning or nuclear decay to generate …read more Continue reading Turning Heat into Electricity
Without knowing it, we’ve spent years watching [Jasper Sikken] piece together an empire of energy harvesting equipment, and now he’s putting the pieces together into wonderful creations. His recently finished …read more Continue reading Magic Pyramids Blink Eternal with the Power of the Sun