(If you want to start a business off this idea feel free to contact me ;) half joking but half serious)
So yeah, I'd rather make musical instruments. If anyone wants to talk about that idea, I'm all in.
:)
Additionally, when doing research around kinetic / thermal energy harvesting technology for a wearable design project (gesture recognizing smart ring) for school, we found modules to have far too low a volumetric energy density (W/mm^3) to be useful, where size matters more than anything else.
Musical instrument design is a well saturated space as well…
Yeah, thats sort of the point. :)
For example, the Dualo touch uses a slider and a gyroscope for analogical input:
The voice recorded through a mic can also be a nice anological input, such as in the Rc-505 loop station:
https://www.boss.info/global/products/rc-505mk2/
Even better if there is an analogical feedback. For example with springs under buttons, rubber bands attached to finger rings or other crazy ideas.
Or Mod DUO:
.. can both do what you want, and a ton more to boot - I know you specifically asked for simple and cheap - well, these devices are cheap and .. amazing ..
In what areas of startup’s have you been in? More of electrons or software or something?
I build a system for an agriculture client like this with each node only having a very small solar panel (6in^2) and some super capacitors that kept it reporting data throughout the night. We even used performance metrics from the voltage being output by the solar panel to measure how cloudy it was. These devices reported via LoRa to a base station setup that was connected to a PoE system so we just ran a single Cat-6 STP line to a pole in the middle of the property.
I think the other aspect of “always on” is that the operator isn’t going to pick up the sensor years down the line. They’re just going to leave it dead and buried, especially if the sensors have to live inside the earth There’s ongoing work on harvesting electricity out of soil
