An idea that's been a long time in reaching reality has hit another milestone:
A device that fits inside a pair of shoes saves the energy generated when someone walks and successfully uses it to charge watch batteries, scientists say.
The shoe insole was created after scientists at the Center for Research in Advanced Materials (CIMAV) in Mexico decided to "capture" the energy produced by people walking.
They designed a pill-shaped cylinder adapted to a shoe in order to store the mechanical-vibrational energy the person generates when walking.
With the captured energy they have been able to recharge clock and AAA batteries. The prototype designed by CIMAV adapted the 'pill' which has a diameter of two inches and a thickness of three millimetres to the sole of a shoe.
Unfortunately, it seems that you'll need wide feet to use the current generation of this device. Hopefully, the design is adaptable to a range of different shoe sizes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday October 05 2014, @09:06AM
A lot of barbeque starters and cigarette lighters use it. The problem is the small ones give out high voltage in the microamp/picoamp range.
A good sized part of using this to charge batteries is to make a decent high-voltage to low voltage power converter....my guess is to charge a capacitor and periodically dump it through a magnetic transformer... kinda like a television flyback transformer running in reverse.
A piezoelectric crystal is what is in a crystal microphone. A phonograph pickup using one of these would develop enough drive voltage to drive the control grid of the favorite commodity beam-power pentode of the day (50L6), making cheapie phonographs using only a 50L6 pentode and 35Z5 rectifier tube possible. ( I had one ).
Actually I remember it that well because that old cheapie phonograph was the very first thing that was thrown away broken, I found the 35Z5 had an open cathode, replaced it, and rescued the phonograph from the trash man. What I trying to say is that it was the first thing in my life I actually fixed. Everything prior to that was given to me working, and I broke it. That old crystal-pickup phonograph was the first thing ever given to me - broken, and I made it work again. Its probably one of the main things that got me interested in electronics.
Even to this day, I use piezoelectrics. My latest use of them involves the little piezoceramic disk in a noisemaker. When one is removed and glued into a funnel, it makes a great pressure transducer for measuring pressure changes when you run a rubber hose from the funnel snout to what you want to listen to... and in my case, I was "listening" to the vacuum line, the crankcase air pressure, and puffing of the exhaust of a car engine. It was quite easy to see the puffs of pressure on an ordinary lab scope, and compare all the puffs to each other to verify all were similar across all of the cylinders. A misbehaving valve or leaking ring shows up like all blazes on the oscilloscope, neatly showing you which cylinder is misfiring, valves not working right, or rings leaking, so I don't have to crack an engine open unless I have a serious mechanical problem in the engine that warrants it. And should I have to crack open an engine, I know exactly what I am looking for - which cylinder - which valve or ring. This way I do not end up barking up the wrong tree when something like a bad fuel injector or ignition wire is the real culprit. No, I am not a professional mechanic, just wanted to see what something like that would look like on a 'scope. And while I am this far offtopic, I will throw in another thing that looks really interesting is how much information about an engine you can glean from something as basic as alternator whine on the battery power bus.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Sunday October 05 2014, @04:05PM
"diameter of two inches and a thickness of three millimetres" How many stone does it weigh?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.