Slashdot Mirror
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."
These things look small and light.
I'd love to get a set of these and attach them to the spokes on my bicycle wheels. Swirly rainbow of light zooming across the dark.
No driver could miss me then.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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
Oh great, let's make our troopers into marching Xmas trees, why don't we? "Don't fire until you see the lights of their feet!"
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
63 million years from now, some huckster is going to have an amusement park featuring cloned glowing lights.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
the military's plan to integrate them into the heels of boots
I wonder if they will resemble these.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
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...
These things (or rather, an application of ther technology) would make amazing emergency lighting in offices or homes. Heck, even in non-emergency situations. Perhaps a walkway with peizo-electric flagstones to power the lights along its path?
I wonder how much power could be obtained from the highways and biways of America? All those cars racing over millions of little generators all day long should produce a pretty goo amount of electricity, I'd imagine. It would almost make up for the ridiculous cost of burning all those fossil fuels in the first place.
what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?
I know this is slightly off-topic, but -- are you sure it's safe to have that amount of tritium dangling from your keys? Those things look pretty bloody bright... just don't stick your keychain in your pocket if you wanna have kids in the future ^_^
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
I thought of those when I first read the "in the heels of soldier's boots" in the story.
Cops loved it when crime suspects wearing those hip shoes tried to sneak away into the night.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Score: 3, Interesting? Well, at least you didn't get an Informative. You have three links... one is to fiction, so we'll skip it. The two that are to real items have nothing at all to do, shockingly, with the point you're (failing at) making. Both use standard coil/magnet arrangements instead of piezo crystals. Have you ever thought about how much sound energy needs to be traveling through a piezo crystal to generate, say, 1W?
I've had this sig for three days.
That might make for a fun private path to a house or something, but certainly not on a city street where it'd A) cost taxpayers more and B) get covered with gum anyway.
I'd think you'd see this as a new material for a dance floor before most other novelty surface applications.
Probably 10 mA, which would be on the low end of where LEDs are generally rated.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
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.
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.