Author: Peiqi Su

Please go to my blog to see the latest update.

Say “Hello World”

I’m an energy parasite on your finger!

Where it comes from?

The ancestor

The ancestor of our energy parasite is a bio mechanical energy harvester from a paper: Biomechanical Energy Harvesting: Generating Electricity During Walking with Minimal User Effort.

[First draft] Literature Reviews

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Grandfather’s father

A big system: harvest body energy, monitor body conditions and visualize the data on/around body. Soul: To opportunistically harvest small bit of energy from human motion. Thanks to Tom, I got clear that the aim of this project is to arouse people’s awareness to the potential energy from our body movements.

Harvest Small Energy from Human Motion

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Grandfather

A flex sensor attached to the index finger. Through Processing statistics, in 1650 seconds (27.5 minutes), the total number of significant finger movement is 2463, so my index finger move 1.493 times per second.

Bio-Energy Parasite: Finger Parasite – Minimum Viable Product

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Grandmother’s brother

This guy is “Breath Parasite”. He doesn’t have much relationships with our current energy parasite, but might have his own children somewhere.

Bio-Energy Parasite: Breath Parasite – Minimum Viable Product

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Father

Mr. Finger Parasite. The idea is to make a “parasite” on a finger. The “parasite”, as a ring, could opportunistically harvest small bit of energy form the movement of a finger.

Finger Parasite – Product Development

What it looks like now?

Energy Parasite: I’m on Your Finger – Product Development 2

Where it would go?

More Comfortable: currently I use wires to help to attach the parasite onto the index finger. Though it’s flexible and could fit for different fingers, it’s not confortable.

More efficient: Test different ways of attaching the parasite in play testing. One possible modification might be increase the distance from the body of parasite to it’s distal wires. This would increase one side of the lever so that small motion of middle phalanges could create more pressure on the piezo element.

More elements: I’d like to use more materials that could be found in our daily life, or even some waste things. Make the parasite more interesting at the same time accesible.

Hello world!

This is my energy parasite, in prehistoric times. I’m sure it’s future generations could be better.

Materials

The small signal diode solved the problem that the current generated by piezo element is too little to be forwarded. The max forward voltage is 1V when the current is 10 mA [Datasheet]. The 3mm LED works better than the 5mm one under the low current low voltage condition. Its DC forward drop is 1.8-2.2V, and suggested current: 16-18mA [Datasheet]. The piezo element also works better than the previous one, more sensitive, more powerful [Datasheet].

Tests

Through the tests, the 1 uF capacitor turned to be the best choice among other capacitors.

The First Generation

 

Future Generations

LED: lower current, higher luminous intensity; small size.

Capacitor: small size.

More Comfortable: currently I use wires to help to attach the parasite onto the index finger. Though it’s flexible and could fit for different fingers, it’s not confortable.

More efficient: Test different ways of attaching the parasite in play testing. One possible modification might be increase the distance from the body of parasite to it’s distal wires. This would increase one side of the lever so that small motion of middle phalanges could create more pressure on the piezo element.

More elements: I’d like to use more materials that could be found in our daily life, or even some waste things. Make the parasite more interesting at the same time accesible.

 

The idea is to make a “parasite” on a finger. The “parasite”, as a ring, could opportunistically harvest small bit of energy form the movement of a finger. After a series of tests, the Piezo Element turned out to be a feasible material.

Test 1: Piezo Vibration Sensor (Large)

In my test, this Piezo Vibration Sensor could generate up to 0.212v itself, which is much more less than the data in its datasheet. (Datasheet)

Test 2: Piezo Element

This Piezo element could generate up to 2.39v in my test. The voltage is 10 times than the voltage generated by the Piezo Vibration Sensor.

Test 3: The Circuit

It’s a basic capacitor charging circuit. A 1N5226 diode (see below datasheet) is in series with the 1 uf capacitor. The forward voltage  (at I = 200mA) is 1.1v. So only the round piezo element could be able to charge the capacitor. When pressed, the piezo element charge the capacitor; then presse the button to discharge the capacitor through the LED.

It did! The LED lighted!

I also would like to try other diodes with lower forward voltage.

 

Prototype

 

 

 

 

“Breath Parasite” is an idea that to harvest energy from every breath.

For the minimum viable product, I tried to 1) transfer the linear motion to rotation (motion) ; 2) rotate a DC motor to generate electricity which could power a LED (power).

1. Motion: linear motion –> rotation

(photo)

2. Power: electromagnetic induction

Parts: LED*1, switch*1, DC motor*1, 200uf capacitor*1, 22k ohm resistor*1

 

First, use a multimeter to measure the voltage and ampere by rotating the DC motor. The Voltage is up to 1.2v; but the current is always 0A:

Then, I tried to rotate the motor to power a LED. It works!

But it failed to user motor to charge a 200uf capacitor. Is it because the current is too little?

 

“Finger Parasite” is an idea that to harvest energy from finger motion, mainly for using mouse and typing.

For the minimum viable product, I tried to attach a flex sensor to and finger and use Precessing to generally measure the quantity of finger movement.

1. The expriments

Parts: 22k ohm resistor*1, SpectraSymbol flex sensor*1

 

 

The flex sensor is sensitive and not very accuracy.

2. The results

In the Processing sketch, the graph will be automatically saved when the data line reaches the edge. Below are some graphs:

The top number counts for the significant finger movement such as scroll the wheel on the mouth or typing. This number is calculated by the difference of sensor values grater than 20. The second line data is the time (in seconds) drawing each sketch. The test lasted for 1650 seconds without interruption. The total number of significant finger movement is 2463, so my index finger move 1.493 times per second.

My concept is to opportunistically harvest small bit of energy from human motion. (will pick up one motion to project)

From a higher level, to build a system which harvest body energy, monitor body conditions and visualize the data on/around body. Please view the full post here: http://itp.nyu.edu/~ps2409/Peiqi/?p=646

Please go to my blog: http://itp.nyu.edu/~ps2409/Peiqi/?p=611

or

Google Doc: http://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bys0b2YUavmKNmxyVUVVUWdQUk0/edit?usp=sharing

I tried FitBit One for days, from Feb.19 to Feb 21. It recorded my daily steps, walking distance, burning calories, time in bed times of awakenings and so on.

Here is the line chart of my daily waking steps and distances:

 

My daily waking steps and burning calories:

what is my average stride length? How many calories do I burn per stride?
Since I never took bus or subway in these three days, the calories in the chart is burned by walking; I climbed 27 floors (270 steps). Thus, Calories per stride = total calories / total steps*2 = 0.70 cals; average stride length = total distance (total steps – steps climbing floors)*2 = 0.37 m.

The sleep data chart is as below which indicates the less time in bed the less time awake:

My interests in biomechanical energy sprouted in childhood. In many cartoons, I always saw a bulb lit up on top of someone’s head when this character came up with an idea. At that time, I believed that something must change inside our body when we are thinking. A few years later, a program on Discovery showed that when people are thinking, the energy consumed by the brain equals the energy powering a 5w bulb. Exciting! Then I wish I could make a desk lamp which will be lighter when I thinking harder and become deemer when I tired.

J. M. Donelan, Q. Li, V. Naing, J. A. Hoffer, D. J. Weber, and A. D. Kuo, “Biomechanical Energy Harvesting: Generating Electricity During Walking with Minimal User Effort,” Science, vol. 319, no. 5864, pp. 807 -810, Feb. 2008. I found this paper here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5864/807.full

When reading this paper, I came up with an idea: Generating Electricity During Useing The Mouse

It was a great lecture that Dr. Dan Formosa shared his experience in applying biomechanics to product design. I’m very interested in the product: “Cimzia Home Injection Experience” and read the related paper: The effect of a new syringe design on the ability of rheumatoid arthritis patients to inject a biological medication (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000368701100072X) (NYU access only). The paper discusses how they study the preferences of 23 Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients and their injection forces using a conventional syringe and a new ergonomically designed syringe. In the research, both objective measurements and subjective questionare are used to design and test the new syringe.

Without any background of science research, by reading this paper, I got a sense of what is a research and how to research:

• How to select the test objects and analyse the demographic information;
• How to interview subjects in the study sessions, what questions should be asked and in which order, what behaviors and feedback should be observed;
• What aspects should be considered in order to measure the forces, how to process the force data;
• How to analyse the results of questionares and come to results.

With the background of UX design and graphic design, I was always thinking “this is about UX” with surprise and pressure when reading this paper. It broadened my understanding about how to improve the holistic product UX.