Texas Instruments Builds New Energy Technology For the Internet of Things 54
dcblogs writes Texas Instruments says it has developed electronics capable of taking small amounts of power generated by harvested sources and turning them into a useful power source. TI has built an efficient 'ultra-low powered' DC-to-DC switching converter that can boost 300 to 400 millivolts power to 3 to 5 volts. To power wearables, the company says it has demonstrated drawing energy from the human body by using harvesters the size of wristwatch straps. It has worked with vibration collectors, for instance, about the same size as a key. It is offering this technology as a means to power sensors in Internet of Things applications, as well as to augment battery power supplies in wearables.
Your power level! (Score:2)
Your power level is draining with every hit!
This fight is over .... Freeza?
(Let's hope they call this device Freeze)
Re:Your power level! (Score:5, Insightful)
Say it with me now... Voltage is not a measure of power!
Looking into the data sheet a little shows that this DC-DC converter maintains decent efficiency from a few microWatts to several hundred milliWatts;
http://www.ti.com/product/bq25... [ti.com]
Now, to bring this home with a car analogy (and a moderately controversial one, although it shouldn't be), quoting the voltage of an electrical power source is not unlike quoting the torque of a car engine. Neither is a measure of the power available. Torque can be changed by going through a gearbox without changing the power delivered apart from the efficiency of the transmission. Similarly, voltage can be changed without changing the available power apart from the efficiency of the DC-DC converter. In both cases, load conditions matter. It would be like looking at the specs of an air wrench that has up to 450 lb-ft of torque and saying "Wow, that's as powerful as a Corvette engine!"
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I wish they offered it in a hand-soldering friendly format, or that the evaluation boards were not really expensive.
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If I'm reading the packaging info right, the pitch spacing is 0.50 mm. For context, that's about the width of a 0603 resistor (0.8 mm). So, if you have a very steady hand and a microscope, it should be doable.
Also, I suspect if there's enough interest someone like Sparkfun will start selling these on breakout boards...
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"Now, to bring this home with a car analogy (and a moderately controversial one, although it shouldn't be), quoting the voltage of an electrical power source is not unlike quoting the torque of a car engine."
This assumes that we all know what the torque of a car engine means.
I'd use a water pressure analogy myself.
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But the reality is that current requirements vary. A car battery is rated for ~300 A at 12 V. A laptop power supply might be rated for ~2 A at 12 V. An LED consumes about 10 mA at ~3V. A microcontroller can run off microAmps at 5 V.
All those voltages are within the same order of magnitude, but the currents span 8 orders of magnitude, and in practice you wouldn't even change the PCB design or wiring for anything 0.1 A.
Someone just failed Physics 101... (Score:4, Insightful)
"...can boost 300 to 400 millivolts power to 3 to 5 volts".
Power? Volts? Boost? Huh???
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My amp goes to 11.
Re:Someone just failed Physics 101... (Score:5, Informative)
"...can boost 300 to 400 millivolts power to 3 to 5 volts".
Power? Volts? Boost? Huh???
In common vernacular of an EE you refer to voltage as power with the understanding that there is current being supplied. EG This device is powered by a 9-volt battery. So the the use of power in TFS and TFA is not out of line.
The paragraph form TFA is:
All these ambient energy sources, such as the difference in temperature in a pipe carrying hot water and the outside air, can generate 300 to 400 millivolts, which isn't enough to power anything. TI has built an "ultra-low powered" DC-to-DC switching converter that can boost this power to 3 to 5 volts, which is sufficient to charge a battery, according to Niranjan Pathare, senior marketing development manager at TI.
Also while current is a needed aspect, the level of voltage is a defining factor in electronic design.
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The whole thing is odd. If you want really low power why not offer 1.8V? Most devices use a lot less energy at that voltage.
But yes, they should specify power in watts. Without that it's hard to get an sense of what you can actually run from these things. They illustrate a CC110L radio module which uses around 35mA when transmitting, but can be lower if you reduce the power (and range). Unfortunately they don't give any sort of time frame, so are we talking having the receiver always on at say 20mA or just
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Same with HVAC and refrigerators. There is a big difference in overall power used if a device has a 100% duty cycle than one that only comes on 10% of the time. Power supplies as well. An 800 watt power supply can actually be running at 10-20 watts fairly often.
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Much like you failed 5th-grade English, it seems.
Volts is the power/force/pressure, Amps is the amount of electricity used.
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Voltage is a measurement of electrical potential. Power, force, pressure - these are all different things, and none of them describe voltage.
5th grade English does not give you insight into physics.
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I don't understand your comment about a dictionary. I referred to the standard definition of power - see (e.g.) http://science.howstuffworks.c... [howstuffworks.com] if your recollection is rusty.
As I was posting on Slashdot, I didn't think it was necessary to explain why the extract I quoted is confusing (and confused).
"...can boost 300 to 400 millivolts power to 3 to 5 volts".
Calling millivolts "power" is sloppy at best, but the real strangeness is the idea of boosting "300 to 400 millivolts power to 3 to 5 volts". Given tha
Power from the human body (Score:4, Funny)
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I've seen this movie for humans it doesn't end well
So were you like me, and totally avoided the sequels?
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Internet of things (Score:1)
Because what people need most in this world is underwear and baseball hats that can be hacked by the NSA to spy on you. What is up with this massive push to make everything massively unnecessarily complex. Will I have to take my underpants to the apple store if they break down?
I can hear it now.... (Score:2)
Millivolts "power"? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I had to accept that Slashdot editors and submitters are not, typically, capable to distinguish between power (watt, W) and energy (watt hour, W h), but this is a... new low? Hell, I don't even know if it's new, with how things have been going, it is quite possible that there was a similarly disgraceful submission already.
Mentally insert image of double facepalm here.
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Just turn things around and it's much easier to understand. It's millihours per watt/volt.
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I agree with the reply to a previous post -- this nit isn't worth picking. They didn't say "300 to 500 millivolts of power", which would have been unambiguously wrong. The summary said "boost 300 to 500 millivolts power to 3 to 5 volts", which is poor grammar, but not necessarily wrong -- if they'd said "300 to 500 millivolt power", it would have correctly described "power delivered at a voltage of 300 to 500 millivolts", which gets converted to "power delivered at a voltage of 3 to 5 volts" (and about one-
Re:Millivolts "power"? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you see "Internet of Things" you know everything that comes after is usually pure idiocy anyway.
Re-inventing the wheel (Score:3)
So, TI is basically saying they made a joule thief. *YAWN*
As long as it doesnt SUCK. (Score:2)
Their MSP430 is great tech but their libraries suck horribly. They need to embrace the public community and less of their in house engineers on making libraries that are worth using AND stop using a compile/IDE that is complete crap and crippled.
the GCC toolchain is decent but still clunky as all hell.
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So this is the beginning? (Score:1)
Did I read that right? (Score:3)
The internet will be powered by " . . .collections of vibrators" ?
But then what powers the . . .
Human batteries? (Score:1)
> "To power wearables, the company says it has demonstrated drawing energy from the human body..."
How do they know?
I can't wait (Score:2)