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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.
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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If only data centers could be powered by forum posts like this. Theres an unlimited supply to draw from.
SORRY I'M YELLING, MY BATTERY IS LOW!!!
(off-topic lowercase to side-step /. yelling filters here)
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details at 11
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.
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.
That was my thought, too. And, unless my memory's wrong, there's not enough power involved for a cell phone. Of course, my familiarity with them is from almost forty years ago, so I wouldn't argue the point if anybody disagrees.
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...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!!!"...
"Machinery Two Lower Level, Maneuvering, shift Main Feed Pumps to fast."
Manuevering, Machinery Two Lower Level, shift Main Feed Pumps to fast, aye."
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
finally a device that actually might start working again when you yell at it.
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
would have posted earlier, but slashdot was down.
Slashdot was just faking its own death for a while.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
"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.
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?
Oh man, that takes me back.
There's a big difference between using people's weight to make electricity (whether by piezoelectrics, or simpler physics of gravity and moving parts) and doing so by the force of exhaled breath touching an area some distance away.
And what you miss is that these people are *also*, somehow, using their own energy to power the lights. It's no different to having a pedal-powered bike to power the lights - the effort is just spread across a lot of people. Those people still needed to use the energy, so it wasn't "free" or "profit" unless you're taxing the people who have to buy more food to cope with their ever-so-slightly more strenuous walk home.
Rule #1: If you can't power an old-fashioned walkman using a device smaller than said walkman to power it, it's a waste of money, materials, design, consultancy, engineering and effort to produce that electricity.
Imagine how much energy you could collect from the screams of human children!
I'm envisioning (haven't read the article) plates that you can buy and affix to your house, converting that nasty road noise into beautiful silence and free energy.
Is that why, on all those Submarine shows/movies, the Captain says something, then the XO repeats it, and finally the helmsman repeats it a third time?
Sincere question: I've always wondered about it.
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.
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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.
Yeah, any time an order is given over sound powered phones, the order is repeated back verbatim to ensure it was clearly heard, and it usually does go from an officer or chief through an enlisted person to another enlisted person. The CO to the XO thing is not the norm since they the CO and XO are not together in Control during routine operations, but during a drill or emergency or some other special operation the CO might be at the conn, and the XO is the OOD (officer of the deck). You could then have the CO give a bell order (changing the speed of the main engines) to the OOD who tells the chief of the watch (COW) who tells the helmsman who tells the throttleman in maneuvering (back in the engineroom) who tells the EOOW, who in turn tells the throttleman who repeats it back, even though he's the one who told the EOOW in the first place(!). Then, once he's carried out the order, that info is relayed back through the same chain in reverse order, so everyone knows exactly what the status is, and so it doesn't end up like that telephone game where the initial message gets garbled after many relays and comes back to the originator totally different.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
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.