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Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

freethegameboy.info

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Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#11

Post by 8note »

schappim wrote: post #6

This is definitely achievable! When I was a young, we'd take long road trips and my Gameboy (original) would run out of battery. I'd use a small solar panel (in place of one of the batteries) from a science kit to keep going, propped up against the back window. The wires and panel were held in place with chewing gum (yes, kids can be gross). I did have the "frequent power failures". Props to the team on fixing this :…

I just had a wall plug in for my game boy colour.

That worked quite well because the grid's always been pretty reliable

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#13

Post by pfannkuchen »

knodi123 wrote: post #8
rom-antics wrote: post #4

When I was a kid I had a toy electronics kit and one of the circuits was an AM radio that worked without batteries. A normal radio station signal is strong enough to drive a pair of earbuds without any additional power. Since then I've always wondered if you could harvest that same radio energy to power other things without batteries, maybe even a Game Boy. There's electromagnetic radiation in the air all around us.…

> I've always wondered if you could harvest that same radio energy to power other things without batteries That's how passive RFID tags work. The tag has a tiny little computer, and you hold it near a thing that emits an electric field that energizes it.

I think the poster wants this to work without the “you hold it near a thing” part.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#14

Post by KennyBlanken »

I don't really understand why they wouldn't just use a supercapacitor instead of going to great lengths to work with a "small" capacitor? For the size/weight of the old batteries you could probably put 30-40 farad worth in, which I would think would be plenty.

The energy harvesting buttons have to be incredibly annoying ergonomically - for gaming, you do NOT want buttons that are really hard to press.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#15

Post by pfannkuchen »

schappim wrote: post #6

This is definitely achievable! When I was a young, we'd take long road trips and my Gameboy (original) would run out of battery. I'd use a small solar panel (in place of one of the batteries) from a science kit to keep going, propped up against the back window. The wires and panel were held in place with chewing gum (yes, kids can be gross). I did have the "frequent power failures". Props to the team on fixing this :…

“When I was a young” sounds amusingly like you are an alien who learned about humans from alien nature documentaries about Earth, and you accidentally slipped up in this post. “The lion feeds its young”.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#16

Post by boomboomsubban »

8note wrote: post #11
schappim wrote: post #6

This is definitely achievable! When I was a young, we'd take long road trips and my Gameboy (original) would run out of battery. I'd use a small solar panel (in place of one of the batteries) from a science kit to keep going, propped up against the back window. The wires and panel were held in place with chewing gum (yes, kids can be gross). I did have the "frequent power failures". Props to the team on fixing this :…

I just had a wall plug in for my game boy colour. That worked quite well because the grid's always been pretty reliable

Cars usually lacked wall plugs. You could get ones that plugged into the cigarette lighter, but my parents at least were unwilling to string a cable through the gear selector to the back seat.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#17

Post by StrangeATractor »

rom-antics wrote: post #4

When I was a kid I had a toy electronics kit and one of the circuits was an AM radio that worked without batteries. A normal radio station signal is strong enough to drive a pair of earbuds without any additional power. Since then I've always wondered if you could harvest that same radio energy to power other things without batteries, maybe even a Game Boy. There's electromagnetic radiation in the air all around us.…

I heard a tale in the days of yore where a radio station was not getting the range promised by the laws of physics. When they did some investigating they found an engineer that lived next door to the tower was syphoning power from the radio waves as part of a home experiment.

I'm not qualified to determine the plausibility of this, but I hope it's true.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#18

Post by IIAOPSW »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #16
8note wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had a wall plug in for my game boy colour. That worked quite well because the grid's always been pretty reliable

Cars usually lacked wall plugs. You could get ones that plugged into the cigarette lighter, but my parents at least were unwilling to string a cable through the gear selector to the back seat.

The trick is negotiation. Start by trying to bum a cigarette off mom. Then settle for using the cigy lighter for your gameboy

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#19

Post by askvictor »

rom-antics wrote: post #4

When I was a kid I had a toy electronics kit and one of the circuits was an AM radio that worked without batteries. A normal radio station signal is strong enough to drive a pair of earbuds without any additional power. Since then I've always wondered if you could harvest that same radio energy to power other things without batteries, maybe even a Game Boy. There's electromagnetic radiation in the air all around us.…

Nikola Tesla spent a good deal of his time working on wireless power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer#Tesla

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#20

Post by kalleboo »

8note wrote: post #11
schappim wrote: post #6

This is definitely achievable! When I was a young, we'd take long road trips and my Gameboy (original) would run out of battery. I'd use a small solar panel (in place of one of the batteries) from a science kit to keep going, propped up against the back window. The wires and panel were held in place with chewing gum (yes, kids can be gross). I did have the "frequent power failures". Props to the team on fixing this :…

I just had a wall plug in for my game boy colour. That worked quite well because the grid's always been pretty reliable

How long was your extension cord that you could use it in a car on a road trip?
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