Team PowerGrab wanted to grab the free vibrational energy given off by a Pebble watch so that it can charge itself.
from the Colorado School of Mines took second place at last weekend’s .
Not bad, considering there were “over 600 of the nation’s most promising developers and designers” at the Princeton University event. At a project.
College seniors — computer science major Krista Horn and Electrical Engineering majors Jessica Gillan and Jade Irizarry-Swordy — spent the weekend building a DC power supply to harvest the free vibrational energy given off by a Pebble watch and feed it back into the device to charge itself.
The all-female Team PowerGrab placed 2nd in the HackPrinceton Hackathon last weekend. Between the two guys are team members Jessica Gillan, Krista Horn and Jade Irizarry-Swordy.
In of how to do this: “A piezoelectric transducer captures the vibrational energy from a Pebble watch. The Pebble and transducer are tuned so that their natural frequencies are as close as possible and a rectification circuit converts the output of the transducer in to usable DC power.”
While there were setbacks, the team finally was able to charge an LED. Read more about the project on .
Eventually, the plan is to boost the power generated to 4.0 V (the minimum for charging a Pebble battery) and adding a charge pump just may be the ticket.
But after the 36-hour hackathon, Team PowerGrab is now back in school.
“Unfortunately, we have to put it on hold until post-graduation in December,” said Jessica Gillan. “After that, we plan to finish off the circuit we had in mind to charge a Pebble watch with the right components, calibrated correctly, and soldered neatly. That way we can take more accurate measurements than we were able to complete in 36 hours and verify the potential of this technology for use with industrial equipment and public structures.”
The team also won the , which encourages developers to make the world a better place.
A Pebble watch that charges itself? Can’t wait to see that!
