How Paper Batteries Charged by Bacteria Could Power the Internet of Things(spectrum.ieee.org)
spectrum.ieee.org
How Paper Batteries Charged by Bacteria Could Power the Internet of Things
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/paper-battery-that-could-power-the-internet-of-things
29 comments
Not trying to nitpick, but we live in our current house for 8 years. And when we moved in we "inherited" city-provided trashcan, which was probably there for another 8 years easily if not more. It is a plastic one. Why does trash can need to be replaced every 5-10 years?
This is the weird part about the internet of things. No one has any generalized rule for differentiating which things should be smart, and which things should stay dumb.
One thing that consistently jumps out at me, though, is the lack of legitimate consumer demand. The motives for buying smart devices are shallow, for the individual. Trying out new toys with disposable income, purely out of boredom, tends to sum up why most people opt for slightly smarter dumb things.
I can think of many powerful applications for smart devices, and almost none of them are in the home. Parking garages, or almost anything transportation related, short term lockers at public places like gyms, any hospitality setting, where nothing actually belongs to an individual, but routine maintenance is required. Any vending machine is kind of already on the internet. Break rooms in office settings, and so on.
In some respects, I don't even want my desktop computer to be an autonomous internet enabled device, and it's the smartest thing I own. I don't regard it as a reliable server of information. I don't want anything personal to become a reliable server of information, because any information it might serve is almost assuredly, implicitly personal.
One thing that consistently jumps out at me, though, is the lack of legitimate consumer demand. The motives for buying smart devices are shallow, for the individual. Trying out new toys with disposable income, purely out of boredom, tends to sum up why most people opt for slightly smarter dumb things.
I can think of many powerful applications for smart devices, and almost none of them are in the home. Parking garages, or almost anything transportation related, short term lockers at public places like gyms, any hospitality setting, where nothing actually belongs to an individual, but routine maintenance is required. Any vending machine is kind of already on the internet. Break rooms in office settings, and so on.
In some respects, I don't even want my desktop computer to be an autonomous internet enabled device, and it's the smartest thing I own. I don't regard it as a reliable server of information. I don't want anything personal to become a reliable server of information, because any information it might serve is almost assuredly, implicitly personal.
It’s not personalized trash cans, it’s public ones at streets and beaches.
You wouldn’t really need IoT in the trash can if it’s emptied on a schedule, but a lot of public trash cans see very different usage amounts over the year.
As for durability, well, people destroy them. Your average public trash can at a park or a beach could need replacement several times during a summer thanks to things like one-usage grills. ;) In those cases the IoT device has the added advantage of being able to warn the fire department.
You wouldn’t really need IoT in the trash can if it’s emptied on a schedule, but a lot of public trash cans see very different usage amounts over the year.
As for durability, well, people destroy them. Your average public trash can at a park or a beach could need replacement several times during a summer thanks to things like one-usage grills. ;) In those cases the IoT device has the added advantage of being able to warn the fire department.
In LA they pick up trash with trucks and a mechanical arm. This seems pretty hard on the trash cans. Mine tend to break in some way every 3-5 years.
In my case it is picked up either by mechanical arm, or by a guy bringing it to the end of the garbage truck and truck doing the rest (did not find why they run different trucks each time) Seems to last just fine.
Im the developer that working in the company making those iot sensors for trashbins. You can shoot me questions if you guys have any.
I'm curious what technology is used to sense when the can is full and needs emptying?
…To activate the battery, the researchers added water or saliva, both of which revived the bacteria …
…Choi says that his latest hybrid paper-polymer biobattery readily decomposes in water….
A new world of biological pollution awaits us.
…Choi says that his latest hybrid paper-polymer biobattery readily decomposes in water….
A new world of biological pollution awaits us.
I think the general idea here is that these are biodegradable materials ....
That doesn't mean it can't be a pollutant. To take a simple example, fertilisers are biodegradable and yet run off + eutrophication is incredibly ecologically damaging.
Sure, but why would you assume it is? Also, you'd need a lot of this stuff to do any damage even if it was that much of a pollutant.
> Sure, but why would you assume it is?
If somebody puts a bunch of unknown chemicals in water, is it not normal to question the safety of that?
If somebody puts a bunch of unknown chemicals in water, is it not normal to question the safety of that?
2 words: contact lenses
At less than a gram per lens, there's only so much damage those are going to do. I looked it up, we're talking about 23 tons worth of lenses for the US. A lot, but it pales in comparison to other stuff we do to the environment. Like traditional batteries for example, which we're talking about replacing with something bio degradable.
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Guess what, we don't need an internet of things. It's not going to happen and you can tell that because it's been hyped for a decade now and has not produced any product that anyone buys.
While I don't really see the use case for private individuals, IoT technology is very interesting on the factory floor. Tracking parts and getting sensor data from all kinds of machines is quite useful.
Yeah I don't really buy the retail argument for IOT, but for large organizations it can make a ton of sense. I previously worked for a company [0] that did remote sensors for water meters - they saved a fortune on sending out technicians to read the meter, and avoided all the problems with usage estimations.
[0] - http://www.taggle.com.au/
[0] - http://www.taggle.com.au/
Why do you think that private individuals wouldn't also benefit from being able to track things? I'm quite forgetful so being able to track my possessions would be quite useful to me.
I'd love if my charger would tell me it wants to go into the backpack before I board the plane without it.
No?
How much cheaper is electricity because meters report back and you don't have to come and read them one by one. How many times has the garbage truck passed by my street only to see no trash container out to be collected? IoT means making everything intelligent so that we can better coordinate our resource usage. A traffic light that knows when the tram is coming ahead or behind schedule, how many people are on it, how many cars are to queue on the red lights can make a better decision on which one should be prioritized, possibly saving a fair amount of electricity in the process.
Or, perhaps, a carpet that knows it's clean (let's say the kids are off to summer camp) can tell the Roomba it doesn't need to do its thing today.
We don't need it like we didn't need cellphones, smartphones, smart watches, electric cars. For most of my childhood we didn't even need personal computers.
How much cheaper is electricity because meters report back and you don't have to come and read them one by one. How many times has the garbage truck passed by my street only to see no trash container out to be collected? IoT means making everything intelligent so that we can better coordinate our resource usage. A traffic light that knows when the tram is coming ahead or behind schedule, how many people are on it, how many cars are to queue on the red lights can make a better decision on which one should be prioritized, possibly saving a fair amount of electricity in the process.
Or, perhaps, a carpet that knows it's clean (let's say the kids are off to summer camp) can tell the Roomba it doesn't need to do its thing today.
We don't need it like we didn't need cellphones, smartphones, smart watches, electric cars. For most of my childhood we didn't even need personal computers.
I'm not sure that this is at all true. Maybe I'm using too broad a definition of IoT, but most people I know have some kind of IoT device. Admittedly, my direct friends are probably representative of a specific group, but...
My apartment a few years ago (wasn't a luxury place) came with a Nest thermostat. My parents have a Nest thermostat as well as a smart lock. My sister has a smart toothbrush. My friend uses Tile to keep track of a couple of her grandmother's important things. I went all in on Phillips Hue across my house, as well as a bunch of other things. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's been a net positive.
HomeKit (and any Android equivalents) have brought this stuff pretty mainstream, and in a mostly-just-works way.
This stuff is everywhere.
My apartment a few years ago (wasn't a luxury place) came with a Nest thermostat. My parents have a Nest thermostat as well as a smart lock. My sister has a smart toothbrush. My friend uses Tile to keep track of a couple of her grandmother's important things. I went all in on Phillips Hue across my house, as well as a bunch of other things. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's been a net positive.
HomeKit (and any Android equivalents) have brought this stuff pretty mainstream, and in a mostly-just-works way.
This stuff is everywhere.
IOT in the nutshell is simply about mapping and tracking physical objects. Air or water quality, building, road and bridge condition, street lights, traffic, and countless more applications. All of those that are currently done manually, imprecisely, or infrequently. Just because it's low profile, not available in store, or not yet achievable using current technology, doesn't mean it does not or will not happen.
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Most devices have batteries that last 5-10 years though, and often it’s the device that needs to get changed, not the battery. Like the trash can IoT devices, they’ll never actually outlive their battery. Even if a devices manages to survive its battery, 10 years is a long time, so you’d probably want to replace it regardless.
This is still a really cool article though, and it’d be silly for me to say that we’d never use it, but battery life isn’t actually a problem for us. Maybe it is in other places? And there is also the enviromental angle to consider, especially in political organizations.