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Tiny Generator Runs Off Vibrations
Warbothong writes "Researchers at Southampton University in the UK have developed a tiny generator that uses local vibrations to output microwatts of power. The device is smaller than one cubic centimeter. It shows promise as an alternative to batteries for applications where frequent battery replacement would not be feasible. The devices are currently being used in industry where 'there is the potential for embedding sensors in previously inaccessible locations,' but its creators imagine it could be used in devices such as pacemakers, where the beating of the heart would produce ample movement to power the magnetic mechanism."
Wrist watches have had this for years now. I think it was casio who first started doing it wide scale.
sounds like real free energy, at last!
suck it, Orbo!
1. Researchers slave night and day to create vibration-powered generator, forsaking house and home in the process.
2. Researchers' wives, frustrated, generate a harnessable amount of localized vibrations.
3. ????????
4. Profit!
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
They'll soon have vibrators that are self-powered. Handheld pocket pieces around the globe. This would definitely outsell the solar powered vibrator idea, for those who just can't be away from masturbation when stuck without batteries.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Wondering how efficient would it had been to use a piezoelectric generator (like the kind converting vibrations of a record in a record player into electricity)
Have EVDO, will travel.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
wouldn't that be some sort of paradox...
Attach a few of these to Shakira's rear end and play "Hey Ya!" on repeat.
Now where's my Nobel prize?
This could be useful for tracking animals. Allow a capacitor to store the energy and when high enough, then give a burst radio signal. Likewise, the moon has a load of tiny trembles that occur. It may be possible to build small sensors and/or radios that make use of that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Could a bluetooth mouse take advantage of this, avoiding the need to ever replace batteries again?
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
You could make it bigger and adapt it to a car, the car vibrates as it goes down the road, in turn powering the device that allows it to go down the road...Perpetual motion automobile...I'd like my Nobel Prize now please...
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
And this perpetual motion machine... it just keeps on going faster and faster.
The first thing that came to mind when I read this article was the application of many of these small generators to be used in bigger projects. Did you ever watch The Core (Movie - )? Well, we're far away from getting to get to centre of the Earth but this tech. could be used on drilling platforms as a secondary power backup for sensors, or in space/planet exploration (these could help heating up robots when the solar panels are not getting rays of the sun for long periods). Granted it's not perpetual but it's still a very good technological development.
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
www.enocean.com
By the way, if anyone has used any of their stuff yet, let me know.
Maybe he saw a or something.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
For viability in the world the important thing will be if this stays running in all conditions without a failure rate. Batteries are old technology but the one thing that keeps them in everything is that they have good reliability, a watch battery will last for years and then be thrown out into a landfill and replaced for example. It might not be good for the environment like this but it's the only option unless this can work. Still looks like fascinating technology, it'd just be interesting to know how close this is technologically to killing the advantages of batteries which the article doesn't seem to have any details on.
Did anyone besides me first read that as: Tiny Generator Runs Off Vibrators ?
Or was that just me?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
ohm. bad link. etc...
Maybe he saw a movie or something.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
... You now get perpetual free power for your vibrator, woohoo! We boys still have to do hand cranking, woooo....
"It shows promise as an alternative to batteries for applications where frequent battery replacement would not be feasible." Perfect for the iPhone!
--
Are you a Chipotle Fan?
Gotta keep those lovin' good
Vibrations a happenin' with her.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
When I first glanced @ this headline, I saw "Tiny vibrator runs off of generator".. ROFFLE
nothing new here? She has one of those 'self-winding' watches. ok maybe that's recovering mechanical energy from movement but this is recovering electrical energy from vibration, not a whole lot of difference really.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
to get energy from the vibrations of raindrops. Seems like a source of renewable energy we're missing out on, and in the UK it's somewhat more plentiful than solar and more practical in urban environments than wind...
by my jaw muscles as I chew gum. But I have to chew very quickly to make the music loud enough to hear.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
At this rate, it won't be long until we have self-sustaining vibrators that don't require batteries.
Setup a website, showing videos of Researchers wives generating localised vibrations
This is stupid. We already have better technology that can constantly produce clean infinite energy based off of the variances in the magnetic fields. I've read about it in three tech web sites!
/. is because the editors are bias and being paid off.
The only reason this article could make the pagers of
How about embedding these things into the road to supply energy to electric cars?
The wind up radio could become a thing of the past. However, if this technology were to be used in the one laptop per child project, would patent royalties also have to be paid to EtchaSketch?
creators imagine it could be used in devices such as pacemakers, where the beating of the heart would produce ample movement to power the magnetic mechanism ... which in turn, powers the heart.
Finally, I was wondering how long that would take. See ya'll later, I'm off to go prospecting!i k-Pohl/dp/0345475836/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6095192-7 879221?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183654729&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Gateway-Heechee-Saga-Freder
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
I've got one on right now. It's an old Seiko, which used to be my grandfather's. If I wear it for the day, then usually it manages to have enough juice/wind to sit on my nightstand when I hit the sack and yet still be keeping correct time in the morning. If I sleep in it usually runs out of juice and stops.
I'm not sure if it runs on an electric (charging a capacitor) or mechanical (winding a spring) principal though, and as curious as I have been I wouldn't want to pull it apart to find out.
Just out of curiosity, how much seismic vibration do you get out of the earth on a typical day? What if you had a huge version of this concept that harnessed power from earth vibration? (say, you had a HUGE weight suspended between springs, and the relative motion of the weight and the earth would generate power?)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
To the point where it is very efficient. Let's say I have a speaker putting out sound (vibrations) that one of these devices in range can pick up on and create/store energy from. Do the laws of conservation of energy (or whatever they are) apply to sound? I'm sure they do... What I'm getting at is... could you (in the future where this tech is fairly efficient) put hundreds if not thousands of these devices somewhere in range of a speaker and produce more energy from the soundwave/vibration 'caughgt' than it took to generate the sound itself (IE, impossible perpetual energy)? Would a field of 100s to 1000s of these devices 'dampen' the surrounding acoustics, acting as a 'sound sponge'?
Of course, you could always set a net of these devices near a waterfall and get them to produce energy as well (Niagra Falls, anyone?).
Thoughts? Is this too far out there or am I just forgetting some basic high school physics?
about 50-60% for polycrystalline (PZT4, PZT5, PZT8 etc), 90% for monocrystalline.
How much energy can this possibly make? Am I the only person thinking this would make a great way to power the Wii Remote? The rumble (vibrations) sucks down batteries like no electronic device I've ever owned. Even if the rumble couldn't do it, flailing around like an idiot when I'm playing Wii Sports should be able to generate something.
This is really cool, but can you ever recapture the amount of energy used to manufacture them? They'd still be better than batteries for a lot of things, though.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Micheal J. Fox and/or Janet Reno powered submarines?
Anyone?
Other than a microphone anyone got ideas for ways to convert sound into electricity? This device seems like it would hit the mark. I had an idea once that I figured would made a good back ground for a SCI-FI novel. Generators that produced power while assorbing annoying background noise. For example line highways with them to produce power while cutting down on noise polution.
Think Deeply.
Yes, but those are US watches. Now the UK can begin making them too.
You mean they finally found a way to make a watch leak oil? Good show, Brits!
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Somebody had to say it....
Prior art is actually patent 5,578,877. It's just bigger.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You should google "thermoacoustics"
The 1st thing I thought of for this was, 'great, never have to change battery on my wiimotes again.' Can't wait for this to go into production. Now the important question, how about voltage? can they package this into a AAA or AA form and still get the required voltage?
There's plenty of free energy out there. The problem is coaxing thermodynamics to let us have it.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
"Cell phone's halfway charged. Keep jumping on the bed, kids!"
Wouldn't this be contrary to the law of conservation of energy that states that energy cannot be created? IE- The heart beats, producing enough energy to power the pacemaker, which in turn produces enough energy to power the heart, which in turn produces enough energy to power the pacemaker... etc?
It's interesting that just the heart's beating would be strong enough to work. If this assumes the rest of the body is motionless, then even more electrical output is possible. Many people with pacemakers are still active physically -- walking around, riding in cars, having sex, etc. -- so, more vibration energy!
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
...this would be great for rechargable batteries for your wiimotes?
/. i have not read the article, but i assume that currently these don't provide enough power for that purpose, and by the time they do, wii will be old.
as is custom on
Hmmm, "local vibrations"? However you slice *that* sounds better than the current generation of "self-winding" pacemakers which require you to rotate end-over-end for an hour each day!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
cue the fox jokes, I'll start
For Michael J. Fox, shake and bake is a one-step process.
Because he has parkinsons.
+5, Truth
They've already got those. They call us "men".
Wil
wiki
One of them? Just how many Dr. David Prutchi PhD's are there?
I don't see much application for this-- very few circuits can run on microwatts.
If she can be covered with these devices too and produce extra power for running other things then they might really be useful. Someone want to file for the research grant and start signing up volunteers for testing? This could bring new popularity and meaning to the old Beach Boys tune.
Bad link. Yes. A glitch in the matrix, no doubt.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Hopefully, the guy who makes these things has to good sense to post the plans on the Internet.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Screw this, I'm out like Michael J. Fox in a game of Jenga.
+5, Truth
I'm tired of refueling mine every night. I smell like diesel for hours!
I run Ubuntu skinned to look like a Mac on a PC. Go figure.
Make an array about a quarter of a mile long, fifty feet wide and four feet thick and then float it in the ocean? There is constant motion there and floating is relatively easy.
Why one of you math geeks figure out how much energy that would produce per day.
I guess this makes a vibrator a perpetual motion machine. Imagine, entire cities powered by women getting off.
It's right up there with The Simpson's vision of harvesting oil from the faces of teenagers. Genius, pure genius.
That's only for déjà vu
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
But, man, like, are they good vibrations, like a Beach Boys song, or are they bad vibrations, like the Dark Side of the Force? It might make all the ethical difference.
"Leia, can I borrow your vibrator to charge my lightsaber?"
That`s only for déjà vu
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
So, Apple have been trying to change the mindset regarding user changerable batteries for the iPods and iPhones - these generators would address the issue once and for all - assuming they retain rotaional HDAs for the primary storage. Solid state wouldn't provide the vibration required to charge up the generator.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
What else needs to be said? Oh i copyright and patent and trademark this for Public use with no limitations or whatever needs to be said to prevent people and companies from trying to make money off this obvious use for small electronic devices. Battery that charges by clicking and/or moving a mouse to drive the mouse, easy simple.
+1 Redundant?
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
So does my wife.
Woosh!
Woosh!
You, sir, are a genius. Notice it links straight to Sourceforge's terms of service? In fact, the word `sourceforge.com' is written right next the link, in usual Slashdot style.
Why would you believe it's anything other than a troll in the first place?
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
It didn't appear next to it for me, and even if it had, that might not indicate that it wasn't just acting on the content of the post as edited by an editor - and, it _is_ the same link that's at the bottom of the page under "terms of service". Slashdot is owned by Sourceforge, didn't you know?
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Hell, I wouldn't even need a pacemaker to power.