The Power Harvesting Challenge is finished! Twenty finalists received a $1000 cash prize and are moving on to the finals of The Hackaday Prize 2018. It was a hard-fought battle to squeeze out every bit of power they could from their projects.
From the Vampire Charger to the Clock for a century, the winners are certainly some truly unique and inspiring projects. You can check out a full list of the finalists right here, but if you want to know which Tindarians are moving on to the finals, you’ve come to the right place.
3 Tindarians Score a Win in The Power Harvesting Challenge
The goal of the Power Harvesting challenge was to pull energy from a source other than traditional batteries or wall-power. Solar panels, wind turbines, or even whacky chemistry experiments were all acceptable options.
Among the twenty finalists, we had not one, not two, but three Tindarians claim a slot! Here are the winning projects, in no particular order:
Tiny Solar Energy Module (TSEM)
The goal of this project was to design a very small module that could easily interface with other projects. Jasper Sikken created a 1×1 inch PCB module with 2 solar cells, an extremely efficient Li-Ion charger, and out of 3.3V and 1.8V.
This project is unique because it’s easy to manufacture and simple to integrate into PCB or breadboard designs. It can even harvest enough energy from indoor light to power a BLE or LoRa sensor.
Ultra-Low Power LiPo Charger Via Energy Harvesting
This project from Pesky Products is a very small (0.5×0.5 inch) breakout board for the Texas Instruments BQ25504 Ultra Low Power Boost Converter With Battery Management for Energy Harvesting Applications.
After using the ESP8285 and other MCUs for environmental sensing projects, Kris Winer found that battery life is a big issue. By harvesting energy from direct sunlight using solar cells, remote applications like environmental data loggers can be consistently charged and powered by the sun.
The BQ25504 makes it easy to power an MCU. The low (>330 mV) cold start threshold also allows energy harvesting from indoor lighting as well.
PCB Coil Joule Thief
A joule thief is a minimalist self-oscillating voltage booster. It pulls the remaining energy from what most would consider a “dead” battery to illuminate an LED. It can also be used as an LED driver to power a white LED from a low voltage source, like an AAA battery. Joule thieves are small, inexpensive, and easy to build. This type of circuit goes by other names too, like blocking oscillator, joule ringer, and vampire torch.
This design from Bobricius is unique in that it replaces the toroid transformer with a PCB etched dual coil. You can find some of the initial boards for sale on Tindie.
Enter The Human Computer Interface Challenge Today!
The next challenge of The 2018 Hackaday Prize is already underway. Check out our full post for details on how to enter. Who knows, you could be featured in our next finalist roundup!
