AdaptivEnergy's Wireless, Remote Sensing Solution Enables Energy Harvesting

(Product News, 28 Aug 2008)

AdaptivEnergy has developed a demonstration kit using Joule-Thief technology to harvest energy and power Texas Instruments Inc.'s (TI) ultra-low power MSP430 microcontroller (MCU) and RF technology to collect data, control the operation of a system or send sensed data to central collection sites. The Joule-Thief energy harvesting device is based on AdaptivEnergy's Ruggedized Laminated Piezo (RLP) technology, which enables compact energy harvesting modules to power applications such as wireless sensors. These wireless sensors could be used to gather ambient intelligence to detect and report critical conditions in factories, automobiles, office buildings, homes and other environments—all without wiring or batteries.

Joule-Thief technology combines AdaptivEnergy's stressed-biased RLP energy harvesting beam that converts vibrations or movement into usable electric energy. The RLP Smart Energy Beam allows up to 10 times more strain to be applied to the piezoceramic than competing piezoelectric energy harvesting devices, creating more converted electric power for system use. In addition to directly sensing movement, the versatile design accepts inputs from external sensing elements that can help detect strain in bridges and high-rise buildings, equipment fatigue in factories, excessive temperatures, the presence of dangerous chemicals, unsafe events in automobiles and a variety of other environmental conditions.

Complementing the RLP Smart Energy Beam and collection electronics is active intelligence and communications based on a chipset consisting of an MSP430F2274 microcontroller and a CC2500 RF transceiver, which allows the Joule-Thief design to gain as much processing and transmission as possible from the charge stored in a capacitor. With leading low power consumption in active and standby modes, the MSP430 microcontroller provides a fast wake-up time of less than a microsecond for a preferable low power/high performance solution.

System-on-chip (SoC) integration of peripherals in the MSP430 microcontroller such as analog-to-digital converters (ADC), timers, comparators and a variety of memory configurations helped AdaptivEnergy save space and board costs while enabling them to build a maintenance-free wireless sensor suitable for a wide range of ambient intelligence applications. TI's CC2500 RF transceivers operate in the 2.4GHz range, making them well-suited for reliable, low-cost digital wireless applications.

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Click here for a demonstration of the Joule-Thief technology and other energy harvesting applications

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