back to article Arm CPU ran on electricity generated by algae for over six months

Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry have run an Arm CPU for six months using algae as a power source. As explained in a paper titled Powering a microprocessor by photosynthesis, the biochem boffins built an AA-battery-sized device that hosts an algae named Synechocystis that "naturally …

  1. Winkypop Silver badge
    Go

    More reason to relocate server farms

    To sewerage farms.

    Cooling and energy?

    1. bazza Silver badge

      Re: More reason to relocate server farms

      Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase Garbage In, Garbage Out...

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: More reason to relocate server farms

        And it'll be easy to spot a dead battery. Brown instead of green. And actually dead, not just a misuse of dead meaning expended :-)

    2. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: More reason to relocate server farms

      If the datacentres are hosting Twitter or Facebook then they are already both "sewerage farms" and server farms.

  2. Pete 2 Silver badge

    No need to charge your phone any more

    > an AA-battery-sized device that hosts an algae named Synechocystis that "naturally harvests energy from the sun through photosynthesis."

    just as long as you remember to water it, daily

    1. Paul Kinsler

      Re: just as long as you remember to water it, daily

      To be fair, that sounds a lot more interesting - and arguably personally satisfying - than "plug it into a charger, daily"

    2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: No need to charge your phone any more

      I can't be arsed to read the paper, but it looks to be a sealed unit. It's probably not perfect. But how often do you need to water the sealed jam jar on the windowsill that's home to your pet algae?

      1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        Re: No need to charge your phone any more

        how often do you need to water the sealed jam jar on the windowsill that's home to your pet algae?

        I think there's an assumption there that isn't really universally applicable.

        1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

          Re: No need to charge your phone any more

          Is my mistake thinking people leave their pet algae on the windowsill rather than carrying it around with them in their handbag?

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: No need to charge your phone any more

            With work from home fewer people are bringing their pet algae into the office every day

          2. Tom 7

            Re: No need to charge your phone any more

            I always wondered about those see through handbags of a few years ago!

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    Go

    I, for one, welcome our power spweing algal overlords...

    ... gotta be better than the tyrants and wankers who run our current power production and generation equipment...

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

      Algae are definitely much less tyrannical, I agree.. (Day of the Triffids scenarios excepted)

      But sadly, this kind of technology is very unlikely to displace the wankers at Drax et al, because the power output is just too piffling.

      The world needs something of the order of 1TW to satisfy its electricity demands. This cell produces about 1 or 2 microwatts.

      For those who struggle with orders of magnitude, the difference between a microwatt and a terawatt is "One Billion Billions". So even if with further development, this experimental tech could become a million times more powerful (unlikely) so that you could get one whole Watt out of it (enough to keep a phone charged 24/7) then we'd still need a Trillion of them (almost a thousand per person) to "power the planet".

      And when the Aluminium anode material degrades and dissolves, we'd have one hell of a pollution problem, not to mention the energy cost of mining and refining all that aluminium in the first place.

      And then there's problem of the triffids.. who will have become our new tyrants.

      * FTFY, see icon

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Mayb so, but every little step counts, so I applaud this research.

        1. Dabooka

          I agree

          However lately on here it's usually overlooked or written off if the solution is 100% viable and immediately in production. See hydrogen developments

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

        Just you wait until the robots recognise the electrical generation capacity of a human................

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

          > Just you wait until the robots recognise the electrical generation capacity of a human................

          I for one am looking forward to my genetically modified, algal green skin.

      3. Al fazed
        Thumb Up

        Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

        Apart from large hadron colliders, football stadiums and cryptocurrency mining, who needs massive amounts of electricity on a daily basis ?

        No one......

        So why produce so fucking much just to see it disipate over the miles from source to consumption ?

        Better to produce at home, what your home needs............

        Saying no more

        ALF

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

          Two problems. First, at-home generation is great, except the methods available tend to be inefficient. You can have your own generator without spending too much money, but you'll be wasting a lot of fuel that generates power you don't need right now. There's a reason they tend to be used only in emergencies. The really big ones tend to be a lot more efficient. Solar panels are a bit better, but storage systems so you can use power at night less so. Again, it's out there and can well be used, but there's a reason many with home solar setups put excess power into the grid during the day and power on something else at night.

          Now for the less important problem: "Apart from large hadron colliders, football stadiums and cryptocurrency mining, who needs massive amounts of electricity on a daily basis ?"

          Server farms. Factories. Industrial kitchens. Hospitals. Airports. Skyscrapers. Any place with a lot of people. Any place with a lot of machines. My home usage is tiny, but there are a lot of nonresidential users out there.

          1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

            Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

            The other small fact is that most solar etc installations are incredibly cost ineffective. I had a quote for solar panels recently - 14 panels + battery.

            a) the suggested installation would not be suitable for heating, I'd have to continue burning oil for that (or freeze which I don't like the idea of)

            b) the payback period only dropped below 10 years if I took account of the current price rises, doubled the cost from October and built in a substantial annual increase (can't remember quite what now)

            I remember reading an article on the beeb (ie a green supporting organisation) which mentioned ground based heat pumps having a payback of 48 years.

            1. lglethal Silver badge
              Go

              Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

              Rob you seem to be confusing a few ideas here.

              Solar panels produce electricity, so unless your willing to retrofit your house with electric heating, solar panels are not going to let you heat your house. They will however, help you reduce your electricity bill. Hell our neighbours tell us they get back about €3000 a year from their solar panels (not they save €3000 a year, but they are paid €3000 for their electricity generation, plus whatever they save from not having to pay an electricity bill). We have our Panels on order, although I dont expect to actually get any money back, as we're a relatively high usage household. But if the payback period is 10-15 years then that's what it is. I'll still save money in the long run and help the environment, and I'm happy with that. Your personal calculation may vary.

              There are solar thermal installations which could cover your heating, but quite frankly unless your living in the tropics, they aren't worth it. And any competent installer will tell you so. They just dont work well enough in our European climates.

              As for Ground heat pumps, 48 years is a lot of bollocks. At least for a new built home - they're highly efficient and relatively cheap to install. I have, however, never heard of anyone getting one installed into an existing home, that I can imagine would be super expensive and pretty dangerous for the house no doubt. You have to dig through the fundament and thats never going to end well. So maybe for a retrofit, the costs would be so high that 48 years might be possible. But no one ever does that. In a new built house, Ground Heat Pumps are an excellent choice and will definitely work out cheaper over 10 years...

            2. MachDiamond Silver badge

              Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

              "The other small fact is that most solar etc installations are incredibly cost ineffective. I had a quote for solar panels recently - 14 panels + battery.

              "

              The problem is when you don't understand what you are being quoted and aren't able to determine if it's a good fit or not. I had a friend that was quoted $30,000 for a system. The quote was absurd. They were trying to make him think that installing 10% more than his usage (which would include usage at night) was a good way to make sure he was well covered and earning money back from the power company. Bonkers.

              Now that my house is paid, saving for a new roof and solar system is in the works. The first thing I plan to do in advance is wire up some current sensors in my electrical board to see exactly how and when I'm using power over a whole year (if possible). There isn't fine enough detail in my monthly bill to make a rational decision on system size and whether a battery has any ROI at all. I also plan to buy panels second hand. I find lots of deals and I'd be buying some of them when I have a way to fetch them as shipping or renting a truck queers the deal. A trailer hitch and a small trailer is close to tops on my purchase list. In the short term, I expect to power a small chest freezer primarily from solar with a battery back up that is backed up by the grid if all else fails. We get lots of sun where I live so the house is heated with passive (nearly passive if you count the small fans) solar heating panels I built. I bundle up when it's really cold and an electric blanket is awesome in winter. I only need electric heat in the bathroom when I shower. I use propane for hot water and the hob. I am replacing the hot water heater with a tankless heater that I already purchased (new old stock, but still a current model). It focuses attention on conservation when you have to refill propane tanks rather than just having gas piped in. Just for cooking, a 5 gallon propane tank will last me a couple of months. It's keeping water hot that kills it. I am working on a thermal battery to store excess solar power and that will preheat water before it runs through the tankless heater. In summer, the tankless unit may not have to come on for a quick shower.

        2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

          Who needs massive amounts of electricity on a daily basis?

          Metals-processors. There are many glass, aluminum, steel, and rare-metals (titanium, niobium, etc.) processing plants where I live, for one reason: the cheap hydro power we have here. It's why we also have so many gods-cursed, industrial-scale crypto-coin-mining installations.

          (That said, we won't be getting any more hydro-electricity-generating dams here, because the resultant lakes would cover too many rich-and-"important" peoples' houses and factories.)

      4. jmch Silver badge

        Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

        very unlikely to displace the wankers at Drax et al, because the power output is just too piffling

        Absolutely, but that's not the use case. If there are going to be billions of tiny devices that need a tiny battery, there are worse ways of providing power than what is essentially a perpetual* source, using free solar energy and non(/not very)-polluting materials, especially if the main raw material needed to produce it is self-replicating and therefore potentially very cheap.

        If the efficiency could be improved a million-fold it would be great, of course!

        *or at least will last as long / longer than the device it powers

  4. MatelotJim

    Or..?

    Or just use a solar cell and a battery?

    1. Zenubi

      Re: Or..?

      Solar cells and batteries use some nasty chemicals - (see article).

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: Or..?

        Aluminum can also be fairly nasty? Especially in its large-scale production.

        I think it would turn out to be fundamentally impossible for these things to provide the energy for their own manufacture, never mind anything else.

        1. Fred Daggy Silver badge

          Re: Or..?

          ISTR that Aluminium was basically electricity in metal form. The refining and smelting requires planet altering amounts of power. So, um, yeah.

          1. Swarthy

            Re: Or..?

            But we do have vast reserves of previously-smelted Aluminium on-hand. It may require crawling through land-fills and/or repurposing ancient computing gear (ancient meaning >2 years if an Apple product), but it would require far lower power levels than refining bauxite

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Or..?

              If memory serves, here in the US, most of our Aluminum plants were purposely built close to hydro-electric dams to benefit from the "cheap" nearby electricity. Also, ISTR smelting only puts about 1 volt of potential into the mix, but requires an enormous amount of amperage.

              1. GlenP Silver badge

                Re: Or..?

                The Blyth aluminium smelter here in the UK had it's own coal fired power station with, at one point, 2 mines* largely dedicated to supplying it.

                *I would have said pits but that might have confused things.

      2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

        Re: Or..?

        Solar + ultra capacitor or lithium-titanium-oxide battery. Not everything needs to be Lithium Ion polymer.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Zenubi

      Re: Size matters

      Read the article - says size of an AA battery.

      1. Martin an gof Silver badge

        Re: Size matters

        While the paper itself is paywalled, if you follow the link it's possible to download the "supplementary information" (appendices and the like). One of these shows the pictured unit with external dimensions of 60mm × 31mm × 23mm. Not really "AA sized", but certainly not car-battery. Possibly the "AA" reference is to the dimensions of the soup-containing part?

        M.

        1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

          Re: Size matters - mea culpa

          I did not read TFA sufficiently-carefully. It's a good thing I didn't write any code that day!

    2. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Size matters

      Er, is it?

      The article says it is the size of an AA-battery. It has what look like four very small screws holding it together.

      (at least it is for 1 microwatt)

      Maybe they could make a 1-milliwatt version in the size of a car battery?

      1. Sgt_Oddball

        Re: Size matters

        A car battery would only garner around 5mA at a best case.

        A 1m³ block of this stuff would garner around 1.2 amps (based off back of fag packet calculations) ... Which is actually getting towards a useful amount (losses not permitting).

        It would mean if I covered my whole back garden with cubes of the stuff, 1 metre deep, I could in theory get about 40ish amps. Imagine if we could covert things like canals over to running on the stuff. That could actually be useful.

        1. Filippo Silver badge

          Re: Size matters

          The power source is ultimately sunlight, which is over a surface, not a volume. This means that the amount of generated power probably doesn't increase much with added depth.

          1. jmch Silver badge

            Re: Size matters

            Agreed. It's algae, which can photosynthesize at depths of a few cm < 1m, and the deeper you go the more efficiency you lose, especially if there's a high algae concentration. So you could stack maybe 3,4,5 cells deep, which always helps but not by much. This can be useful for micro scale, not anything more

            1. TRT Silver badge

              Re: Size matters

              Possibly also not immune to viruses.

  6. Lazlo Woodbine

    So my algae filled pond could probably power a decent sized server...

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Unhappy

      If your pond was the size of a lake, with a lake-sized aluminum anode just under its surface, then maybe.

      1. bpfh
        Joke

        More aluminium?

        Just toss some more cans empty cans of Stella into the pond. Job done!

      2. Kane
        Joke

        "If your pond was the size of a lake, with a lake-sized aluminum anode just under its surface, then maybe."

        So... that's a Yes then?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "If your pond was the size of a lake, with a lake-sized aluminum anode just under its surface, then maybe."

          So... that's a Yes then?

          Have you ever worked in sales ???

          You appear to have the right attitude ....

          i.e. all answers mean yes ... until you have the signature on the contract !!!!

          :)

  7. Warm Braw

    MOS Technology?

    1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

      I'm lichen what you did there

      1. Warm Braw

        It was a toss up between that and:

        Hail to thee, blithe spirits! Nerds of liverwort...

      2. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Facepalm

        see icon :(

  8. awy

    > No – this one can't play Doom, or Crysis. Or any game at all, probably.

    Not even Adventure?

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Depends...

      ~1µA is a very thin power budget. Enough to update about 2cm² of E-Ink display. A normal USB keyboard would need too much power but some lap-top keyboards are electrically just a grid of switches which you can scan with the micro-controller. If you do not type too fast you will be able to see what you type with partial display updates but you would have to wait for sufficient charge to build up to update the whole display when you press 'enter'. You are not short of MHz or Mbytes but losses in the voltage converters would kill the project. Use 10 power cells instead of just one and an algae powered adventure would be nearly possible while the sun shines.

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Depends...

        Meanwhile the silicon PV powered adventure would be happily awaiting your next move. And it costs orders of magnitude less energy to manufacture.

        This paper is not much more than a greenwash-machine, so that corporate social responsibility types can pretend that they are saving the planet by installing an algae-powered calculator in the finance office. (meanwhile the A/C is on with the windows open, thus wiping out the algae's efforts a billion times over)

        If we want to save the actual planet, we need to drop all the FUD about nuclear power, immediately.

    2. Cuddles

      It should be able to play any game you want - a Turing-complete computer can perform any calculation. Eventually. The framerate might not be great.

    3. TRT Silver badge

      Does it run Algol?

  9. Howard Sway Silver badge

    Power output is too low

    If we're going to go organic to power our IOT doorbells, I suggest a more fruitful line of research may be to look at enclosed centipede treadmills.

    * centipede may need food and water and might get a bit tired.

    1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Power output is too low

      Research in to use of centipedes concludes "100 legs ought to be enough for anybody"

      10 years later, everybody is using millipede treadmills

      1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        Re: Power output is too low

        Millipedes generally move a lot faster than centipedes so it would make sense.

        1. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

          Re: Power output is too low

          Surely they should be a tenth of the speed? It's the megapedes I'd be worried about.

      2. Jedit Silver badge
        Joke

        "10 years later, everybody is using millipede treadmills"

        There may be problems with adoption of this system in the EU. They use the metric system, but you're asking them to work in feet.

        1. alisonken1
          Facepalm

          Re: "10 years later, everybody is using millipede treadmills"

          doh!

  10. Spoobistle
    Joke

    Won't last!

    All very tidy with those Green algae - they're young, enthusiastic and keen to save the planet, but you just wait, it won't be long before the Red algae take over and you're having to give them power to stop them making toxic blooms and other mischief...

  11. Vocational Vagabond

    Did Musk fund this ??

    So Let me guess, this is an experiment of integrity yeilding food, oxygen and compute for Elon's Mars by 2029 sort of... mission... quest... thing? >_<

  12. deadlockvictim

    Productisation

    Did anyone else wince at the use of the word 'productisation'?

    I'm getting old.

    I'll have to get a lawn so that I can scream at kids now.

    1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

      Re: Productisation

      The next generation will be shouting "Get off my battery!"

      1. Tom 7

        Re: Productisation

        No need - BOFH tech will mean walking on the lawn results in muscle spasms that launch you back from where you came!

  13. Danny 2

    @Cyberdemon

    "The world needs...to satisfy its electricity demands."

    We know from building roads that demand increases as supply increases. The world needs to reduce it's demands!

    Or at least think smarter. For example a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button. A video doorbell could be on social media and powered by the views it gets. Royal Mail could be funded by people who get snail mail - you have to pass a sandwich through your letter box before they pass letters. Elections and politicians could be sponsored by foreign oligarchs.

    I've been watching Star Trek: The Animated Series (the 4th series I hadn't heard of until a few days ago) and I think it is a bad idea to give control of Arm to the algae. They'll soon figure out they are being exploited and there are more of them than us. It'd be as crazy as giving away your wafer-fabs and nuclear plants to the Chinese.

    1. ThatOne Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: @Cyberdemon

      > The world needs to reduce it's demands!

      Sure, the problem is just to find someone who accepts to start it... Nobody will accept to be the first, and all unanimously claim their rights to abundance (at least the level they can afford).

      Of course there is the simple, tried and tested solution of forcing the poor to reduce their demands, after all they are legion and easy to control, but the affluent and influential will quickly gobble up that small surplus generated, after all it would only cover a luxury apartment in [Big Capital] or a new supercar for a handful of big enchiladas.

      So yes, while probably the better solution, it is practically unenforceable.

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: @Cyberdemon

        The world population is currently overstretched beyond the planet's means to support it. As a species, we have reached the edge of the petri dish.

        Any volunteers to be the first country to starve to death for lack of energy?

        No? Didn't think so.. We'll have to draw straws then.

        (see icon)

        1. ThatOne Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: @Cyberdemon

          > Any volunteers to be the first country to starve to death

          You clearly don't understand how that works: Those volunteers are designated by those countries who have the power to do so, among those countries who don't have the power to prevent it. And inside each country it's the same on the individual level, so there is never a shortage of "volunteers" to push out of the petri dish...

          Cynical? Yes, but realistic too.

    2. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: @Cyberdemon

      Royal Mail could be funded by people who get snail mail - you have to pass a sandwich through your letter box before they pass letters.

      Three days a week my posties come around lunch time. Are they going to want a hot meal? How do you pour soup through a letter box?(*)

      Elections and politicians could be sponsored by foreign oligarchs.

      Umm? But I thought they already were …

      (*) Answer: messily.

      1. Irony Deficient

        How do you pour soup through a letter box?(*)

        (*) Answer: messily.

        Alternative answer: using a funnel.

      2. Danny 2

        How do you pour soup through a letter box?

        Thin, wide tupperware boxes. Or a funnel with an on/off valve.

        [True story. It's comedic so you won't believe me but it's sad so you might. I wasn't getting out much and I developed a crush on my postman woman/girl person in her short shorts, and over months was steeling myself to ask her out. I finally worked up the courage and then she knocked on my door and said, "You've got a big package!", handing me a parcel too big for the letterbox. My cheeks went crimson.

        I just couldn't look her in the face after that, and she stopped delivering my mail. In my dotage I like to think she was deliberately flirting with me and was devastated when I didn't reply, "Because of your lovely legs."]

    3. Mike 137 Silver badge

      Re: @Cyberdemon

      @Danny2 you're dead right. But pursuading people is the hard part, because everyone needs a wall size TV. I use a hand wound coffee grinder, and it takes about the same time to use as an electric one.

      " For example a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button

      Until around 1900 they used to be 'powered' by pulling a rod that pulled a wire that waggled a bell on a spring. You can now buy very expensive replicas of these.

      1. Irony Deficient

        a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button

        Until around 1900 they used to be ‘powered’ by pulling a rod that pulled a wire that waggled a bell on a spring. You can now buy very expensive replicas of these.

        There were also Victorian-era twist- and lever-actuated enclosed “interior” doorbells; replicas of them are still available. A manually “powered” door knocker is another option.

        1. TRT Silver badge

          Re: a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button

          Ours still bang on the window. That's not going to make it ring in the back garden though! Now if they still carried a bugle it could double up as a soup funnel.

    4. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: @Cyberdemon

      > The world needs to reduce it's demands!

      I don't think that's going to happen. From what I understand of how the world works, we'll reduce demand through a world war, before we reduce it by agreement. We simply don't have any political framework that can reliably prioritize the long-term. I sincerely hope a technical solution comes up, because at the moment I can't even imagine what a political solution would look like.

      1. cyberdemon Silver badge
        Terminator

        Re: @Cyberdemon

        We have a perfectly good technical solution - it's called nuclear fission.

        Unfortunately, some twats in the 60s were terribly interested in using civil nuclear power plants to manufacture weapons, which caused the reputation of nuclear power to become irreperably tarnished. Then in the 80s, we narrowly averted nuclear war.

        There ARE nuclear fission designs that are able to consume the world's stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium in a safe way, to produce enormous amounts of cheap energy. But because of the earlier crises, we are so scared of nuclear power that we regulate it into the ground so that it is unbelievably expensive when it should be cheap- and we end up with no new designs for the past 5 decades, and act all surprised when we find that all our nuclear power stations are crumbling, because they were built in the 60s.

        If we fail to sustain ourselves with peaceful nuclear fission, then the only option is war (with nuclear weapons, and/or automated genocide machines), as we struggle for the last of the fossil fuel, and the last of the food.

        1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
          Mushroom

          Nuclear Fission

          The unsolvable problem with nuclear fission is that greedy and/or insufficiently-caring and/or insufficiently-imagination-possessing people design, build, and run the plants, take cheap/careless shortcuts, and so eventually cause disasters.

          That's a people-problem, not a technology-problem.

    5. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Re: @Cyberdemon

      "A doorbell could be powered by the push of a button". My doorbell is. It's at least 60 years old, and probably no-longer made. You push the button, and it goes 'ding'; you release the button and it goes 'dong'.

      Many things are electrically-powered when they need not be so.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "But the M0+ does do very well in small, embedded devices that need to go a long time between battery changes"

    Sounds like the perfect chip for a device that only needs to tell you how much power is left in the (algae) battery that's powering it. F'nar...

    Cool tech though.

  15. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

    Is it bigger than claimed or just closer?

    That's not a lot of power but it is a small battery. A larger source of algae would presumably generate more and we have plenty of ocean we could exploit.

    Perhaps warming the atmosphere could help us there?

  16. pimppetgaeghsr

    Wonder if their CPUs could run on the hot air coming from their senior leadership.

  17. fidodogbreath

    Small Business Edition

    Do they have one that can power a server from spider webs and dust?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cool, so the second drink holder on my rucksack can soon be used for a thermos of scum as an emergency power supply.

  19. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge
    Stop

    How about... NO... to IOT devices... They're not needed, they have no actual real world added value in the vast majority of useage and exist purely as a means to weaponize... I mean... harvest personal and private data to sell on to advertisers.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Boat bits...

    I've got a windometer at the masthead and a display in the cockpit. They communicate over a radio link and are powered by solar cells and ni cads. It's been working fine for 20 years, and I've got a young one.

  21. The H-J Man

    I remember back in the day reading that it was possible to power an ARM3 from the wasted heat of a Pentimum 100.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "power an ARM3 from the wasted heat of a Pentimum 100."

      Yeahbut, all those Pentium 100s saved us a fortune in heating bills!!

  22. an.other_tech

    Lemons

    Had a simple LCD clock that was lemon powered, many years ago as a kid. Smelt nice, plus we had a lemon tree.

    When we tried potatoes, they didn't smell as good but lasted a bit longer.

    Can't remember how long they lasted, but it's doubtful anywhere near a month, so it will be interesting to see the actual output figures , over time, they got !

    1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      Re: Lemons

      That's getting power from the destruction of the electrical plates. It's like an ordinary disposable battery except that it consumes lemons too.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Lemons

      "Can't remember how long they lasted, but it's doubtful anywhere near a month,"

      That's something I've always known about but never tried. I wonder if it'd last longer wrapped and sealed in clingfilm or similar? I'm assuming the EOL was lemon or potato related and not the electrodes wearing out.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like