[HN Gopher] With a simple piece of paper, engineers create self-...
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       With a simple piece of paper, engineers create self-powered,
       wireless keyboard
        
       Author : based2
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2020-09-06 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | A simple piece of paper... With circuits printed on it. Kinda
       | neat tech, totally clickbait title.
        
         | eikenberry wrote:
         | I was expecting different click-bait, like a keyboard drawn on
         | paper with a camera pointed at it or something.
        
         | aaaxyz wrote:
         | I had imagined they had built it by carefully folding the paper
         | to give each "key" a distinctive sound that a nearby computer
         | could decode into key presses
        
       | withinboredom wrote:
       | Maybe "spell books" in ancient "history" were just interfaces for
       | the time travelers.
        
         | codebje wrote:
         | Scott Meyer's "Magic 2.0" series is more or less this idea.
        
       | retox wrote:
       | From the headline I thought it was related to a video I saw years
       | ago for a television remote control from a French (I think)
       | hardware engineer. It was only a prototype but it replaced the
       | batteries with a piezoelectric mechanism that generated enough of
       | a charge from physically depressing the button to send the
       | infrared signal. Probably not enough power there to reliably send
       | a bluetooth signal though.
        
       | ykevinator wrote:
       | Super neat. But a solution looking for a problem.
        
       | ineedasername wrote:
       | They did that with a "simple" piece of paper? Imagine what they
       | could do with a "complex" piece of paper!
       | 
       | More seriously, we've seen attempts to make flat keyboards [0].
       | The lack of haptic feedback limits them to niche devices. If they
       | can do more than just input devices though, I'd be much more
       | interested.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.amazon.com/AGS-Wireless-Projection-Bluetooth-
       | Sma...
        
         | sosborn wrote:
         | Would you consider soft keyboard implementations in modern
         | smartphones as niche applications?
        
         | nkingsy wrote:
         | The Q+A section of that product is like some kind of reddit
         | comment chain.
        
       | sthnblllII wrote:
       | The lack of details is infuriating. It makes it sound like they
       | implemented a compliant bluetooth chip at 1/1000th the cost size
       | and power of commercial solutions.
        
         | shakna wrote:
         | The actual paper [0] does have some decent details, though it
         | is somewhat heavy.
         | 
         | [0] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.105301
        
           | davidhyde wrote:
           | Too bad they published it through Elsevier. I would have
           | liked to read their paper.
        
             | CamperBob2 wrote:
             | That's what sci-hub.tw is for.
        
         | Palomides wrote:
         | from skimming the paper, the big advance here is a moisture/oil
         | resistant "triboelectric nanogenerator", which generates energy
         | from touch or vibration, and they could get stable power out of
         | it long enough to do a bluetooth transmission with a standard
         | (conventional) bluetooth chip (an adafruit bluefruit,
         | apparently)
         | 
         | the moisture/oil resistant part is a big deal for actually
         | using it in the real world
        
       | rcarmo wrote:
       | This has a certain "Diamond Age" vibe to it. I'm all for single-
       | function devices as individual pieces of "smart" paper.
        
       | Aardwolf wrote:
       | Imagine if this were not a piece of paper, but a mechanical
       | keyboard where the clicky action of the keys generates enough
       | energy for the self powered wirelessness!
        
       | vsskanth wrote:
       | Can anyone ELI5 this for me ? I am unable to access the paper and
       | the abstract is way too technical for me to make sense. If I
       | understand this right, they are using friction to generate power,
       | but how are they doing Bluetooth wireless transmission ? Is the
       | bluetooth circuit and antenna also printed on the paper ?
        
         | ramoz wrote:
         | I worked on a project with Novalia a few years back, they have
         | a simple way of explaining their tech:
         | https://www.novalia.co.uk/platforms/
         | 
         | We needed a small battery coin for some unique interactions,
         | not sure if that was needed, & not sure/didnt read what Purdue
         | is doing different with self-power.
        
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       (page generated 2020-09-06 23:00 UTC)