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"our sensor architecture easily lends itself to a compact solid-state imaging chip" ... hmm ... there is no scale on the photo of the camera, so it's easy to m

"our sensor architecture easily lends itself to a compact solid-state imaging chip" ... hmm ... there is no scale on the photo of the camera, so it's easy to miss that the image sensor is 8" x 11". The lens size scales with the amount of power needed - it is about 7" in diameter right now. http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/self_powered_camera/images/array.JPG http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/self_powered_camera... Capacitances will be lower at this scale, but will only increase when you increase the frame rate (currently 1 fps with a 1 second exposure). It's a wonderful start, but still orders of magnitude of improvement needed until practical. But there was a time when no one could have imagined a calculator could have been powered by sunlight alone!

darkmighty 11y ago
I question whether the fundamentals are practical, due to conflicting goals. In general, we want to minimize sensor sizes for a camera; while if it's going to be used as a power source, we want the opposite. In a PV plate, we want to maximize light capture; while in a camera we want to make sure we 'organize' incoming light with a lens, and restricted field of view. ... In this case having separate specialized PV plate makes total sense, in fact you can find in the market a cheap cam and a cheap PV plaque that will provide power for the camera blowing this one out of the water. If they could "hack" existing camera systems to provide some extra power essentially for free though, that might be worthwhile.
- ploxiln 11y ago
  Well, we want to minimize camera sizes, particularly for phones. Besides that, the only other reason to minimize sensor size is cost. But nicer/fancier digital cameras have bigger sensors. Look up "full frame sensor" and "three quarter frame", here's an example google result http://improvephotography.com/699/the-difference-between-full-frame-and-crop-sensor-dslr-cameras/ http://improvephotography.com/699/the-difference-between-ful... I suppose that right now the resolution of this new self-powered camera is so low, it's hard to really compare the technology to traditional CCDs. Maybe it's fundamentally limited to less quality for the same sensor or lens size, since some of the light must power the controller and flash writing. I have no idea.

darkmighty 11y ago

I question whether the fundamentals are practical, due to conflicting goals. In general, we want to minimize sensor sizes for a camera; while if it's going to be used as a power source, we want the opposite. In a PV plate, we want to maximize light capture; while in a camera we want to make sure we 'organize' incoming light with a lens, and restricted field of view. ... In this case having separate specialized PV plate makes total sense, in fact you can find in the market a cheap cam and a cheap PV plaque that will provide power for the camera blowing this one out of the water. If they could "hack" existing camera systems to provide some extra power essentially for free though, that might be worthwhile.

ploxiln 11y ago
Well, we want to minimize camera sizes, particularly for phones. Besides that, the only other reason to minimize sensor size is cost. But nicer/fancier digital cameras have bigger sensors. Look up "full frame sensor" and "three quarter frame", here's an example google result http://improvephotography.com/699/the-difference-between-full-frame-and-crop-sensor-dslr-cameras/ http://improvephotography.com/699/the-difference-between-ful... I suppose that right now the resolution of this new self-powered camera is so low, it's hard to really compare the technology to traditional CCDs. Maybe it's fundamentally limited to less quality for the same sensor or lens size, since some of the light must power the controller and flash writing. I have no idea.