| Title | 17th Century Clock Inspires Power Harvester Implementation | |
| Date | Friday September 19 2014, @01:26PM | |
| Author | LaminatorX | |
| Topic | ||
| from the ambient-time dept. | ||
There's an interesting paper on an Ambient Temperature Power Harvester, which was presented at The ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp):
...we present a thermal power harvester that utilizes naturally changing ambient temperature in the environment as the power source. In contrast to traditional thermoelectric power harvesters, our approach does not require a spatial temperature gradient; instead it relies on temperature fluctuations over time, enabling it to be used freestanding in any environment in which temperature changes throughout the day.
This design is inspired by the Atmos Clock, a 17th century clock design, which contains a small expansion chamber, and uses the expansion and condensation of a gas to make a small mechanical motion. There are details on How the Atmos Clock works, and the history of the clock. The original clock used the motion for mechanical winding, where this design converts the motion to electrical energy, and provides:
...the ability to power a sensor node, transmit sensor data wirelessly, and update a bistable E-ink display
after as little as a 0.25 °C ambient temperature change.
The paper itself is a available for download as a five page PDF, and there's a simple demonstration video of the device.
Reported at New Scientist, with earlier stories from Nanowerk and The University of Washington.
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printed from SoylentNews, 17th Century Clock Inspires Power Harvester Implementation on 2024-04-25 04:10:15