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Cell Phones Powered By Conversations
disco_tracy sent in a story about some fancy new power technology designed to tap energy from sound waves. Although the cell phone concept grabs the headline, they also talk about harvesting noise from traffic.
would have posted earlier, but slashdot was down.
Geez if I could hook up a storage battery and wire it to my wife I could go off grid.
People who live near highways and main roads know how hard it is to get rid of traffic noise... if such a system catches 100% sound wave, that's a wave that dies at that point and is no longer heard. And, if that gets converted back to power, that's worth something in money.
Just remember Newton's Law of Energy Conservation... and remember that things powered by the car driving over a power capturing device is stealing gas from your tank indirectly.
A cell phone powered by radio waves? Like a crystal radio? The speaker would suck but hey.. at least the electronics mig
Just make a phone that, while making a call, recharges its battery from the motion of the car. You've got a lot more energy to work with there than just sound energy, especially if you can derive energy from sudden stops.
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The teenagers around here seem to think it's their 5K watts sound systems that makes their car moves anyway.
SORRY I'M YELLING, MY BATTERY IS LOW!!!
(off-topic lowercase to side-step /. yelling filters here)
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
details at 11
There may not be enough sun here in the UK to make solar panels that effective, but given the high population density and the tight layout of our cities, this kind of technology could be incredibly useful. If it can absorb noise it'd be great, if it can actually put the energy to use that'd be fantastic.
Wow, sound-powered phones!
Failure to follow this advice may result in non-deterministic behavior.
This is a bogus story that wanders around every now and then. Cell phones require hundreds of milliwatts of transmit power, an amount of power far beyond what the human voice can achieve -- even at 100% conversion efficiency.
If only we could harvest energy from articles about operating multi-watt devices from nanowatt energy sources, all of the world's energy problems would be solved.
now I don't have to throw away all my incandescent light bulbs.
Cell phones are for apps, or texting. I didn't realise anyone used them to talk any more, except for members of an evil secret society dedicated to inflicting pain on users of public transport.
"Sorry honey, you're about to cut out, just let me move closer to the traffic....hang on a sec, if I jump out in front of this car right here it'll honk and I'll get a power boost.....okay now that that's under control can you please talk a little louder? The traffic here in the middle of the highway is just shocking" *THUD*.
No thanks. Sounds like a bad idea. How efficient could the conversion be anyway? I'd rather a phone that was powered by my own farts. (Can you imagine an amorous conversation on that one?) I think i'll stick to my current phone.
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A ham operator has built a voice powered radio and has made several long distance contacts with it.
Details are here
So those people on their phones 24/7 (I realize that's a bit of a 90s comment right there, but you know who I mean) will only be rewarded with MORE battery power? They already won't shut up. Damn it.
AND ABOUT AS EFFECTIVE.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The phone already taps the energy of sound, if their was no energy in the sound then the microphone would not be able to pick up the sound waves and send the information on.
But even assuming that they can get the device to convert the power to small enough it does not matter, you would need a wide receiver, as the energy dissipates in all directions at a squared rate.
and I would think that even if you converted all the power it would still not even be close to enough.
think about it, you are basically saying the energy taken from a person speaking normally could be used for the same voice to be heard miles away, does not sound like it follows the laws of conservation of energy unless you think that it will be operating at 100% efficiency.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
...thinking that the sound waves from my screaming voice will actually be providing power to the very device I'm yelling at the asshat in front of me to "hang the fuck up and drive!!!"...
finally a device that actually might start working again when you yell at it.
... the article says its not a lot of power, because volts isn't a measure of power, fail :(
I worked on piezoelectrics a few years back, and its quite easy to produce voltage with them. I guess from the article sound waves produce 50millivolts. We were using blunt impacts, we could get impulses of a few hundred volts actually... but the current was on the order of some nanoamps from the samples we had... useless to power and normal electronic, especially a cell phone which is so inefficient (like how they get warm in an area with poor signal)
From TFA - "Just as speakers transform electric signals into sound, the opposite process -- of turning sound into a source of electrical power -- is possible"
I never would have guessed that. Maybe now they can make something capable of turning sound into electrical impulses. I will patent that idea I think - and call it an anti-speaker. Or an audioelectictransmogrifier for short.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
The sound waves produced a mild electrical current of about 50 millivolts. The average cell phone requires a few volts to operate, several times the power this technology can currently produce.
Wrong, so very wrong. Millivolts is not a unit of current, and volts is no unit of power. Nor is power current. I've seen journalists not understanding electrical units before, but never have I seen something quite so wrong as this.
Hmm.. Sounds a lot like the "Sound-powered Telephone" that's been in use with the US Navy (and probably many other navys) for over 6 decades....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound-powered_telephone
1. Soundwaves-to-electricity converter
2. Methane powered mini powerplant
3. Back pockets
There is a great deal of energy lost out there. Lots of heat, sound, inertia, etc that just bleeds away (well, at least with respect to forms we find useful). The question is can we *efficiently* gather it back up - not *can* we gather it back up. The same things goes with any recycling of "waste" products - it isn't always good to recycle them. Sometimes the wast products from capturing that energy is worse than letting that energy go away (I know for a long time the waste products from solar panel production/disposal were *significantly* worse than any carbon emissions you were saving) and sometimes it is cheap (and therefor mroe resources can go towards fixing the long term issue) to *not* recycle.
That's a good question for most "environmental" questions and it isn't easy. Lets take Corn based ethanol fuels - there are a number of studies out there that show it takes *more* energy to create them than if you just stayed with oil based products. The gains are probably not in that arena, they are either in emissions or dependence on a number of not so great human rights nations. Then we can take into account Wind Power - something that looks great in all these things. Well, that is, until you look at the impact on bird wildlife in those regions - is it worth the cost? Hard to say, if you are primarily worried about carbon emissions then very much so, if you are primarily worried about avian life then most assuredly not, if you want the best over all then all you pretty much get are both sides battling it out for which one is correct (and IMO neither one is).
So, if we cut carbon emissions by 50% but increase sulfur emissions by 15% to collect all this sound energy it isn't too good for us, though under certain people views that is a "win". I do not know and I'm not trying to say it is a good or bad (in this case there may be no downside whatsoever) idea - just that this article (along with the vast vast vast majority of environmental articles and studies out there) do not really address this well. In the long term we will bump against levels where we have to do this, but for right now we are still in an infantancy stage and we are better off looking for better processes than refining our current ones - unless our current ones are so bad that we need to refine them now (and energy loss to sound is minor compared to the rest of the system).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
"A patent for a mobile telephony network requiring no power. Telephone A, consisting of a hollow cylindrical object with a hole drilled into the bottom, is connected via a high tech, string-like device, to Telephone B, another cylindrical object with the hole cut in the bottom. Range is excellent provided you buy lots of Monster brand string, it can even reach my super-secret treehouse!"
Monstar L
if you yell loud enough, you don't even need a cellphone. that's the case in my village.
As for clarification, 120 DB of sound is about like standing next to a jet engine at full power, or near the speakers at a rock concert. It's not "quite loud", it's painfully so.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Just what we need, more assholes on cellphones in traffic.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
I work for the journal that published the orignal research paper behind this story, and we've set it free to access for the next few weeks; you can find it here: http://www.materialsviews.com/details/news/843529/Self-Powered_Cell_Phones_Piezoelectrics_in_Action.html Adrian Miller Advanced Materials
"The sound waves produced a mild electrical current of about 50 millivolts. The average cell phone requires a few volts to operate, several times the power this technology can currently produce. ...
The Korean scientists agree: 50 millivolts is not a lot of power, but they also say their research is proof of concept. As they continue their work, they expect to get a higher power output."
volts = current = power! a new physics is at hand!
Scientists from Korea have turned the main ingredient of calamine lotion into a tiny material that converts sound waves into electricity.
"Just as speakers transform electric signals into sound, the opposite process -- of turning sound into a source of electrical power -- is possible,"
Wow, somebody has to tell these Korean scientists that they are 134 years late in discovering the microphone. Perhaps they should work on the next big problem Korea is facing : Fan deaths...
PS. I hope talking about measuring power & current with volts is the journalists fault.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Ridiculous. Phones need about a watt. If you SHOUT into a microphone, you will maybe generate 50 millivolts across 600 ohms, or (E^2/R) about FIVE BLEEPIN MICROWATTS.
We're a good five powers of ten below what is needed.
Doesn't anybody do math anymore?
I was in Japan a few months ago and while in Shinjuku, at the million-person intersection, came across this development they were doing that would use the resounding power from thousands of footsteps 24/7 to power all of the lights in the area. Can't seem to find an article on it now. Anyone more familiar have a link? It sounds like the concept is really similar.
Imagine how much energy you could collect from the screams of human children!
Don't tell the navy they'll want one.
Oh: they already have one.
never mind.
Since this material absorbs sound waves, could it be used to create a cone of silence like in the Get Smart TV show?
And forget about lining highways with it, line the inside of your car's engine compartment and use that to provide extra power to recharging the battery or onboard devices.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I found the LTC3108 (or the LTC3801-1 variant) best suited most of my projects, but the LTC3588/LTC3588-1 is better for capturing energy from ambient sound or vibration via a piezoelectric transducer. (Their evaluation kit, which includes all the parts and a selected PZT, is a bit pricey for a hobbyist, so just get some free sample ICs and roll your own)
Their online specs, designs and datasheets provide everything you need to build your own test rig. These chips even come with built-in support for auxiliary capacitor/ultracap storage, including bucking/boosting the ultracap voltage to the programmed output voltage, which I'd expected to have to implement externally. It's all there in one cheap package with a minimal of external components.
Sound waves? How effective is that?
Considering the amount of Hot Air my boss produces, cell companies should look into capturing that "valuable" resource. Its just like waste heat now.