Battery-free AA gadgetry

RE: Battery-free AA gadgetry

aemarconnet — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 02:29:48 GMT

Parts are trickling in from TI. I placed an order for some Capacitors from Newark and look forward to actually doing some physical work soon!

RE: Battery-free AA gadgetry

hlipka — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 21:27:05 GMT

Why not use a supercapacitor charger (e.g. from Linear or TI)? Then you can charge the caps to 2.5V each, and use a buck-boost converter to get the most out of them. This should improve efficiency.

Look for caps with low self-discharge current, an for a converter with low quiescent current (since it will be always on).

RE: Battery-free AA gadgetry

aemarconnet — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 16:28:26 GMT

Good News Everyone!

I had been searching around Newark for parts. Trying to find some small energy harvesters that would not blow my budget. I have a $300 budget, and the parts I would need are only $0.30 each, but I would have to order a reel of a thousand! 0.3*1000 units would leave me penniless. But thankfully I remembered that TI offers free samples of many small parts. with 2 minutes of searching on there website i found a half dozen solutions. I ordered a few options, but i think that these efficient little energy harvesters with a fixed 3V output will work well although I may have to use a pair in parallel to provide enough current: Converter (Integrated Switch) - Step-Up (Boost) Converter - TLV61224 - TI.com .

Thanks Everyone!

Alex