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The world's first solar powered video camera is the birth of a new era

Ian CrosslandApr 23, 2015, 10:59:04 PM
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Scientists and engineers at Columbia University’s Computer Vision Laboratory have developed a camera that charges itself as you use it.  When it's not being used for pictures, you can use it as an energy harvesting device.

Light entering the machine is converted to electricity through the photovoltaic diodes, acting as both solar panel and image capture.

It's an early test subject of the relatively new technology and only captures one image per second (as opposed to a regular video camera's 30 images per second) so the image is blurry, as you can see below

 

But it works, and it powers itself.  It's another step in what Shree K. Nayar, director of the Computer Vision Laboratory at Columbia Engineering, refers to as the digital imaging revolution.  According to Nayar, we are on track to build self powered watches and phones, as well as other wearable devices and a multitude of other self powering devices like "sensor netowrks, smart environments, personalized medicine," and what he refers to as the "internet of things" (an allusion to the infinite possibility of printing smart items with 3D printers).

 

This is the beginning of an entirely new generation of cameras.

 

 

Image Credit: http://inhabitat.com/this-video-camera-captures-light-to-generate-its-own-power/

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/self_powered_camera/