Tag Archives: energy harvesting

Silicon Labs is aiming at battery-free harvested energy applications with xG22E, a family of wireless microcontrollers covering Bluetooth Low Energy, 802.15.4 or proprietary 2.4 GHz links. “As Silicon Labs’ most energy-efficient SoCs to date, all three will enable IoT device makers to build wireless devices for battery-optimised and battery-free devices that can harvest energy from external sources in their environments ...

There are a few ways to harvest 10μW from the environment but, perhaps, none so much fun as a generator based on a ‘drinking bird’ toy built by researchers in China. Dubbed a DB-THG (drinking-bird triboelectric hydrovoltaic generator), power is extracted from the movement of the bird by the rubbing action of different materials – think rubbing a balloon on ...

E-peas has created an energy harvesting IC specifically for hand-held remote controls and wireless keyboards equipped with small solar cells. A cold start is possible from an input voltage as low as 275mV if 5µW of power is available. There are two versions, which optimise loading of the photovoltaic source in two different ways to get the best out of ...

E-peas has created a power IC that can mediate between two energy harvesters, a 5V charger, a power store and a load. AEM13920 can work from any combination of two sources including: photo-voltaic cells, thermo-electric generators, RF energy harvesters or kinetic pulsed sources. “For instance, a remote control could have separate PV cells on its front and rear, to maintain ...

Mouser Electronics has signed a distribution partnership deal with Atmosic Technologies. The latter’s low power and energy harvesting wireless Blueooth SoCs and evaluation kits are used by tier one consumer brands, said the company. “With Atmosic products now in stock at Mouser, IoT product developers around the world have immediate access to their extremely low-power wireless portfolio,” said Andy Kerr, ...

Nexperia has created an energy harvesting IC for photovoltaic cells up to around 1mW, that automatically matches the cell to the battery – aiming to extract at least 80% of energy that the cell can produce for any given illumination. Harvesting range is 35µW to 2mW. Inside the IC, called NEH2000BY, power conversion is thorough a voltage-doubling capacitive dc-dc converter, ...

Gemns G100 is the latest finger-powered energy harvester from WePower Technologies – in this case, a push-button with built-in wireless IoT sensor node. Around 40mm in diameter and 70mm from end to end, it is designed to mount in a standard 22mm panel hole. “G100 is an integrated, self-contained Bluetooth LE RF switch solution,” the company told Electronics Weekly. “Within ...

Already aware of NGK’s interesting EnerCera solid-state lithium-ion cells, I recently came across TDK’s CeraCharge surface-mount solid state rechargeable battery, which appeared in 2020. Intended for load-levelling in energy harvesting applications and backing up real-time clocks, there is one TDK CeraCharge part, the 1812 packaged (4.4 x 3 x 1.1mm) BCT1812M101AG, which operates across 0 to 1.6V (1.5V nominal) and ...

Everactive has a development kit for its battery-less IoT system in the pipeline. “The company’s self-powered hardware and managed network is purpose-built to acquire and deliver the dense physical-world data,” it said. The development kit includes two of Everactive’s  batteryless IoT devices (left), each with a sensors to measure temperature, humidity, pressure and tri-axial acceleration. Power comes from a low-light ...

The first anchor has been installed for CorPower’s 9m diameter 300kW C4 wave power converter. The custom anchor, dubbed Umack, has been installed 4km off the coast of northern Portugal at Aguçadoura, where the giant buoy will be part of the HiWave-5 wave power demonstration project. C4 generates power by bobbing up and down along the axis of its single ...