Pervasive computers enable virtually any measurement to be made across virtually any environment. But how would you power your network? What if you wanted to place the computer in the middle of a field? Or in a tree? Or in the desert? Or a cave? How long would the computer run given alkaline or lithium batteries? Could it draw power from its surroundings? Could it be packaged in a reasonable size?

These are not hypothetical questions. These questions arise with almost every customer interaction at Sentilla. After all, a pervasive computer is only useful for as long as it interacts with the world, and there are environmental limitations to primary batteries, particularly in extremely hot areas. These questions have also persisted for as long as pervasive computers have existed. They literally funded my battery research at UC Berkeley, and my thermoelectric device implementations at Wireless Industrial Techologies.

Luckily, Sentilla computers "sip" energy, and can be readily powered from environmental sources, whether it's the light from the sun, the heat from an exhaust pipe, or the vibration of a motor. Many energy harvesting solutions are cost competitive with standard batteries, particularly for large or remote installations where field maintenance is an unattractive option. At Sentilla, working with our partners, we have enabled java-based solutions to run primarily from the energy available in their environments, be they HVAC subsystems, aluminum smelters, or oil tankers.

As Sentilla begins to explore energy reduction with our customers, we recognize that it's important to keep the focus on reducing energy consumption for critical applications, rather than creating another subsystem where batteries must be continually replaced. To this end, we're publishing a white paper that introduces solar, thermal, and vibrational harvesting methods in the context of pervasive computing. We keep the science behind the harvesting techniques at a high level, but we give proper size and placement context. We hope this white paper provides an introduction to the exciting abilities that modern energy harvesting devices offer, and we think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the amount of work you can extract from an computer smaller than a can of Coke!

Read the white paper >>