Spotted at phys.org is a story on a prototype video camera that is the first to be fully self-powered:
A leading researcher in computational imaging, Nayar realized that although digital cameras and solar panels have different purposes - one measures light while the other converts light to power - both are constructed from essentially the same components.
...
The pixel design is very simple, and uses just two transistors. During each image capture cycle, the pixels are used first to record and read out the image and then to harvest energy and charge the sensor's power supply—the image sensor continuously toggles between image capture and power harvesting modes.
Additional background at Columbia Engineering Computer Vision Lab
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 16 2015, @02:14AM
And when my PiJuice with a solar panel arrives, I'll be able to plug it into my Raspberry PI, and have the same thing, or better, for tiny fraction of the price, (that's an assumption, but I'll bet I'm right).