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Still Suits and Body-powered Devices

Posted by michael on from the stay-out-of-the-rain dept.

Helmholtz writes: "Soon body powered devices may be a reality thanks to work being done at the Center for Space Power and Advanced Electronics, a NASA commercial center in Alabama. The article talks mostly about military and space applications, but I think it'd be really slick to make still suits, not to mention portable audio players, PDA, and even laptops that are powered by energy that we are generating anyway."

3 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. That's not new by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Soon body powered devices may be a reality"

    I have a Seiko kinetic on my wrist that tells me reality goes faster than Slashdot (and tells me the time too).

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. efficiency by TH4L35 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While these cool ideas are unfortunately under-researched (according to the article), it is pretty obvious that the energy efficiency of the items you wish to power is a more important research goal than how you power them, as greater efficiency will always have a benefit, while improved energy reclamation techniques may be limited in usefulness.

    IMHO, it is better to have efficient core business operations than a business/revenue model whose excessive burn rate losses are "balanced" by millions pop-up X10 video cam ads. The former model has greater inherent stability and therefore flexibility. While the latter is just plain annoying.

    --
    When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."
  3. Not for me. by MarkusQ · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I don't see why everyone things that devices that act like parasites would be cool to wear. If they are driven by the wind going by as you run, they will make it harder to run. If they are powered by the heat of your body, they will make it harder for you body to regulate its temperature (unless you live somewhere real cold). If they are powered by motion, they will make it harder to move. In short, you will have to work harder when you wear them, just as if they had a hand cranked generator.

    I fail to see why this doesn't sound like a royal pain in the end.

    -- MarkusQ