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Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

freethegameboy.info

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Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#31

Post by chillbill »

I appreciate the hackery aspect of this but I have very high levels of doubt that this path will amount to anything significant. Aside from that, it’s slightly annoying that they repeated a false premise (or at best half-truth) twice at the beginning and left a significant piece of how it works (it’ll turn on and off) till the middle. I think everyone knows that you can harvest solar power but the problem with it is its unpredictability.

It doesn’t have to be the same experience as playing a game boy, but maybe start off with that: it’s not the same way as playing any console really, having to wait for a few seconds every ten is not only annoying, it won’t work for a significant amount of “computing”.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#32

Post by 0_____0 »

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 heard of AM radio being audible in non-electric structures, like an old hangar door. Some combination of geometry, metal surface condition (corrosion?), and proximity to a station.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#33

Post by nimish »

0_____0 wrote: post #32
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 heard of AM radio being audible in non-electric structures, like an old hangar door. Some combination of geometry, metal surface condition (corrosion?), and proximity to a station.

All you need is a rectifying junction: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Primitive diodes.

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#34

Post by a1371 »

I recall there was a battery free cellphone project on the premise of harvesting power from electro magnetic cell tower waves. They couldn't pull it off but maybe that could help this?

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#35

Post by the_third_wave »

elecush wrote: post #9
kilgnad wrote: post #2

This will be worth billions of dollars in a post war apocalypse when electricity no longer exists.

Once a GameBoy, now GameMan.

When I was a boy everything was just a game. Now I'm a man things are for real.

Who would have thought that a GameBoy would lead to a RealMan?

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#36

Post by HideousKojima »

0_____0 wrote: post #32
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 heard of AM radio being audible in non-electric structures, like an old hangar door. Some combination of geometry, metal surface condition (corrosion?), and proximity to a station.

Poorly shielded wires and speakers can pick up stations as well. My brother's cheap guitar amp would randomly pick up garbled bits of sound from radio stations (while not plugged into any power source)

Re: Battery-free Game Boy (2020)

#37

Post by icoder »

jandrese wrote: post #22

I have to wonder just how much power they get out of those button presses. It seems like it must be such a tiny amount that it's hardly worth the effort.

Depends on the game a bit but I too am a bit sceptical that this adds much, would be interesting to see a breakdown of solar vs buttons.
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