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Sure, there are pocket calculators that can run off of ambient indoor lighting, but they have to be designed to run on a truly miniscule energy budget -- on the

Sure, there are pocket calculators that can run off of ambient indoor lighting, but they have to be designed to run on a truly miniscule energy budget -- on the order of a fraction of a milliwatt.

dspillett 4y ago
You seem to have missed the second sentence in what you replied to (and the relevant bit if TFA): > The article even explicitly states that these can be charged from indoor light. These apparently can also gain useful charge from much smaller energy sources than direct sunlight, including typical indoor light levels. Even if it isn't enough to run them indefinitely, it could extend their run-time between plugged-in charges.
- teraflop 4y ago
  No, I didn't miss it. You'll note, if you read carefully, that the article only says they can be charged from indoor light, which I don't doubt is true. It doesn't say they can get a useful amount of energy indoors. The only concrete numbers quoted are for direct sunlight, which is several orders of magnitude more intense than ambient indoor lighting.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    > No, I didn't miss it. It seemed so, or that you were ignoring it, from what you write. Perhaps offer more clarity in future to avoid such confusion. > the article only says they can be charged from indoor light The article says they can be charged from indoor light. Adding “only” there I think is needlessly negative. The article goes on to describe how this is expected/hoped to be useful, charging between uses even if (unlike direct sunlight) it is not enough to maintain power during prolonged use, which strongly implies a useful amount of energy if thought to be harvestable in typical indoor conditions.
    - teraflop 4y ago
      > Perhaps offer more clarity in future to avoid such confusion. Sorry, I'll be more explicit: I give absolutely no credence to what a manufacturer "expects" or "hopes" or "strongly implies" their product to be able to do in a thinly-veiled press release, especially when they're unwilling to give any concrete facts to back those hopes up.
      - dspillett 4y ago
        I likewise, given how often people don't read things before responding to or about them, don't give the benefit of the doubt when someone's response looks like they may not have considered details that are openly presented. Feel free to be a cynic, it is often a healthy position IMO, but you'll be less stressed if you try not to let yourself get offended (or just surprised) when others are too, or consider how others might read you incorrectly which can be corrected with a little detail of your PoV (other than it is contrary to another one) up front.
- samatman 4y ago
  A "100 Watt equivalent" LED bulb uses 13 actual Watts. Let's be generous, and say it's 10W of light, 3W heat. Let's be generous again, and completely wrap the bulb in 50% efficient photovoltaic, feed that into a 50% efficient battery charger. You now have 2.5 Watts. It just doesn't add up.
hnlmorg 4y ago
Minuscule by 80s standards. But also using smaller solar panels, less efficient solar panels, less efficient chipsets, and a display too. Technology has moved on considerably since solar powered calculations were a thing. So I don’t doubt these headphones are possible. To be honest, I’m really surprised at all the armchair physicists here posting snarky comments. Maybe if Apple had released it people would be more complimentary…?
- tomcam 4y ago
  Apple headphones have full-on computers inside them. No way with a B able to operate with power from solar cells
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    Sorry, that Apple comment was intended to be taken sarcastically rather than literally -- I really should have made that clear in the comment itself. The point being: it's disappointing just how skeptical everyone is being. I'm not suggesting that the PR hasn't given favorable figures but there might still be a genuinely great product here.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      Awkward for me because I am usually in your position. I do like where your heart is. But the physics just won’t work out. You cannot power modern noise suppression, speaker drivers, amp, and Bluetooth with solar, using today’s tech, period.
      - hnlmorg 4y ago
        You can run headphones without any battery what-so-ever when wired to an external amp via an audio jack, and the amount of power sent over that is small. Also it's deceptive to include the amp and speaker drivers as separate items in your list because it is the amp that powers the speakers. Maybe you mean DAC? But DACs are really cheap to power these days so I'm really not concerned about their power draw. There's no mention in the article of automatic noise cancelling. "noise suppression" is an acoustic design rather than electronic one. Eg the way the hardware cups your ears to dampen external sounds. So noise suppression costs nothing in terms of power draw. Whereas "noise cancelling" is what requires a mic and some onboard computation to inverse the sound wave, which will obviously have a power draw. But noise cancelling isn't an "always on" piece of technology, it's something the wearer can enable or disable. So it might be that when running low battery power and thus more dependent on solar, noise cancelling needs to be disabled (assuming this device even ships with it, not all headphones do) and as a wearer you're more dependent on the acoustic properties of the headphones to reduce external noises. So we just have bluetooth and an amp left to power. It may well be that to run the device "fully solar" (ie with zero reserve in the battery) the device has to be wired to the music player via a traditional TRS audio jack. This is already a pretty common thing for bluetooth headphones to support when low on power. Thus the solar cells would be designed to charge the battery when the headphones are off and supplement the battery while in heavy usage. That still seems like a massive win to me because if you use your headphones sporadically or even just have a few hours in the day when you're not using them, you still end up not having to think about recharging your headphones every time you want to use it. And that's exactly how this device is reported by the BBC: not as something that never needs to be charged or is "fully solar" but instead as something that uses solar energy to reduce the need to charge. (I've built speakers and other audio hardware. So while I'm far from an electrical engineer, I'm also not a total noob in this field)

Sure, there are pocket calculators that can run off of ambient indoor lighting, but they have to be designed to run on a truly miniscule energy budget -- on the order of a fraction of a milliwatt.

dspillett 4y ago

You seem to have missed the second sentence in what you replied to (and the relevant bit if TFA): > The article even explicitly states that these can be charged from indoor light. These apparently can also gain useful charge from much smaller energy sources than direct sunlight, including typical indoor light levels. Even if it isn't enough to run them indefinitely, it could extend their run-time between plugged-in charges.

teraflop 4y ago
No, I didn't miss it. You'll note, if you read carefully, that the article only says they can be charged from indoor light, which I don't doubt is true. It doesn't say they can get a useful amount of energy indoors. The only concrete numbers quoted are for direct sunlight, which is several orders of magnitude more intense than ambient indoor lighting.
- dspillett 4y ago
  > No, I didn't miss it. It seemed so, or that you were ignoring it, from what you write. Perhaps offer more clarity in future to avoid such confusion. > the article only says they can be charged from indoor light The article says they can be charged from indoor light. Adding “only” there I think is needlessly negative. The article goes on to describe how this is expected/hoped to be useful, charging between uses even if (unlike direct sunlight) it is not enough to maintain power during prolonged use, which strongly implies a useful amount of energy if thought to be harvestable in typical indoor conditions.
  - teraflop 4y ago
    > Perhaps offer more clarity in future to avoid such confusion. Sorry, I'll be more explicit: I give absolutely no credence to what a manufacturer "expects" or "hopes" or "strongly implies" their product to be able to do in a thinly-veiled press release, especially when they're unwilling to give any concrete facts to back those hopes up.
    - dspillett 4y ago
      I likewise, given how often people don't read things before responding to or about them, don't give the benefit of the doubt when someone's response looks like they may not have considered details that are openly presented. Feel free to be a cynic, it is often a healthy position IMO, but you'll be less stressed if you try not to let yourself get offended (or just surprised) when others are too, or consider how others might read you incorrectly which can be corrected with a little detail of your PoV (other than it is contrary to another one) up front.
samatman 4y ago
A "100 Watt equivalent" LED bulb uses 13 actual Watts. Let's be generous, and say it's 10W of light, 3W heat. Let's be generous again, and completely wrap the bulb in 50% efficient photovoltaic, feed that into a 50% efficient battery charger. You now have 2.5 Watts. It just doesn't add up.

hnlmorg 4y ago

Minuscule by 80s standards. But also using smaller solar panels, less efficient solar panels, less efficient chipsets, and a display too. Technology has moved on considerably since solar powered calculations were a thing. So I don’t doubt these headphones are possible. To be honest, I’m really surprised at all the armchair physicists here posting snarky comments. Maybe if Apple had released it people would be more complimentary…?

tomcam 4y ago
Apple headphones have full-on computers inside them. No way with a B able to operate with power from solar cells
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  Sorry, that Apple comment was intended to be taken sarcastically rather than literally -- I really should have made that clear in the comment itself. The point being: it's disappointing just how skeptical everyone is being. I'm not suggesting that the PR hasn't given favorable figures but there might still be a genuinely great product here.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Awkward for me because I am usually in your position. I do like where your heart is. But the physics just won’t work out. You cannot power modern noise suppression, speaker drivers, amp, and Bluetooth with solar, using today’s tech, period.
    - hnlmorg 4y ago
      You can run headphones without any battery what-so-ever when wired to an external amp via an audio jack, and the amount of power sent over that is small. Also it's deceptive to include the amp and speaker drivers as separate items in your list because it is the amp that powers the speakers. Maybe you mean DAC? But DACs are really cheap to power these days so I'm really not concerned about their power draw. There's no mention in the article of automatic noise cancelling. "noise suppression" is an acoustic design rather than electronic one. Eg the way the hardware cups your ears to dampen external sounds. So noise suppression costs nothing in terms of power draw. Whereas "noise cancelling" is what requires a mic and some onboard computation to inverse the sound wave, which will obviously have a power draw. But noise cancelling isn't an "always on" piece of technology, it's something the wearer can enable or disable. So it might be that when running low battery power and thus more dependent on solar, noise cancelling needs to be disabled (assuming this device even ships with it, not all headphones do) and as a wearer you're more dependent on the acoustic properties of the headphones to reduce external noises. So we just have bluetooth and an amp left to power. It may well be that to run the device "fully solar" (ie with zero reserve in the battery) the device has to be wired to the music player via a traditional TRS audio jack. This is already a pretty common thing for bluetooth headphones to support when low on power. Thus the solar cells would be designed to charge the battery when the headphones are off and supplement the battery while in heavy usage. That still seems like a massive win to me because if you use your headphones sporadically or even just have a few hours in the day when you're not using them, you still end up not having to think about recharging your headphones every time you want to use it. And that's exactly how this device is reported by the BBC: not as something that never needs to be charged or is "fully solar" but instead as something that uses solar energy to reduce the need to charge. (I've built speakers and other audio hardware. So while I'm far from an electrical engineer, I'm also not a total noob in this field)