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The Ubiquitous LED Becomes More Ubiquitous

Posted by timothy on from the more-meats-in-cones dept.

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."

5 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Cool! by Deagol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think self-powered and self-contained light sources are really cool. I'd rather have a Glowring, but they can't be imported for resale in the US/Canada. Any enterprising folks across the pond wish to work out a deal and get me some? ;-)

    --
    Method of processing duck feet
  2. Concerts... by Bugaboo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Am I the only one who thinks this would be a neat thing to embed in a clear drumstick and then use at concert?

    Hell, disperse the little ones in the crowd and turn the whole place into a giant pulsating light...

  3. K2 skis and airplane wings had these years ago by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The K2 - "fours" have embedded piezos hooked to leds. the piezo's in turn are hooked to the fiberglass top sheet. when the ski vibrates excesivley the energy is damped by draining the piezo through a load, in this case an LED. The LED is used in stead of a resistor for two reasons 1) it sells skis cause its cool to watch and you know its "working". 2) the diode has a threshold for activation that turns on the damping only when the vibration is excessive. so your ski is lively up to a point.

    they got the idea from the airforce who uses this idea to damp wing vibration.

    in both cases active vibration is lighter weight than passive damping materials. (unfortunately the K2s are still heavy as sin, so really it was a gimmick aimed at nerds. still it worked--I bought the skis!)

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  4. Re:Bicycles... by jarran · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, they need batteries, but you might be satisfied with Hokey Spokes. They even communicate somehow and sync if you have several on one wheel.

  5. Solar powered LED in a calculator by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I once disassembled a early model of solar-powered credit card-sized calculator (one with no battery at all). While holding the circuit board near a light, I noticed a little glow ont he backside of the board. The designer had used an LED as a cheap voltage regulator. The LED lit up to dump excess energy coming from the solar cells.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.