Battery-Free Game Boy Powered by Button-Pressing Runs Forever
This powerful proof-of-concept created by researchers at Northwestern Engineering and TU Delft in the Netherlands is the first battery-free, interactive device that harvests energy from user actions. The researchers created a failure-resilient clone of the 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy, one of the most popular hand-held gaming consoles. "ENGAGE" is the name of their energy-aware gaming platform; it's equipped with a set of solar panels attached to the front of the chassis, and button presses by the user are a second source of energy. For games that require at least moderate amounts of button pressing, and on days that aren't too cloudy, gameplay interruptions usually last less than a second for every ten seconds of gameplay.