75% Less Power! - Saving the Planet With Motion Sensing and Image Processing In this blog, I was dealing with a conundrum on how to reduce the power consumption of my cool magic mirror that was always on, always drawing power. I considered options such as a PIR (Passive Infra Red) sensor and a doppler radar microwave motion sensor. The latter worked brilliantly except for a few too many false positives. Things got technologically fancy when I introduced a camera for motion detection and face recognition, even recognizing who is in front of the mirror! However, while it was fascinating, it upped the power consumption which was against our original goal. After combining... 26 June 2023
Energy Scavenging - Can we keep our electronics running indefinitely? After a previous unsuccessful attempt to power my Christmas lights with solar power, I've decided to try run my ultra-energy efficient ePaper weather display on solar energy. This display, already low on power consumption thanks to ESP32's deep sleep mode, is now paired with the BQ25570 energy-harvesting board and lithium cell to test if solar power can keep it running. Despite the limited Scottish winter sun, initial results look promising. With a little more code tinkering, it is my belief that the weather display might just keep running indefinitely and never need charging again. 23 March 2023