There's a battery-free Game Boy that runs solely on the power of sunlight and the speed of your button-mashing
- Reference: 1599199933
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/09/04/battery_free_gameboy/
- Source link:
Unfortunately, the console is not for sale and it’s not officially affiliated with Nintendo. Instead, it’s a research project that seems to be intended as some sort of a metaphorical middle finger to modern IoT gizmos.
“Our work is the antithesis of the Internet of Things, which has many devices with batteries in them,” [1]said Josiah Hester, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in the US.
“Those batteries eventually end up in the garbage. If they aren’t fully discharged, they can become hazardous. They are hard to recycle. We want to build devices that are more sustainable and can last for decades.”
[2]
Better hope those panels work ... Click to enlarge. Source: Northwestern University
Hester, along with folks at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, decided to craft a machine capable of playing Game Boy cartridges using an emulator without relying on any batteries at all. Strips of solar panels on the front of their blocky gadget convert sunlight to electrical energy as the user plays a game. Solar power is not enough, however, and there’s a second mechanism that produces electricity whenever a button is pushed.
Here’s a video of the battery-free Game Boy in action:
[3]Youtube Video
“The buttons generate energy by moving a magnet inside a coil,” Hester explained to El Reg . “When you press the button it moves the magnet through the coil, this energy is then siphoned into a capacitor for immediate use by the Game Boy.”
In other words, in the process of playing the Game Boy the user creates some energy to keep the console going. Games that involve more button-mashing, like Tetris or Super Mario, therefore, generate more energy than slower games like Chess.
Although it’s possible that the battery-free Game Boy could run forever, in practice it doesn’t really work out that way. Playing a game is a constant battle between energy generation and consumption.
When the balance skews too much toward consumption, the Game Boy simply just turns off, and when it gets enough energy it comes back to life – all in a matter of seconds depending on the amount of sunlight available. Thankfully, the researchers figured out how to snapshot the state of the machine and save it to non-volatile memory in time when the supply runs low, and restore from it from memory when the power returns. Thus players can just continue where they left off... if they can put up. With the. Game pausing. Occasionally.
“With good sunlight, like a sunny day in Chicago at noon, and a few button presses every second – for instance, to turn a Tetris block – the Game Boy can stay continuously powered since it is harvesting enough energy to power all operations,” Hester told us.
"However, if you don't have great Sun, or the game you are playing does not require a lot of button presses – for example some slower games like Chess – we have noticed about ten seconds of play then one second of waiting for enough energy to turn back on
“The energy the device gathers is used almost immediately by the Game Boy. So, if you turned the lights off, the Game Boy would lose power quite quickly. The energy is stored in a small intermediate capacitor, which is basically two metal plates that hold a charge between them. Our particular capacitor is smaller than a grain of rice."
The device is more of a proof-of-concept that the idea of “sustainable gaming,” where consoles are powered by green energy, will one day be possible.
“Sustainable gaming will become a reality, and we made a major step in that direction — by getting rid of the battery completely,” said Przemyslaw Pawelczak, who co-led the research and is an assistant professor at the TU Delft’s Embedded Software Lab. “With our platform, we want to make a statement that it is possible to make a sustainable gaming system that brings fun and joy to the user.”
A paper detailing the design of the gizmo is due to go public on September 10. ®
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[1] https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/09/battery-free-game-boy-runs-forever/?&fj=1
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/09/03/gameboy.jpg
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VzDyvwfEZA
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Hopefully, we're not too many years away from the glass batteries being developed by Hydro Quebec and John Goodenough.
Then, devices similar to this might have legs: Solar and electromagnetic power for the mainstay of operations and a rechargable, safe, biodegradable glass battery to give constant power in those instances where the draw is too great.
re: Neat trick, but you really can't do away with batteries
That's exactly what they have done.
Zero point energy. That's the answer.
Either that or sharks with frickin' lasers.
Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.
Zero Point Energy. "How many supernovae were actually industrial accidents?" asked Arthur C Clarke
Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.
There is no such thing as zero point energy. The so-called "zero point energy" is inferred from the difference between a classical calculation of ground-state energy and a quantum calculation of ground-state energy. However, since our universe is *only* quantum and is *not* classical, the difference between them has no physical meaning whatsoever.
Sometimes it can look as if there are quantum fluctuations [1], and these can - in linear systems - be treated as if due to statistical fluctuations with a "zero point" origin. But this does not mean there is actually any zero point energy, even if the approximation makes some calculations (e.g. of the Casimir effect) rather easier.
Unfortunately this means that Stargate-SG1, and the various spin offs, contain a number of episodes that are clearly nonsense, but we will just have to live with this and pretend not to notice :-)
.
[1] See e.g. my post here https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2020/08/27/radiation_quantum_computing/#c_4098271
Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.
The knowledge that some people have on here never ceases to amaze me. I cannot think of any other forum where someone with very specific domain knowledge chips in to a conversation. It's brilliant!
Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.
Paul Kinsler, you will from now on be known as Mr Poo Face No Fun.
(I still upvoted you for a cool and informative post, mind you.)
Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.
I see words. Lots of words. However, I don't seem to be able to make head or tails of their meaning in this particular arrangement.
Which speaks volumes about my knowledge and understanding of Quantum Physics. (Bistable cats in sealed boxes and spherical sheep in vacuums * are about as far as I go)
Have a beer on me Mr. Kinsler.
* Of course, I'm not implying that these are very small sheep, or particularly large vacuums. Or any particular model of vacuum either, but clearly your average domestic Dyson isn't going to be cutting it here...
There was a Gameboy Advance game which used a photometric sensor in that cartridge, to encourage the player to spend time outside. By playing outside, the player could 'charge' up their 'solar powered' weapons in their role as a vampire hunter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand
Powerball!
This concept made me think of other ways of powering a Gameboy using the player's muscles. I remembered those naff dynamo flashlights which resembled naff grip-strength exercisers... and in turn Powerballs - gyroscopic balls that are used to treat RSI and build forearm strength in musicians and rock climbers.
Of course some clever bugger has already fitted a dynamo to one:
https://hackaday.com/2010/11/22/ridiculous-exerciser-become-useful-as-a-charger/
Note: Powerballs are not ridiculous. Since the gyroscopic effect keeps your wrist straight it keeps your tendons happy. Recommended to those with RSI. Consult your doctor etc
Re: Powerball!
That Hackaday was from 2010. Naturally some other bugger is now trying to make a commercialised version on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/handenergy/handenergy-your-pocket-electricity-generator
Re: Powerball!
I have one of those powerballs. They do work although in action they appear more like a masturbation trainer
Re: Powerball!
"I have one of those powerballs. They do work although in action they appear more like a masturbation trainer"
If you need training, then you have bigger problems on your hands.
Fnar, fnar
Whatever happened to the batteries that you can pee in to recharge?
Reported on in ElReg some years ago, they may be more yellow than green but would certainly be considered a renewable.
I really like the trick, but it will need more work before taking off, and I'm not sure it'll ever be practical. The market has moved beyond basic handheld consoles, current cell phones require much more energy.
The market has moved beyond basic handheld consoles, ...
Perhaps I need to hook up the exercise bike up to a generator and get my son to self-power his xbox :-)
Re: The market has moved beyond basic handheld consoles, ...
I'm just thinking of the stationary bicycles with dynamos connected to a 60W bulb that used to be at festivals... as a young teen I struggled to get the bulb very bright.
With the usual caveats about dynamo efficiency etc, my intuition is that a cyclist would struggle to power an older Xbox (they ran hot), but might have a chance with a handheld console (with battery just used to even out the dynamo's output)
Look at the angle he's having to hold it to get max sunlight, and how much button mashing he's doing, and it STILL turns off. They've built a battery free device that doesn't actually work battery free, and instead of MAKING it work just threw in a game save workaround for when it stops working every few seconds. Nice idea, failed execution.
Neat trick, but you really can't do away with batteries. We really need to figure out a way to properly recycle them.