4 ms·

So the questions in your first paragraph are mostly answered by the paper. And your second paragraph feels a bit like an unfair comparison to me. This is a fir

So the questions in your first paragraph are mostly answered by the paper. And your second paragraph feels a bit like an unfair comparison to me. This is a first attempt at seeing if this concept is even remotely feasible, and it uses off-the-shelf parts for that. It's not a company with a lot of money and resources invested in it that produces mediocre final products where the embodied energy of the solar panels is so much more than any energy it saves over its life-time that it's less green than something that runs on batteries. Which, yes, are an annoying feature of modern greenwashing. But this research project is not that.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
But you'd expect a research project to say "we tried harvesting button presses, rf, inertial energy, and all of it sucked except for solar, so we decided to up the solar as much as we can with a gameboy sized case". If they have budget issues, then buy one of those energy harvesting buttons, press it as fast as you can and measure the output... if it generates any meaningful amount of power, nice, buy one for every button and use it in the final "product"... if not, try something else. Solar cells are cheap, 3d printing is cheap, so adding a few more would help a lot.
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  > But you'd expect a research project to say "we tried harvesting button presses, rf, inertial energy, and all of it sucked except for solar, so we decided to up the solar as much as we can with a gameboy sized case". Why do you assume this? It's academic research, not the R&D department at a company. They're not building a product to sell and they're probably working with a shoestring budget. The goal is to extract as much knowledge and insight as possible from as little hardware as possible.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    But the research is the same and the results are the same... buttons don't produce enough power to make it worthwile compared to larger solar cells. The difference would be, if the buttons produced a comparable amount of power, where academics could then write "while expensive, with mass production, the cost of buttons will fall to a level to make it economically viable" and product designers would tell their bosses BOM prices for both options, and then a decision would be made.
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      How about reading the paper before commenting on what the paper does and does not say?

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

But you'd expect a research project to say "we tried harvesting button presses, rf, inertial energy, and all of it sucked except for solar, so we decided to up the solar as much as we can with a gameboy sized case". If they have budget issues, then buy one of those energy harvesting buttons, press it as fast as you can and measure the output... if it generates any meaningful amount of power, nice, buy one for every button and use it in the final "product"... if not, try something else. Solar cells are cheap, 3d printing is cheap, so adding a few more would help a lot.

vanderZwan 4y ago
> But you'd expect a research project to say "we tried harvesting button presses, rf, inertial energy, and all of it sucked except for solar, so we decided to up the solar as much as we can with a gameboy sized case". Why do you assume this? It's academic research, not the R&D department at a company. They're not building a product to sell and they're probably working with a shoestring budget. The goal is to extract as much knowledge and insight as possible from as little hardware as possible.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  But the research is the same and the results are the same... buttons don't produce enough power to make it worthwile compared to larger solar cells. The difference would be, if the buttons produced a comparable amount of power, where academics could then write "while expensive, with mass production, the cost of buttons will fall to a level to make it economically viable" and product designers would tell their bosses BOM prices for both options, and then a decision would be made.
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    How about reading the paper before commenting on what the paper does and does not say?