3 ms·
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 mo
by 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 agohttps://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