This project just made me think about all the different ways one could move magnets past wires. For some reason I only ever thought about them spinning. This opens up so many possibilities for me to think about now.
I've been learning & dreaming about fashioning my platform boots with regenerative energy & engines 🌝 I know it's dorky but it's why I came across your channel & so it's lively to see y'all mention footwear 💕
I appreciate that you take so much time in setting up your explanation videos. I don't know if most people understand the amount of time and work that goes into recording in all the different places and stitching it all together. All just to keep a person's attention since we loose attention if you just talk to the camera in one spot.
That's great, thank you! I "designed-in-my-head" back when I was using the subway for commuting, something I had called SpringStep, which was the same concept. I decided not to pursue it when I realized that it would basically be generating energy from people's meals: it'd be more difficult to walk, like walking on sand, because part of one's locomotive energy would be captured. Having the harvester working in multiple environments, particularly with wind or waves, seems much more productive!
The best description of walking I heard recently was Geoffrey Hinton's, basically saying we do have a wheel as an integral part of our body, just two sections of a wheel...length of leg is the radius and hip the pivot, and we keep alternating the two sections of that big wheel instead of going "full circle" 🙂
You should put it in a shoe, some how using the oscillations of walking, then adds energy into a spring drum, that intakes both stepping up, and down, as if there were two mechanisms: one released when pulling foot up and the other compressing. This could also be like a ratchet system that for each release and step of the foot adds energy into a drum spring that powers a clock generator system, In summary you could make a clock shoe, that powers a battery.
I remember drawing a idea that your video reminded me of🤔 I wondered if my garage could have a angled ramp that as I parked on it could slowly generate electricity as the weight of the car pushed it level.... Maybe springs to lift the ramp up again when I leave....kinda like bellows 🤷♂️😬
For some reason this puts me in mind of a conference I once attended about 25 years ago on technological convergence. Many of the talks that day were about how mobile phones, cameras, televisions and computers would all, one day, be part of the same device. I wonder if we might see a similar convergence with passive energy generation devices.
We should be. Most people think of energy generation and their minds are like "so you're just going to put solar panels everywhere?" All these energy generation mechanisms are meant to be used together. A modular system.
That convergance made sense because of the "duplicate parts". The cost of a smartphone > cost of all it's components. A computer, TV and digital camera all have a screen. A TV and dumb phone and maybe computer all have a speaker. A TV and dumb phone both need an aerial. A smartphone only needs one of each. So is cheaper than all the other devices put together. And one small device is more convenient. If you can make cheap "convergant" power generators, you can make substantially cheaper solar, and use that.
@@Javierm0n0 Scale, cost and ability/efficiency. Just as we were predicting the convergence of electronics in the late 90's to happen from a scale, cost and ability level (as it did a decade later) perhaps the same is true with energy generation? If we can get the scale, cost and efficiency level of multiple technologies down to a sufficient degree, then the energy market should be no different to electronics and we'll start to see convergence as a natural progression of the sector.
Nice! If you hang your device in a cradle that is fitted with the same springs on each side but perpendicular (to the original cog-wheel-spring) and put some magnets on the bottom (with the coils on the cradle), you would have a 2D capture device instead of the 1D you have now.
The oscillating widget you made has a lot of potential if placed in a water location with strong oscillations such as beach areas where there are regular ocean waves... the kinetic energy is massive there for scalable power gen. Those sidewalks are cool and nifty, but cities buying these will Never recoup the installation and maintenance costs for the amount of electricity they generate from "walking"... it is simply not economical. While I do understand that experiments and prototypes need to mature to get their full benefit, I think it is also important to take stock of the reality... those devices will Never have economical benefit over tidal, wind or solar b/c the energy density is many magnitudes better over time.
The thing is generators like these aren't meant to be by themselves. The proper end result would be a city wide network of energy harvesting each generating power for certain things in their immediate vicinity. This partnered with some intelligently designed and incorporated solar panels, wind turbines, and other possible kinetic recovery systems could generate enough electricity for the street lights for a few blocks and send excess energy into a local battery bank. A collection of modular systems that dont all have to be directly connected throughout the city.
@@Javierm0n0 That doesn't change the fact that they aren't economical. The cost to make them (panels that generate electricity with walking) exceeds the amount of energy they can "Ever" generate in any reasonable payback period... You can't have people stomping on a tile every 1/4 second every second of a 24 hour period and not "break" these things. By the time they make any useful electricity it will be decades and decades after install, and they will have to have been replaced many times over. If people don't step on them often, they generate nothing. This is starkly contrasted by Solar which pretty much guarantees a certain percentage of the day will be sunshine or cloudy and produce thousands of kilowatt hours in just 10 square meters every day for 20+ years. Even when it is cloudy 10 square meters will still produce usable electricity. Whereas, the amount of electricity produced by "stepping" on a tile is so fractional as to be laughable because it is incredibly intermittent as well as very limited in the actual power delivered. These ideas are "creative". But, it is important to understand the limitations of the tech. The theoretical maximum of this technology is simply too limiting to be useful as an energy source unless one was literally desperate and had simply no other way to make it. You would be far better off using the copper in the coil for some other purpose than a "sidewalk" panel that generates from walking. For example... you could use the copper to make a generator that hooked to a bicycle in some fashion. That would work much better and have much more usable output on a consistent basis than panels designed to generate electricity from walking. But yea, I challenge you to get two panels and spend time making electricity for an hour... vs 1 hour of riding a bike with a 12v generator. After 1 hour, the walking panels will have made next to nothing, where as with a bicycle almost anyone can generate around 100 watts to 200 watts easily and continuously for 1 hour. It is simply a matter of mechanics and efficiency. Again, I like the creativity, but these "Gimmicks" are why people keep getting fooled into investing in these ideas... and it is not a good idea to promote these ideas as actual solutions... because they are not solutions. Several cities have already spent thousands on these "sidewalks" with no payback.
As for the football generator, it is an interesting design. I'm not sure I have any ideas for it right now, but that's my lack of creativity or inspiration in this moment. I look forward to seeing the ideas others come up with.
A much simpler approach would be to put small pistons at the corners of the plates so that people walking on the plates would compress the air in the piston and deliver it to a manifold where it would then be stored in a tank and could approach very high pressures and volumes. By storing the compressed air, energy could be produced on demand when needed without the need for expensive batteries. Speed bumps could be made that delivered bursts of compressed air to a tank that could be tapped to supply electrical power to road signs or emergency lighting.
Chairs are possible as a harvester. Office chairs use hydraulic piston, change to harvester? People move a lot in their chairs. Turning, leaning back and rolling. Harvest each movement and store with batteries inside arm rest? And rocking chair movement would be good place use.
i love this channel. one thing i think about with footfall collecting is that any generator has to move. i feel any give on the pavement will make walking uncomfortable. i wonder how much give is comfortable. i feel like its millimeters. it seems there might be some kind of multi-axis plot you could make of stiffness, depth etc. dangit now you got me going down a rabbit hole. :)
Jus on the principal that there is nothing free in physics, I have to suspect the following: All these seemingly free energy collectors is that they are not free at all but suck energy from whatever is driving them. In this case, it will cause your walking to be harder, like stepping up hill 5mm with each pace. This levels a cost of living increase on the public for food. There was a proposal to collect energy from the displaced wind of passing traffic. It just increased the wind drag on the traffic increasing fuel consumption. Which increases the cost to the public. In short, it's a sneaky way to steal from the public in small unnoticed increments. It's like a 0.1 cent per day fee on everyone's bank account.
As a severely physically disabled person (motor neuropathy since before birth), I can attest that I thought of walking as controlled falling. As my weakness began low to begin with, and fatigue decreased strength rapidly, I found I could get more work out of my legs by walking faster, as counter intuitive as it may seem. To control the falling in a slow walk takes more "energy" (motor neuron energy and/or fatigue) than pulling a leg forward a little quicker to catch me. A side effect was that I moved farther with each step, faster as well, and increased max distance until collapse (or rest). So in that sense, I've been hard wired to be acutely aware of micro motions and cumulative energy expenditure, and the compound effects of minimizing microfatigue and recycling mechanical energy / momentum of cyclic or repetetive motion. That said, I'm also quite sensitive to tripping and falling due to unexpected changes in walkway height. But it's not just me, and not just disabled people. There's a history of lawsuits here - among able bodied people - for people falling from things such as different step heights on stairs, with such a strong precedent and support, that tenants can justifiably refuse to pay rent to any landlord who does not fix uneven step heights. The sidewalk with vertical height changes would likely cause a trip hazard here, most definitely a slip hazard in wet or icy conditions, and absolutely be impassable and an arbitrary barrier to access for disabled people, as surely and not so subtly as putting a big sign saying "disabled, go die, you're not welcome in our society". Such walkways might need signage, warnings, a disabled button to deactivate and firm up, then you need algorithms or sensors for reactivation so as not to strand or cause falls. Or else you restrict shortest-path access to able-bodied only, forcing disableds to walk further, which is just wrong on so many levels. In any case, then a quest to generate a little power turns disabled people into a bigger target to be scapegoated, ridiculed, blamed, dehumanized, marginalized, maligned, assaulted, abused, and killed, because in yet another very public way, they become seen as a hindrance, different, other, a drain on society, completely ignoring the big picture of potential contributions in other areas. Technology that interfaces directly with living beings must take into account a whole host of considerations, especially in the case of complex social dynamics that may arise as a result. This sidewalk made me think of an old MIT project I once saw, where shoes were fitted with quartz crystals and could generate enough power to run several LEDs on an outfit (as an example). The benefit os quartz is that there's no moving parts to cause trip hazards or wear out or break. The drawback is relative scarcity and difficulty in refining to the required level of quality and consistency. But I don't know if you'd need as much quartz as the whole paver. It may work with any size paver, limited only by maximum pressure per unit area (PSI or your favorite units) to avoid causing microfractures or whatever that might lead to eventual catastrophic failure. Another benefit is that the empty paver itself generates power, extracted directly as a result of the effect of gravity upon its mass. So the sidewalk makes power even if nobody stands on it, makes more if many stand on it, and actually makes more even if everyone has to slow down for 15-30 seconds for a disabled person. There's no barrier to access. It's a technology that values inclusion and rewards us for existing, doesn't require us to be publically singled out and viewed as a burden or hindrance, rather than encourages hate crimes against us. This is a huge point, and when people fail to grasp that, and instead return overt apathy, hatred, disgust, contempt, or passively-aggressively minimize, dismiss, give patronizing smiles and platitudes to my face and insults when they think I'm out of earshot, then people are a whole lot closer to acting like Nazis then they'll ever likely be able to admit.
Glancing at the bottom when I started reading your narrative I saw the word Nazi and stopped reading. You know less than nothing about National Socialism
Your comment is very valuable. I was aware that physical layout of things affect how different people can practically use them. I had not tied that idea to social inclusion and exclusion. I am very aware of exclusion for ethnic, religious and mental health reasons, I was professionally involved in that field and know the potentially lethal consequences of that. It's a tremendous contribution to the community of makers and engineers to clarify this. Inclusion is not about convenience, and not about a later clunky fix. It should be part of even the doodle stage of design.
Yeah, "energy capture pavements" suck at their primary purpose of being pavements, a reliable hard surface for transportation. Quartz doesn't break conservation of energy. Nothing can generate power just sitting there from its own mass. Anything that generates energy when walked on must squish. If it hardly squishes, that's because it's generating basically no energy. (Consistent with "several led's" Those tiny indicator light LED's use very little energy)
Cool to see you plowing away at making your content slowly more involving. Gaining traction in terms of subs 👍🏻 The two go hand in hand. Stay at it sir (and son)
Dr. Smith, with just a little more modification you could be making energy harvesting roller blades. Each wheel could be generating as you skate around. So that's 4 wheels per skate times 2 feet. 8 volts to charge your phone while skating. Nice.
Fine idea! With the suspension constantly moving this could work. So much energy is wasted in cars, lots of movement and heat. Something should be done with the heat as well.
I had a similar idea some years ago about the heat waste. I wondered if it was possible to replace the alternator with a Stirling engine wrapped around the exhaust manifold. With the benefit of removing the drag from not having the alternator (they do put a fair bit of drag on the engine, that is why most people remove them for the drag strip). In the end I concluded that you wouldn't be able to generate enough from that alone. you might be able to use a smaller alternator (with reduced drag) but the cost wouldn't be worth the effort :( Had a fun time thinking about it though. There is a lot of wasted energy around a car that could be harvested if we couldn't only figure out how to do it cheap enough (including cost of maintenance due to higher complexity)
Developing energy harvesters in the heels of shoes would harvest energy stored in a portable accumulator; this would make it possible to store on oneself the energy necessary for one's personal needs. In addition, energy harvesters under the pavements of public spaces would make it possible to exploit the energy of the movements of the multitude in order to pool it. An alliance between individual and collective energy harvesting.
Reminds me a bit of the suspension generator. I got a running light that you strap on your arm, which does a great job of strobing LEDs when you bounce up and down.
I've been thinking about those baby spinning toys that you push down on and the bulk of the toy is itself a flywheel, they could be good for underfloor generation
Roberts while listening to your generator design reciprocate, I was reminded of the cat playing with the bedroom door spring snubber, so it occurs to me that if the cats going to sit there and flip that thing and playing with it all day long, I could be collecting electricity from the cat by mounting magnets in the door spring and placing pickup coils near by😸
Robert Murray-Smith You need to make a ratchet trigger mechanism that doesn't fowl the back and forth motion 🤔 Haha I have an idea, you can use the tooth brushes angles down in a rod, when pressed cranks the spring, then releases when it passes the gear ( which could be changed out for a roller ) And a delayed void plunger return (small flappy checkvelve on a cylinder & piston with a small hole for bleed) 🤔 Ya might need to figure out the leverage to increase the travel, with can be done given the 80 100 + Kgs. Side note... Was watching wave collector generators at sea, they would do good at adding the wobble tube generators on top, with all that wasted space...
Best one so far in terms of usable in a ton of project ideas. Would a flag etc give a lot of volts, are were you spinning with a lot of force? Finding the right use case woild be key. The tech is simple enough to experiment with!
@@ThinkingandTinkering Yes..I have quite a bit of experience in that particular gravitational affect! And I luv the comedic effect that it provides to others! I appreciate your appreciation of said affect lol!:))
It's amazing how trying be a positive force for the good of all by openly sharing your ideas attracts a certain amount of negativity. Where I live a lot of people are overly stressed and quite unpleasant. I don't mean to say most people around me are negative. In my opinion a large portion of folks around me are congenial and kind. So I'm not surprised that the vast majority of comments are here are positive and encouraging, but it is still interesting to read the negative ones mixed in amongst the rest. I guess it's like salt. Too much and it ruins the flavor of a meal. I'm still binge watching your past videos and I am amazed how quickly you adapted 3d printing into your creative process. I do wonder if using a different filament as the spring could improve it. Ever since you explained that there are different materials in 3d printing, I've been wondering how many of your older concepts could be improved by taking advantage of their different properties. Like using ABS for shafts or rods. Threaded bar is so expensive and weighs a good bit compared to a 3d one. Plus no waste from cutting metal down to fit. Sorry about the long comment but I wanted to say are the cat's meow.
The concern I have about footfall energy harvesting is that walking on it might be like walking on a soft beach which is relatively hard so most pedestrians might bypass it after the novelty wears off. That being said, Robert's nifty device will undoubtedly have unforeseen applications.
Yes, I like the harvesting concept, but think footfall harvesting would be harvesting energy from people - ie walking on them will take more effort. I know we all should exercise more, but not a fan of this approach.
Exactly my thoughts. Walking on a beach is uncomfortable and quickly fatiguing. I suspect this would feel similar. And if so, I don't think it's acceptable to use people as involuntary energy sources. Just like you wouldn't go around hitching carts to unsuspecting pedestrians.
Amazing. Tram car number 24396 His servant, Genesis 24. 936, the beginning of 'I Love You'. Axial Flux, and now Footballs, plenty of thoughtful presentations.
Yes SSS 👍👍👍👍👌👌👌👌 ok Thanks Robert a small motor loads a spring and then the spring comes back it supplies energy there and back maybe magnets and coils at 360° my thought the thought of a small and humble man bye 👋👋👋👋
Ah, but then your main income source is the £10/h. So you want to make them as fun as possible. And any energy generation will make it less bouncy and so less fun. So you get regular trampolines.
Remember the windmills they put along the highway so the cars would turn them this would work in that situation too with a flag out there car goes by wind off the car moves the flag and it comes back and forth
Very interesting!! Gave me a thought. If coils were put within road pavement and magnets put on cars, would that also produce electrical energy as the cars drive on the road? I know it would have to be on a much larger scale, but it's interesting to think about. Maybe start with "Hot Wheels" size cars??
If coils were put within road pavement and magnets put on cars, would that also produce electrical energy as the cars drive on the road? You have invented the electric generator. Only more inefficient. This isn't useful unless someone else is paying the petrol bill. And even then, a small hole in the gas tank + collection gutters + conventional power station is a better combo. Maybe we could invent robots that drill holes into the gas tanks and suck the petrol out. That would capture much more energy than most forms of "energy capture".
The concern I have is that if the device makes 0.01 watts (1v X 10ma say?), it will take 100,000 hours to make 1 kwh. In the UK, I'm currently paying about £0.30 per kwh retail, so about 11 years to generate 30p worth of electricity? I wonder how much it costs to make, even in mass production? I know this channel is all about new/old ideas and the birth/rebirth and development of those ideas, but this one has a LONG way to go!
Hmmm.....if we covered California with those they would generate during an earthquake..... It looks interesting, living in England. You have public transportation like the underground and regular busses, easier for my electric bike to get me here and there. I guess I went on a tangent, great video!
Any form of energy generation that only produces energy in earthquakes is useless. (you need big wires to carry that energy, and those wires will be empty 99.99% of the time) This is also why lightning based energy is stupid. You need a source of energy where your equipment is used much of the time, like solar or wind, otherwise the energy of making your equipment dwarfs what it could capture.
Interesting physics. I think I've heard of playpark equipment with generators in. Not sure about the pavement application as pedestrians have to use more energy to walk across the energy harvesting pavement, so that it can harvest energy from them, without asking permission first. Seems like a bit of a liberty, and walking on a spongy surface like that also looks a bit awkward. Perhaps the concept could be better applied to the sole of a shoe in a solid state (piezo electric?) form, because that surface is supposed to have some give in it.
If the Vampire effect was a real issue, this tech wouldn't be being installed on Railroad Tracks. For those boys, even a penny a mile of extra fuel cost adds up fast.
My first thought was to couple it to a tooth brush slip clutch and rectify the oscillation into rotation. In conjunction with the slip clutch I think multiple panels could contribute to spinning up a single flywheel. Maybe it would be cheaper and more efficient to electrically rectify to DC and store the energy in a battery. Have you done a comparison of different diodes to see how much voltage drop there is? Would scaling up a little more would improve your efficiency?
sea: Schottky diodes can be had with very low forward voltage drops. I was fooling around with model sized steam turbine generators for illuminating head and cab lights on a model steam locomotive. This worked well but burned out the small bulbs with varying steam pressure. Under load this little demon, 7/8" outside dia. produced 2 VAC at 1.5 Amps., which was fine for a flashlight bulb. I had the bright idea to use 3 Watt LED light but, this required at least 3.5 Volts DC or so. I could have re-wound the little alternator for higher Voltage but, since I needed a rectifier anyway for the LED, I decided that a voltage doubler was the way to go. Searching through the DIGIKEY catalog we found Schottky diodes with a guaranteed forward Voltage drop of .22 Volts. When completed the arrangement worked very well with the LED at full brightness. The actual Voltage drop on the 2 diodes in the circuit we measured at .18 Volts each. Trust this helps. The current capacity was 15 Amperes.
I've never seen a Pavegen surface with my own eyes, but I imagine it will feel strange to walk on, and given the choice, most people will go out of their way to avoid it. It will also probably be very obnoxious to anyone on a bike, wheelchair, pushchair, or anyone with mobility / balance problems. I perceive it as the next "solar freaking roadways" (i.e. a total waste of time).
Thats brilliant Rob.... That means walking is a form of skydiving. So now for skydiving there is, courses for, in order of difficulty: Walking, Static Line and Accelerated Free Fall 😂
ok can you image if you slapped that on Semi's and Cars - how much energy would be generated on just driving hitting potholes - you attach it to the hub of each tire
I wonder: if you put a one-way "escapement " on a spring - loaded "gear', so that the relatively slow, but powerful, step, pushed the gear to a certain point, then releases it, it would then be able to spin quite fast, the more volts to put out...not necessarily more power, but at a higher voltage, which is easier to store or convert to a "useful" voltage...a good place for supercapacitors.
It's a curiosity but not the best humanity can do. There are technologies that can make things like this obsolete so I call it a curiosity. I love learning how to build things in many perspectives and I've watched your channel for years. Have you ever built something that could power a tiny house on wheels or Arched Cabin without need for solar or wind? I haven't seen all your videos but around 1000. If I missed it I'd love to watch it. I like Gravity Batteries and HHO Gas on demand using Stanford Universities Scientist Nickel Oxide Electrodes which are cheap.
I would think that using walking to pump a fluid would be more cost efficient. High tank, low tank, and single water wheel generator. Instead of magnets and coils every meter
Until some stiletto punctures it, and all the energy leaks out. I think capturing energy from places with more energy to begin with, like the wind and waves, would be more cost efficient.
Did you ever play with the cars that you put on the ground and pull backwards, then let go and they drive under their own spring force? Bet it would be a better adaptation it allows a longer stored energy. The spring you use wastes to much. Good try.
Hi I have an idea for To improve the axial motor, I thought of a way to cover the magnet even more so as to have more torque for the motors of the same size. where can I write to send you the idea ?
The best Physical Therapist I ever met described walking as a controlled fall.
Hm, my parachute-instructor said the same thing.
I think he ment gravity xD
@@DreadX10same here and he also said the parachute is like a seatbelt.
That's how my dance teacher described it.
💚☀️🌴
I've always been a fan of the arm swing generator myself, yes!
This project just made me think about all the different ways one could move magnets past wires. For some reason I only ever thought about them spinning. This opens up so many possibilities for me to think about now.
Great work again Rob..
Cheers from London 👍
Stairs in and out of the busiest railway stations could generate some serious power.
I see Rob tip toeing thru his tulips...lol..another great vid...keep up great work
I've been learning & dreaming about fashioning my platform boots with regenerative energy & engines 🌝 I know it's dorky but it's why I came across your channel & so it's lively to see y'all mention footwear 💕
you could use this mechanism - personally i love the idea!
I'm liking the 1970s Dr Who vibe :)
He does seem to be channeling Pertwee.
I appreciate that you take so much time in setting up your explanation videos. I don't know if most people understand the amount of time and work that goes into recording in all the different places and stitching it all together. All just to keep a person's attention since we loose attention if you just talk to the camera in one spot.
I've always wondered how the footfall harvesters could be working. Much thanks for the information and inspiration.
I run 6-10 miles in a go; I'd love to try it out on my feet.
That's great, thank you! I "designed-in-my-head" back when I was using the subway for commuting, something I had called SpringStep, which was the same concept. I decided not to pursue it when I realized that it would basically be generating energy from people's meals: it'd be more difficult to walk, like walking on sand, because part of one's locomotive energy would be captured. Having the harvester working in multiple environments, particularly with wind or waves, seems much more productive!
@2:45 need a VAWT there. I was watching that leaf blow around in circles.
The best description of walking I heard recently was Geoffrey Hinton's, basically saying we do have a wheel as an integral part of our body, just two sections of a wheel...length of leg is the radius and hip the pivot, and we keep alternating the two sections of that big wheel instead of going "full circle" 🙂
You should put it in a shoe, some how using the oscillations of walking, then adds energy into a spring drum, that intakes both stepping up, and down, as if there were two mechanisms: one released when pulling foot up and the other compressing.
This could also be like a ratchet system that for each release and step of the foot adds energy into a drum spring that powers a clock generator system, In summary you could make a clock shoe, that powers a battery.
might try the swiss lever escapement with that. add another spring that keeps it going.
As always , I love your inventions. Imagine shoes with these in them. I'm on my feet 8+ hours daily.
You could build one that uses foot pressure to move hydraulic fluid through tiny turbines and they would be less bulky, and much quieter.
Interesting “Harmony Turbine” with a axle flux motor thank you for your channel always interesting
I remember drawing a idea that your video reminded me of🤔
I wondered if my garage could have a angled ramp that as I parked on it could slowly generate electricity as the weight of the car pushed it level....
Maybe springs to lift the ramp up again when I leave....kinda like bellows 🤷♂️😬
For some reason this puts me in mind of a conference I once attended about 25 years ago on technological convergence.
Many of the talks that day were about how mobile phones, cameras, televisions and computers would all, one day, be part of the same device.
I wonder if we might see a similar convergence with passive energy generation devices.
We should be. Most people think of energy generation and their minds are like "so you're just going to put solar panels everywhere?" All these energy generation mechanisms are meant to be used together. A modular system.
That convergance made sense because of the "duplicate parts". The cost of a smartphone > cost of all it's components.
A computer, TV and digital camera all have a screen. A TV and dumb phone and maybe computer all have a speaker. A TV and dumb phone both need an aerial.
A smartphone only needs one of each. So is cheaper than all the other devices put together.
And one small device is more convenient. If you can make cheap "convergant" power generators, you can make substantially cheaper solar, and use that.
@@Javierm0n0 Scale, cost and ability/efficiency.
Just as we were predicting the convergence of electronics in the late 90's to happen from a scale, cost and ability level (as it did a decade later) perhaps the same is true with energy generation?
If we can get the scale, cost and efficiency level of multiple technologies down to a sufficient degree, then the energy market should be no different to electronics and we'll start to see convergence as a natural progression of the sector.
@@donaldhobson8873 People thought the same about gadgets..... Some still do.
Nice!
If you hang your device in a cradle that is fitted with the same springs on each side but perpendicular (to the original cog-wheel-spring) and put some magnets on the bottom (with the coils on the cradle), you would have a 2D capture device instead of the 1D you have now.
The oscillating widget you made has a lot of potential if placed in a water location with strong oscillations such as beach areas where there are regular ocean waves... the kinetic energy is massive there for scalable power gen. Those sidewalks are cool and nifty, but cities buying these will Never recoup the installation and maintenance costs for the amount of electricity they generate from "walking"... it is simply not economical. While I do understand that experiments and prototypes need to mature to get their full benefit, I think it is also important to take stock of the reality... those devices will Never have economical benefit over tidal, wind or solar b/c the energy density is many magnitudes better over time.
The thing is generators like these aren't meant to be by themselves. The proper end result would be a city wide network of energy harvesting each generating power for certain things in their immediate vicinity. This partnered with some intelligently designed and incorporated solar panels, wind turbines, and other possible kinetic recovery systems could generate enough electricity for the street lights for a few blocks and send excess energy into a local battery bank. A collection of modular systems that dont all have to be directly connected throughout the city.
@@Javierm0n0 That doesn't change the fact that they aren't economical. The cost to make them (panels that generate electricity with walking) exceeds the amount of energy they can "Ever" generate in any reasonable payback period... You can't have people stomping on a tile every 1/4 second every second of a 24 hour period and not "break" these things. By the time they make any useful electricity it will be decades and decades after install, and they will have to have been replaced many times over. If people don't step on them often, they generate nothing. This is starkly contrasted by Solar which pretty much guarantees a certain percentage of the day will be sunshine or cloudy and produce thousands of kilowatt hours in just 10 square meters every day for 20+ years. Even when it is cloudy 10 square meters will still produce usable electricity. Whereas, the amount of electricity produced by "stepping" on a tile is so fractional as to be laughable because it is incredibly intermittent as well as very limited in the actual power delivered. These ideas are "creative". But, it is important to understand the limitations of the tech. The theoretical maximum of this technology is simply too limiting to be useful as an energy source unless one was literally desperate and had simply no other way to make it. You would be far better off using the copper in the coil for some other purpose than a "sidewalk" panel that generates from walking. For example... you could use the copper to make a generator that hooked to a bicycle in some fashion. That would work much better and have much more usable output on a consistent basis than panels designed to generate electricity from walking. But yea, I challenge you to get two panels and spend time making electricity for an hour... vs 1 hour of riding a bike with a 12v generator. After 1 hour, the walking panels will have made next to nothing, where as with a bicycle almost anyone can generate around 100 watts to 200 watts easily and continuously for 1 hour. It is simply a matter of mechanics and efficiency. Again, I like the creativity, but these "Gimmicks" are why people keep getting fooled into investing in these ideas... and it is not a good idea to promote these ideas as actual solutions... because they are not solutions. Several cities have already spent thousands on these "sidewalks" with no payback.
As for the football generator, it is an interesting design. I'm not sure I have any ideas for it right now, but that's my lack of creativity or inspiration in this moment. I look forward to seeing the ideas others come up with.
A much simpler approach would be to put small pistons at the corners of the plates so that people walking on the plates would compress the air in the piston and deliver it to a manifold where it would then be stored in a tank and could approach very high pressures and volumes. By storing the compressed air, energy could be produced on demand when needed without the need for expensive batteries. Speed bumps could be made that delivered bursts of compressed air to a tank that could be tapped to supply electrical power to road signs or emergency lighting.
Chairs are possible as a harvester. Office chairs use hydraulic piston, change to harvester? People move a lot in their chairs. Turning, leaning back and rolling. Harvest each movement and store with batteries inside arm rest?
And rocking chair movement would be good place use.
Beautiful vortex (chip bag visualised) at 2:48 at the bottom right corner, waiting to be harvested!
A track of these for walking would be nice. Used to walk a ton since it helped me think.
i love this channel. one thing i think about with footfall collecting is that any generator has to move. i feel any give on the pavement will make walking uncomfortable. i wonder how much give is comfortable. i feel like its millimeters. it seems there might be some kind of multi-axis plot you could make of stiffness, depth etc. dangit now you got me going down a rabbit hole. :)
Jus on the principal that there is nothing free in physics, I have to suspect the following:
All these seemingly free energy collectors is that they are not free at all but suck energy from whatever is driving them.
In this case, it will cause your walking to be harder, like stepping up hill 5mm with each pace. This levels a cost of living increase on the public for food.
There was a proposal to collect energy from the displaced wind of passing traffic. It just increased the wind drag on the traffic increasing fuel consumption. Which increases the cost to the public.
In short, it's a sneaky way to steal from the public in small unnoticed increments. It's like a 0.1 cent per day fee on everyone's bank account.
As a severely physically disabled person (motor neuropathy since before birth), I can attest that I thought of walking as controlled falling. As my weakness began low to begin with, and fatigue decreased strength rapidly, I found I could get more work out of my legs by walking faster, as counter intuitive as it may seem. To control the falling in a slow walk takes more "energy" (motor neuron energy and/or fatigue) than pulling a leg forward a little quicker to catch me. A side effect was that I moved farther with each step, faster as well, and increased max distance until collapse (or rest). So in that sense, I've been hard wired to be acutely aware of micro motions and cumulative energy expenditure, and the compound effects of minimizing microfatigue and recycling mechanical energy / momentum of cyclic or repetetive motion. That said, I'm also quite sensitive to tripping and falling due to unexpected changes in walkway height. But it's not just me, and not just disabled people. There's a history of lawsuits here - among able bodied people - for people falling from things such as different step heights on stairs, with such a strong precedent and support, that tenants can justifiably refuse to pay rent to any landlord who does not fix uneven step heights. The sidewalk with vertical height changes would likely cause a trip hazard here, most definitely a slip hazard in wet or icy conditions, and absolutely be impassable and an arbitrary barrier to access for disabled people, as surely and not so subtly as putting a big sign saying "disabled, go die, you're not welcome in our society". Such walkways might need signage, warnings, a disabled button to deactivate and firm up, then you need algorithms or sensors for reactivation so as not to strand or cause falls. Or else you restrict shortest-path access to able-bodied only, forcing disableds to walk further, which is just wrong on so many levels. In any case, then a quest to generate a little power turns disabled people into a bigger target to be scapegoated, ridiculed, blamed, dehumanized, marginalized, maligned, assaulted, abused, and killed, because in yet another very public way, they become seen as a hindrance, different, other, a drain on society, completely ignoring the big picture of potential contributions in other areas. Technology that interfaces directly with living beings must take into account a whole host of considerations, especially in the case of complex social dynamics that may arise as a result. This sidewalk made me think of an old MIT project I once saw, where shoes were fitted with quartz crystals and could generate enough power to run several LEDs on an outfit (as an example). The benefit os quartz is that there's no moving parts to cause trip hazards or wear out or break. The drawback is relative scarcity and difficulty in refining to the required level of quality and consistency. But I don't know if you'd need as much quartz as the whole paver. It may work with any size paver, limited only by maximum pressure per unit area (PSI or your favorite units) to avoid causing microfractures or whatever that might lead to eventual catastrophic failure. Another benefit is that the empty paver itself generates power, extracted directly as a result of the effect of gravity upon its mass. So the sidewalk makes power even if nobody stands on it, makes more if many stand on it, and actually makes more even if everyone has to slow down for 15-30 seconds for a disabled person. There's no barrier to access. It's a technology that values inclusion and rewards us for existing, doesn't require us to be publically singled out and viewed as a burden or hindrance, rather than encourages hate crimes against us. This is a huge point, and when people fail to grasp that, and instead return overt apathy, hatred, disgust, contempt, or passively-aggressively minimize, dismiss, give patronizing smiles and platitudes to my face and insults when they think I'm out of earshot, then people are a whole lot closer to acting like Nazis then they'll ever likely be able to admit.
Glancing at the bottom when I started reading your narrative I saw the word Nazi and stopped reading. You know less than nothing about National Socialism
Your comment is very valuable. I was aware that physical layout of things affect how different people can practically use them. I had not tied that idea to social inclusion and exclusion. I am very aware of exclusion for ethnic, religious and mental health reasons, I was professionally involved in that field and know the potentially lethal consequences of that. It's a tremendous contribution to the community of makers and engineers to clarify this. Inclusion is not about convenience, and not about a later clunky fix. It should be part of even the doodle stage of design.
Yeah, "energy capture pavements" suck at their primary purpose of being pavements, a reliable hard surface for transportation.
Quartz doesn't break conservation of energy. Nothing can generate power just sitting there from its own mass. Anything that generates energy when walked on must squish. If it hardly squishes, that's because it's generating basically no energy. (Consistent with "several led's" Those tiny indicator light LED's use very little energy)
Cool to see you plowing away at making your content slowly more involving. Gaining traction in terms of subs 👍🏻 The two go hand in hand. Stay at it sir (and son)
Love your exuberance. That in addition to the simply expressed intelligence is what made a fan. Thanks for making me think. God bless brother.
Dr. Smith, with just a little more modification you could be making energy harvesting roller blades. Each wheel could be generating as you skate around. So that's 4 wheels per skate times 2 feet. 8 volts to charge your phone while skating. Nice.
It could be integrated into vehicle suspension, with better effect IMO. As well as small energy harvests integrated into brake systems.
100% this - you slap one into each hub assembly every single pothole uneven surface would generate power
Fine idea! With the suspension constantly moving this could work. So much energy is wasted in cars, lots of movement and heat. Something should be done with the heat as well.
if you can capture the heat energy loss from an engine its over - you dont need fussion @@gorgosanma
I had a similar idea some years ago about the heat waste. I wondered if it was possible to replace the alternator with a Stirling engine wrapped around the exhaust manifold. With the benefit of removing the drag from not having the alternator (they do put a fair bit of drag on the engine, that is why most people remove them for the drag strip). In the end I concluded that you wouldn't be able to generate enough from that alone. you might be able to use a smaller alternator (with reduced drag) but the cost wouldn't be worth the effort :( Had a fun time thinking about it though. There is a lot of wasted energy around a car that could be harvested if we couldn't only figure out how to do it cheap enough (including cost of maintenance due to higher complexity)
Developing energy harvesters in the heels of shoes would harvest energy stored in a portable accumulator; this would make it possible to store on oneself the energy necessary for one's personal needs.
In addition, energy harvesters under the pavements of public spaces would make it possible to exploit the energy of the movements of the multitude in order to pool it.
An alliance between individual and collective energy harvesting.
you could use that as the base for the stalk of your bullrush generator and be generating at both ends.
Reminds me a bit of the suspension generator. I got a running light that you strap on your arm, which does a great job of strobing LEDs when you bounce up and down.
I think you must be the most prolific inventor alive, I genuinely don’t know how you find the time
I've been thinking about those baby spinning toys that you push down on and the bulk of the toy is itself a flywheel, they could be good for underfloor generation
look at this video th-cam.com/video/BSsj2rDJ2ts/w-d-xo.html
Cheers mate. Nice work I don't know how I missed that one
Absolutely genius I wish you had another 1000 years to live on this Earth and teach us all❤
Roberts while listening to your generator design reciprocate, I was reminded of the cat playing with the bedroom door spring snubber, so it occurs to me that if the cats going to sit there and flip that thing and playing with it all day long, I could be collecting electricity from the cat by mounting magnets in the door spring and placing pickup coils near by😸
lol - like it mate!
Brilliant Rob !
once again, bless you.
Robert Murray-Smith
You need to make a ratchet trigger mechanism that doesn't fowl the back and forth motion 🤔
Haha I have an idea, you can use the tooth brushes angles down in a rod, when pressed cranks the spring, then releases when it passes the gear ( which could be changed out for a roller )
And a delayed void plunger return (small flappy checkvelve on a cylinder & piston with a small hole for bleed)
🤔 Ya might need to figure out the leverage to increase the travel, with can be done given the 80 100 + Kgs.
Side note... Was watching wave collector generators at sea, they would do good at adding the wobble tube generators on top, with all that wasted space...
Best one so far in terms of usable in a ton of project ideas. Would a flag etc give a lot of volts, are were you spinning with a lot of force? Finding the right use case woild be key. The tech is simple enough to experiment with!
If you've ever stepped on a nail....you'll realize how accurate the falling, walking analogy is! Lol!
lol - i am sorry mate that sounds like the voice of experience lol - laughing with you mate!
@@ThinkingandTinkering Yes..I have quite a bit of experience in that particular gravitational affect! And I luv the comedic effect that it provides to others! I appreciate your appreciation of said affect lol!:))
Brilliant !!!
Great video, Rob. Very Tom Scott-esque. Love it
cheers mate
It's amazing how trying be a positive force for the good of all by openly sharing your ideas attracts a certain amount of negativity. Where I live a lot of people are overly stressed and quite unpleasant. I don't mean to say most people around me are negative. In my opinion a large portion of folks around me are congenial and kind. So I'm not surprised that the vast majority of comments are here are positive and encouraging, but it is still interesting to read the negative ones mixed in amongst the rest. I guess it's like salt. Too much and it ruins the flavor of a meal. I'm still binge watching your past videos and I am amazed how quickly you adapted 3d printing into your creative process. I do wonder if using a different filament as the spring could improve it. Ever since you explained that there are different materials in 3d printing, I've been wondering how many of your older concepts could be improved by taking advantage of their different properties. Like using ABS for shafts or rods. Threaded bar is so expensive and weighs a good bit compared to a 3d one. Plus no waste from cutting metal down to fit. Sorry about the long comment but I wanted to say are the cat's meow.
Here’s the man out of time again 👍🏻👍🏻👌🏻
The concern I have about footfall energy harvesting is that walking on it might be like walking on a soft beach which is relatively hard so most pedestrians might bypass it after the novelty wears off. That being said, Robert's nifty device will undoubtedly have unforeseen applications.
Yes, I like the harvesting concept, but think footfall harvesting would be harvesting energy from people - ie walking on them will take more effort. I know we all should exercise more, but not a fan of this approach.
Exactly my thoughts. Walking on a beach is uncomfortable and quickly fatiguing. I suspect this would feel similar. And if so, I don't think it's acceptable to use people as involuntary energy sources. Just like you wouldn't go around hitching carts to unsuspecting pedestrians.
this is the silliest response I've ever read on this thread. Many runners literally dream of training on a beach-like surface.@@andybrice2711
*i,e, you use more effort to go less of a distance... thus allowing for easier time management.
This guy looks like he should be on Doctor Who.
Amazing.
Tram car number 24396
His servant, Genesis 24.
936, the beginning of 'I Love You'.
Axial Flux, and now Footballs, plenty of thoughtful presentations.
Could you use the step to wind a spring , and attach it to a clock escapement to run for longer?
Walking a km on that pavement would be like a km in sand
Oscillating whilst perambulating....
Oh, yes!
I think I would change the spring to a roller skate bearing and balanced pendulum with buffer magnets, but love your idea Robert
Almost certainly it's not a new idea, but has anyone harvested the energy from the suspension from a moving vehicle
How about integrating some kind of pressure pads into the tires?
Harvesting resonant oscillation with a positive feedback loop, in theory, could really pick up a lot of energy.
Yes SSS 👍👍👍👍👌👌👌👌 ok Thanks Robert a small motor loads a spring and then the spring comes back it supplies energy there and back maybe magnets and coils at 360° my thought the thought of a small and humble man bye 👋👋👋👋
fix them to the springs of trampolines in them play centers and you can charge them £10 ph while they charge your batteries.
Ah, but then your main income source is the £10/h. So you want to make them as fun as possible. And any energy generation will make it less bouncy and so less fun.
So you get regular trampolines.
2:39 yall check that awesome leaf out on the right hand side of the screen, its dancing like it knew it was on camera lol
It would be interesting used as a scale to generate storable energy say in elevators, or truck weigh stations.
Marvelous! I am a dog sitter, no further explanation needed, soon to be a major competitor in North American power generation field.
lol - awesome
Remember the windmills they put along the highway so the cars would turn them this would work in that situation too with a flag out there car goes by wind off the car moves the flag and it comes back and forth
Liverpool Street station. Nice. Welcome to Lomdon sir.
Pipe system underwater with turbines that only move a series of those run down pipe
Very interesting!! Gave me a thought. If coils were put within road pavement and magnets put on cars, would that also produce electrical energy as the cars drive on the road? I know it would have to be on a much larger scale, but it's interesting to think about. Maybe start with "Hot Wheels" size cars??
If coils were put within road pavement and magnets put on cars, would that also produce electrical energy as the cars drive on the road?
You have invented the electric generator. Only more inefficient.
This isn't useful unless someone else is paying the petrol bill. And even then, a small hole in the gas tank + collection gutters + conventional power station is a better combo.
Maybe we could invent robots that drill holes into the gas tanks and suck the petrol out. That would capture much more energy than most forms of "energy capture".
A "shoe generator" would help reduce the importation of shoes from China...great idea!
The concern I have is that if the device makes 0.01 watts (1v X 10ma say?), it will take 100,000 hours to make 1 kwh. In the UK, I'm currently paying about £0.30 per kwh retail, so about 11 years to generate 30p worth of electricity? I wonder how much it costs to make, even in mass production?
I know this channel is all about new/old ideas and the birth/rebirth and development of those ideas, but this one has a LONG way to go!
I was kinda freaked out a bit, I was swiping through, thought I saw, "fall foot harvest! " 😮
This reminds me of the barleycorn generator, imagine hundreds of these next to a motorway or in a field
Wouldn't be easier to use the generate air pressure as the person steps on the tile. Then all the compressed air could be used in one big generator
you could try - but compressing air and keeping it compressed isn't as simple as it sounds mate
Almost a minute into the video before I realized that the video wasn't named Football Harvester. LOL I only watched it because Rob made it.
Guilty. Amazing how the mind plays tricks on you.
Hmmm.....if we covered California with those they would generate during an earthquake..... It looks interesting, living in England. You have public transportation like the underground and regular busses, easier for my electric bike to get me here and there. I guess I went on a tangent, great video!
Any form of energy generation that only produces energy in earthquakes is useless. (you need big wires to carry that energy, and those wires will be empty 99.99% of the time) This is also why lightning based energy is stupid. You need a source of energy where your equipment is used much of the time, like solar or wind, otherwise the energy of making your equipment dwarfs what it could capture.
Because the magnets oscillate back and forth, would that be a ac current?
Interesting physics. I think I've heard of playpark equipment with generators in.
Not sure about the pavement application as pedestrians have to use more energy to walk across the energy harvesting pavement, so that it can harvest energy from them, without asking permission first. Seems like a bit of a liberty, and walking on a spongy surface like that also looks a bit awkward.
Perhaps the concept could be better applied to the sole of a shoe in a solid state (piezo electric?) form, because that surface is supposed to have some give in it.
If the Vampire effect was a real issue, this tech wouldn't be being installed on Railroad Tracks.
For those boys, even a penny a mile of extra fuel cost adds up fast.
My first thought was to couple it to a tooth brush slip clutch and rectify the oscillation into rotation. In conjunction with the slip clutch I think multiple panels could contribute to spinning up a single flywheel. Maybe it would be cheaper and more efficient to electrically rectify to DC and store the energy in a battery. Have you done a comparison of different diodes to see how much voltage drop there is? Would scaling up a little more would improve your efficiency?
sea: Schottky diodes can be had with very low forward voltage drops.
I was fooling around with model sized steam turbine generators for illuminating head and cab lights on a model steam locomotive. This worked well but burned out the small bulbs with varying steam pressure. Under load this little demon, 7/8" outside dia. produced 2 VAC at 1.5 Amps., which was fine for a flashlight bulb.
I had the bright idea to use 3 Watt LED light but, this required at least 3.5 Volts DC or so.
I could have re-wound the little alternator for higher Voltage but, since I needed a rectifier anyway for the LED, I decided that a voltage doubler was the way to go.
Searching through the DIGIKEY catalog we found Schottky diodes with a guaranteed forward Voltage drop of .22 Volts.
When completed the arrangement worked very well with the LED at full brightness. The actual Voltage drop on the 2 diodes in the circuit we measured at .18 Volts each.
Trust this helps. The current capacity was 15 Amperes.
I've never seen a Pavegen surface with my own eyes, but I imagine it will feel strange to walk on, and given the choice, most people will go out of their way to avoid it. It will also probably be very obnoxious to anyone on a bike, wheelchair, pushchair, or anyone with mobility / balance problems. I perceive it as the next "solar freaking roadways" (i.e. a total waste of time).
Yes. I like James Burke too.
I am giving up walking. I shall start oscillating instead....seems more efficient.. 😉
Thats brilliant Rob.... That means walking is a form of skydiving. So now for skydiving there is, courses for, in order of difficulty: Walking, Static Line and Accelerated Free Fall 😂
It is dependent energy source still !
yes - of course it is!
ok can you image if you slapped that on Semi's and Cars - how much energy would be generated on just driving hitting potholes - you attach it to the hub of each tire
Ty
I wonder: if you put a one-way "escapement " on a spring - loaded "gear', so that the relatively slow, but powerful, step, pushed the gear to a certain point, then releases it, it would then be able to spin quite fast, the more volts to put out...not necessarily more power, but at a higher voltage, which is easier to store or convert to a "useful" voltage...a good place for supercapacitors.
It's a curiosity but not the best humanity can do. There are technologies that can make things like this obsolete so I call it a curiosity. I love learning how to build things in many perspectives and I've watched your channel for years.
Have you ever built something that could power a tiny house on wheels or Arched Cabin without need for solar or wind? I haven't seen all your videos but around 1000. If I missed it I'd love to watch it.
I like Gravity Batteries and HHO Gas on demand using Stanford Universities Scientist Nickel Oxide Electrodes which are cheap.
Will you be auditioning as the new Dr Who?
handy for a door hinge or gates
or tidal floating island generators
❤love your vidéo 🤩 have you ever postulate to do the Doctor who ?❤
The first week they will be stolen.What isn't stolen will be vandalized.
Getting closer to human batteries 😂
What is your source of coil wire? Do you use coated “magnetic” wire, or bare?
I would think that using walking to pump a fluid would be more cost efficient. High tank, low tank, and single water wheel generator. Instead of magnets and coils every meter
Until some stiletto punctures it, and all the energy leaks out.
I think capturing energy from places with more energy to begin with, like the wind and waves, would be more cost efficient.
This would need tested with some skateboards and rollerblades. If those pass, I'm in full agreement.
I see it working in reverse....like to produce an oscillation for a wing....like in the latest dune movie.
Robert that's great but have you considered piezoelectricity?
good ep. you starting a pbs show???
Did you ever play with the cars that you put on the ground and pull backwards, then let go and they drive under their own spring force? Bet it would be a better adaptation it allows a longer stored energy. The spring you use wastes to much. Good try.
Hi I have an idea for To improve the axial motor, I thought of a way to cover the magnet even more so as to have more torque for the motors of the same size. where can I write to send you the idea ?