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About 10 years ago I did a research/what-if project, involving energy-harvesting tracker tags .. essentially a smaller/lighter version of the AirTag. It used e

About 10 years ago I did a research/what-if project, involving energy-harvesting tracker tags .. essentially a smaller/lighter version of the AirTag. It used energy-harvesting for the sensor packages, essentially charging caps if things got wet/moved/etc., but would boot up to do the sensor-data processing and communication (BLE/ANT) .. my lead on the project brought his dusty old home phone in, to give us all a stable power source, but we didn't really need it much - lots of 800mhz-900mhz in the city. Was fun to realize, even back then, that we are literally surrounded by energy and don't really have an energy problem. We have an energy management problem, which we have yet to localize at the individual, and are instead spreading the problem across our society. But, in between builds on this project, I would often daydream of a scenario where computing devices ran simply on background radiation, and there was no longer any need for cables, really, in order to compute. Its fun to note we're getting closer and closer to that point. Okay, I could build a solar powered computer and also feel such satisfaction, but .. an all-in-one wafer that simply ran on cosmic noise? Hell yeah, gimme that, sparkies!!!

user_7832 3y ago
Specifically for moving object like air tags, watches “automatic” movements are already a “solution” that would be easy enough to implement, and probably even provide up to a few joules (!!) per day. (If you want to start a business off this idea feel free to contact me ;) half joking but half serious)
- simonbarker87 3y ago
  Where were you when I was wrapping up my dissertation? I’ve been in start ups ever since pretty much but not in that area sadly.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    Haha I realised this idea after a fair bit of mulling, if it gives any comfort. I’m also coincidentally finishing my thesis, albeit a master’s. In what areas of startup’s have you been in? More of electrons or software or something?
    - simonbarker87 3y ago
      Manufacturing and now web/architecture (buildings not tech architecture) I left electronics behind many years ago sadly
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  I have zero interest in this idea, business-wise - it is already a crowded space, Apple are mere new-comers to this - as the more you see these sensor nets grow, the more you realize we are making a big, big psycho-social 'smog' around the ways they can be used .. So yeah, I'd rather make musical instruments. If anyone wants to talk about that idea, I'm all in. :)
  - aramachandran7 3y ago
    With you on this, haha. Big tech has heavily crowded the wearables space, with questionable intentions and uses of personal health data. Additionally, when doing research around kinetic / thermal energy harvesting technology for a wearable design project (gesture recognizing smart ring) for school, we found modules to have far too low a volumetric energy density (W/mm^3) to be useful, where size matters more than anything else. Musical instrument design is a well saturated space as well…
    - bigallen 3y ago
      Have you ever thought of a commercial location tracking solution based off this tech? It’s another heavily, heavily crowded industry, but it has oddly high margins, and a basically-infinite battery life would be a huge selling point
    - helpfulContrib 3y ago
      >Musical instrument design is a well saturated space as well… Yeah, thats sort of the point. :)
    - usrusr 3y ago
      Big Tech may have crowded the wearables space, but Garmin is still quite a player in that field and the description "Big Tech" seems almost as bad a fit for them as "Olathe tinkerer collective" would be.
  - kian 3y ago
    Provide a way to contact you, please.
- samtho 3y ago
  I think there is space in the IoT market for a micro-watt platform that harvests energy from the environment. Always on connectivity is silly if it sits idle most of the time (think monitoring systems that take a temperature and moisture readings every 15 minutes), especially if it can communicate via a low power/low bandwidth channel. I build a system for an agriculture client like this with each node only having a very small solar panel (6in^2) and some super capacitors that kept it reporting data throughout the night. We even used performance metrics from the voltage being output by the solar panel to measure how cloudy it was. These devices reported via LoRa to a base station setup that was connected to a PoE system so we just ran a single Cat-6 STP line to a pole in the middle of the property.
  - nocsi 3y ago
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775321010892 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787... I think the other aspect of “always on” is that the operator isn’t going to pick up the sensor years down the line. They’re just going to leave it dead and buried, especially if the sensors have to live inside the earth There’s ongoing work on harvesting electricity out of soil
- buescher 3y ago
  AirTags get about a year of battery life from a 2033 in moderate/typical use cases, according to Apple. That’s 0.675 Wh (Panasonic 2032) / 1 year = 77 microwatts. Or about 7 joules/ day. That’s a lot to guarantee for production. Watch movements are also at least an order of magnitude more expensive than batteries and have a service life.
simonbarker87 3y ago
This was basically my feeling when doing my PhD - there is energy everywhere and if we make systems power efficient enough there is no real reason we can’t make significantly great use of that energy. That being said, it’s not the energy per se that we can tap into, it’s the gradient created as it dissipates/moves that we tap into. Heat is great, but not if it’s uniform, solar is great, but not if it harvesting it casts an area in shadow that needs it, vibration is great so long as it doesn’t damp and further load the system it’s being taken from.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  [flagged]
- rpaddock 3y ago
  " doesn’t damp and further load the system it’s being taken from." Don't all of these Harvesting systems load a system? For example one of the transmitters somewhere. Yes it is microwatts and no transmitter will notice a single unit. However if we start to talk large quantity of sensors, who is really paying the price? Otherwise we are admitting that Free Energy is a real thing. You and others may find the recently released Nexperia NBM5100 and NBM7100 of interest. While aimed at batteries it functionally translates high impedance power sources to lower impedance to charge up caps for IoT usage. https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics/battery-management-ics/series/NBM5100.html https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics... https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics/battery-management-ics/NBM7100ABQ.html https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics...
  - simonbarker87 3y ago
    Oh for sure, it’s relative to the system being harvested from and the amount of energy being extracted though. If it’s a train cart/carriage then not really a problem as there is so much mass and vibration to go around, if it’s the surface of a small industrial machine that needs to be reasonably balanced only producing a few hundred milli g then more of a concern.
  - 3y ago

user_7832 3y ago

Specifically for moving object like air tags, watches “automatic” movements are already a “solution” that would be easy enough to implement, and probably even provide up to a few joules (!!) per day. (If you want to start a business off this idea feel free to contact me ;) half joking but half serious)

simonbarker87 3y ago
Where were you when I was wrapping up my dissertation? I’ve been in start ups ever since pretty much but not in that area sadly.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Haha I realised this idea after a fair bit of mulling, if it gives any comfort. I’m also coincidentally finishing my thesis, albeit a master’s. In what areas of startup’s have you been in? More of electrons or software or something?
  - simonbarker87 3y ago
    Manufacturing and now web/architecture (buildings not tech architecture) I left electronics behind many years ago sadly
helpfulContrib 3y ago
I have zero interest in this idea, business-wise - it is already a crowded space, Apple are mere new-comers to this - as the more you see these sensor nets grow, the more you realize we are making a big, big psycho-social 'smog' around the ways they can be used .. So yeah, I'd rather make musical instruments. If anyone wants to talk about that idea, I'm all in. :)
- aramachandran7 3y ago
  With you on this, haha. Big tech has heavily crowded the wearables space, with questionable intentions and uses of personal health data. Additionally, when doing research around kinetic / thermal energy harvesting technology for a wearable design project (gesture recognizing smart ring) for school, we found modules to have far too low a volumetric energy density (W/mm^3) to be useful, where size matters more than anything else. Musical instrument design is a well saturated space as well…
  - bigallen 3y ago
    Have you ever thought of a commercial location tracking solution based off this tech? It’s another heavily, heavily crowded industry, but it has oddly high margins, and a basically-infinite battery life would be a huge selling point
  - helpfulContrib 3y ago
    >Musical instrument design is a well saturated space as well… Yeah, thats sort of the point. :)
  - usrusr 3y ago
    Big Tech may have crowded the wearables space, but Garmin is still quite a player in that field and the description "Big Tech" seems almost as bad a fit for them as "Olathe tinkerer collective" would be.
- kian 3y ago
  Provide a way to contact you, please.
samtho 3y ago
I think there is space in the IoT market for a micro-watt platform that harvests energy from the environment. Always on connectivity is silly if it sits idle most of the time (think monitoring systems that take a temperature and moisture readings every 15 minutes), especially if it can communicate via a low power/low bandwidth channel. I build a system for an agriculture client like this with each node only having a very small solar panel (6in^2) and some super capacitors that kept it reporting data throughout the night. We even used performance metrics from the voltage being output by the solar panel to measure how cloudy it was. These devices reported via LoRa to a base station setup that was connected to a PoE system so we just ran a single Cat-6 STP line to a pole in the middle of the property.
- nocsi 3y ago
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775321010892 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787... I think the other aspect of “always on” is that the operator isn’t going to pick up the sensor years down the line. They’re just going to leave it dead and buried, especially if the sensors have to live inside the earth There’s ongoing work on harvesting electricity out of soil
buescher 3y ago
AirTags get about a year of battery life from a 2033 in moderate/typical use cases, according to Apple. That’s 0.675 Wh (Panasonic 2032) / 1 year = 77 microwatts. Or about 7 joules/ day. That’s a lot to guarantee for production. Watch movements are also at least an order of magnitude more expensive than batteries and have a service life.

simonbarker87 3y ago

This was basically my feeling when doing my PhD - there is energy everywhere and if we make systems power efficient enough there is no real reason we can’t make significantly great use of that energy. That being said, it’s not the energy per se that we can tap into, it’s the gradient created as it dissipates/moves that we tap into. Heat is great, but not if it’s uniform, solar is great, but not if it harvesting it casts an area in shadow that needs it, vibration is great so long as it doesn’t damp and further load the system it’s being taken from.

helpfulContrib 3y ago
[flagged]
rpaddock 3y ago
" doesn’t damp and further load the system it’s being taken from." Don't all of these Harvesting systems load a system? For example one of the transmitters somewhere. Yes it is microwatts and no transmitter will notice a single unit. However if we start to talk large quantity of sensors, who is really paying the price? Otherwise we are admitting that Free Energy is a real thing. You and others may find the recently released Nexperia NBM5100 and NBM7100 of interest. While aimed at batteries it functionally translates high impedance power sources to lower impedance to charge up caps for IoT usage. https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics/battery-management-ics/series/NBM5100.html https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics... https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics/battery-management-ics/NBM7100ABQ.html https://www.nexperia.com/products/analog-logic-ics/power-ics...
- simonbarker87 3y ago
  Oh for sure, it’s relative to the system being harvested from and the amount of energy being extracted though. If it’s a train cart/carriage then not really a problem as there is so much mass and vibration to go around, if it’s the surface of a small industrial machine that needs to be reasonably balanced only producing a few hundred milli g then more of a concern.
- 3y ago