Slashdot Mirror
Bluetooth Keyboards With a 10-Year Charge Promised
angry tapir writes "Broadcom is working on a Bluetooth chipset that will give wireless keyboards a battery life of up to 10 years. If they had a battery life of as long as 10 years, that Bluetooth-based accessories could potentially never need new batteries, the chip maker said. A set of two AA batteries would be enough to power a keyboard using the BCM20730 Bluetooth chip to connect with a computer for its entire lifetime, Broadcom said."
Or generate tiny amount of electricity from the key press.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
tinfoil hat time!
This bluetooth chip would draw a whopping .057mAh at 1.5v, or .0285mAh at 3v. (Assuming a 2500mAh AA cell type, with 10 years of power draw.)
You can easily generate this using biologically inplanted power sources, or from a standard solar powered calculator's photocell, or even from a thin film thermocoupler.
This would allow for ubiquitous bluetooth devices in a lot of surfaces, including things you would never consider to have need of a network stack.
Hell, you could power this stack on an AM crystal radio!
About ten years ago, I bought a Memorex wireless keyboard at Pic-n-save aka "Big Lots".
I think I paid about $10.
Much to my amazement, its still running on a pair of "Everready lithium" batteries I put in when I first got it.
I put those batteries in everything that I have a tendency to ignore maintenance on, like remotes. I have never seen one of those lithium cells leak yet.
Its been one of those things with me that alkaline cells, regardless of who made them, leak. Even if they aren't dead yet.
I rarely use the keyboard, but when I do, it works. It only transmits ten feet or so, but its enough. It feeds an old P166 I have loaded with DOS and WIN95 to run my old DOS stuff.
What impressed me so was that the keyboard had no on-off switch. For ten years, the keyboard has been sitting there waiting for me to press a key.
My hat's off to the engineer who designed the thing.
I would not mind paying more for this keyboard's electronics in a sturdier mechanical design, but for ten bucks, I thought I got a really nice little gadget.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I actually called Duracell to tell them that a clock that I got with a very loud rooster alarm every day for 12 years finally quit working. The Duracell batteries came with the clock. They asked me if there was any leakage from the 12 year old batteries and sent me a coupon.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Couldn't the bluetooth chip be powered by utilizing the kinetic energy of a human pressing a button. Many people would actually prefer a bit of physical resistance in the buttons of a keyboard.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?