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The Ubiquitous LED Becomes More Ubiquitous
LiberalApplication writes "Piezoelectric generators have been mentioned here before, regarding the military's plan to integrate them into the heels of boots for the purposes of harvesting electricity from the cumulative stompage of a soldier, but now someone has come up with the idea to combine them with LEDs and cast the entire assembly into a little block of resin. Well, a stick, really. If you were getting tired of seeing little blinky lights everywhere, you ain't seen nothing yet."
Actually, on a smooth road these wouldn't work; they require a cycle of compression and decompression to generate power - you'd want nice hard tires and a bumpy road to shake the suckers up.
It would be interesting to know just how vigourously they need to be jostled to generate a given luminosity.
The article claims that the piezo generator can crank out up to 10amps! Is that right?
www.linux-skunkworks.com
The piezoelectric transducer is sealed with resins, but is planned to undergo future improvements of waterproof sealing. Shaken in a container having a small amount of water, the Light Emitting Stick looks beautifully luminous between light rays reflected from the water, Nissin Electric said.
I had an idea for luminous items in beverages before, but then I envisioned glowing beads that were neutrally buoyant so that any carbonation in the beverage would cause them to continously move around. I was going to call them "fireflies" and market them to trendy bars.
Of course they'd either have to be safe for consumption or have the beverage container's opening be filtered with a mesh so they couldn't be swallowed.
Think glowing skittlebrau.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Neat.
But really, aren't these most likely to show up as toys ( both for children and rave-going tripsters ) ? At least on a consumer level, I'm having a hard time thinking of other good applications.
Of course, the article was a little thin, and I'm left asking questions.
How much light do these generate? I take it all the light-up kid's shoes we see have batteries in them, right? These won't compare to -or work for- that kind of thing... how many applications require that the light source _always_ works and doesn't need to be very bright ? Basically, I'm wondering if these won't be adopted too well because battery-based solutions will "outshine" them. And with LEDs, batteries last quite a long time. I know my son outgrows his light-up shoes before they stop lighting up...
A: Interesting idea.
B: You're kinda missing the whole "conservation of energy" thing. It could never come close to making up the difference.
C: After reading the article, it's clear that converting vibration into current will never create a large ammount of electricity. It WILL create small ammounts just about anyplace, allowing electronics to go without a battery or powercord. Pizo in the road might for various sensors to be included into a kind of "smart streets" (as opposed to "street smarts"). The sensors could then trigger de-icing gear, for example.
Lots of cool little applications. Emphasis on the "little".
I suppose a massive-scale deployment would get useful ammounts of power, but wouldn't be cost effective.
(! / $) 1
Fooz Meister
The Light Emitting Stick generates a current of up to about 10A
10 Amps ?? Is it just me or does this seem a little high to anyone?