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has anyone ever tried to harvest energy from key presses to prolong battery life? on that one, a little capacitor in the parenthesis keys would probably make t
by sieste 4y ago
has anyone ever tried to harvest energy from key presses to prolong battery life?
on that one, a little capacitor in the parenthesis keys would probably make that solar panel unnecessary.
- reerdna 4y agoYeah, it is used in https://www.freethegameboy.info https://www.freethegameboy.info for one - not sure if they published numbers on how much energy it produced.
- teruakohatu 4y agoThose switches look like they are the mini generators from ZF Electronics that produce 0.33 mWs of power per activation. ZF Electronics used to be called Cherry Industrial, which was until a few years ago part of the same company as Cherry AG who make the famous keyboard switches.
- justsomehnguy 4y agoYes, specifically ZF AFIG-0007 energy harvesting switch https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3411839 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3411839 p. 12 https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZF/AFIG-0007 https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZF/AFIG-0007
- metadat 4y agoAs a heads up, the second link leads to 404 Not Found error. Edit: Oddly, the product page is viewable if you enter the product ID from the tail end of the URL into the product search field.
- Y_Y 4y agohttps://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZF/AFIG-0007?qs=KnNyCueLKRVo%252BCLj1DZFyQ%3D%3D https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZF/AFIG-0007?qs=KnNyCueL...
- pqb 4y agoWhoa, I have to buy at least 5000 switches. Together with a price tag (~50K EUR) it does not look good for a weekend tinkerer.
- msk-lywenn 4y agoI dream of a DMG-1000, an original gameboy with a thousand hours battery life because it would have a CPU made with modern technology. This is actually DMG-Infinite! Amazing. Thanks for sharing.
- mock-possum 4y agoaw what a cool project!
- kragen 4y agoPeople reading this might be interested in my notes from 9 years ago on this topic at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/keyboard-powered-computers.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/keyboard-powered-computers....
- joe_the_user 4y agoI think I'd prefer a good solid crank to having to grind a keyboard. I remember manual typewriters - they were a hideous, miserable experience.
- reerdna 4y agoI've considered adding a few small geared stepper motors as a combination input device (scroll wheel, or two for etch-a-sketch cursor control) and energy harvester.
- snozolli 4y agoPedal power, like an old-timey sewing machine.
- digitallyfree 4y agoA hand crank would be really cool on such a device. Rather than scramble for a charger and outlet you could just take a break and crank away.
- leovander 4y agoIf only the Playdate could charge using the crank.
- jessriedel 4y agoPresumably the resistance of a typical laptop keyboard is set to get the correct feel, not like a minimum mechanical resistance to get it to work at all, so there must be energy that is currently dissipated as heat that could be harvested for free, in principle without changing the feel.
- pklausler 4y agoHaving grown up with a non-Selectric typewriter, I'd be okay with a charging crank that mimicked the action of a manual carriage return that I had to shove to the left at the end of each line of code when the editor goes "ding!". But I'm not sure where it could be mounted on a laptop.
- 4y ago
- justsomehnguy 4y agoAt $10 a piece and ~90-key keyboard you can have chargable batteries for years. https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZF/AFIG-0007 https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZF/AFIG-0007 > on that one, a little capacitor in the parenthesis keys would probably make that solar panel unnecessary. ... ye, you probably can get it with $20 only.
- sparkie 4y agoIt's a slight exaggeration how frequent parens are used in Lisp. The keys tab, space, shift, backspace, hyphen enter are probably used more often, and many alphanumeric keys. Perhaps you could have the whole keyboard floating on a pivot like a see-saw, with one of these switches beneath it at the right and left side of the pivot (say beneath s and ; keys). That way any key press off-center would have a chance of activating one of the two switches, and keys closest to the far left and right would have a greater probability of activating them. The keyboard would have a slight wobble.
- slondr 4y agoThat link is dead for me
- justsomehnguy 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35075592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35075592 You can find the spec at the manufacturer site.
- megaman8 4y agoenergy from key presses: really cool idea. i hope that gets documented somewhere so the patent trolls don't try to patent it or something.