New supercapacitor charged by body heat:

https://techxplore.com/news/2016-11-supercapacitor-human-body.html

Wearable electronics, watches, heart/blood pressure monitors can be run as long as someone is wearing these things.

So basically a thermocouple and capacitor in one. Of course they are far from the first to think of using human body heat to power devices.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ann-makosinski-s-new-invention-a-body-heat-powered-headlamp-1.2678576

Originally posted by twhitehead
So basically a thermocouple and capacitor in one. Of course they are far from the first to think of using human body heat to power devices.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ann-makosinski-s-new-invention-a-body-heat-powered-headlamp-1.2678576

Yes, I saw that report, brilliant girl. I was thinking about stuff that takes microwatts or milliwatts like watches or blood pressure, glucouse readers and the like. Clearly you are not going to get watts out of such devices, only milliwatts. I like the idea for a watch since I have had experience with both solar powered watches which works fine as long as you subject the watch to light but on your wrist you are not going to get much light to harvest and so it dies after a few months like that unless you physically take off the watch and set it out in the sun for a few hours.

Or just battery power but the one I use (casio) has a 60 kilohertz reciever inside which picks up the time signal from Fort Collins Colorado and I am sure it takes quite a bit more energy to run 24/7 than the rest of the electronics in the watch, still milliwatts but the battery dies in under 2 years and much less in my experience. Human body heat to power such a device would mean you just wear it and get power renewable.

This was the backstory initial problem in The Matrix.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Human body heat to power such a device would mean you just wear it and get power renewable.

With a watch, the obvious solution is mechanical movement devices (and they were invented in 1923).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_watch

Originally posted by twhitehead
With a watch, the obvious solution is mechanical movement devices (and they were invented in 1923).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_watch

Of course, been around forever but the thermoelectric converter would be cheaper, no moving parts, so no machining costs.

Originally posted by sonhouse
https://techxplore.com/news/2016-11-supercapacitor-human-body.html

Wearable electronics, watches, heart/blood pressure monitors can be run as long as someone is wearing these things.

A capacitor that works by stuffing it with food would, you know, cut out the middle man.

Originally posted by apathist
A capacitor that works by stuffing it with food would, you know, cut out the middle man.

Then you would call it a fuel cell.....