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Source of power.
So look at it this way. Transdermals are neat, right? You got something sticking out of your skin that can plug in/charge/power your device. But why? The body produces heat, right? You have two metals of different electrical potentials in series, allow them to use your body heat to produce low current. What would keep you from using those to power your internal devices?
I'm just curious as to how this would work, this website's thoughts and how this could potentially be incorporated into what ever projects y'all might have.
Also, if you're curious and or confused look into thermopiles. Thanks y'all.
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Comments
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So, my understanding is that a thermopile will encounter the same problem as a thermoelectric generator in an implant scenario. They both require a temperature _differential_ to generate current flow.
While that might work as a patch on the surface of your skin, there's not enough of a differential once it's under your skin to generate useful amounts of energy.
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Yep. You'll instead have to become Mr. Freeze. You'll power your implants by dipping your arms in ice water.
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That would actually be an interesting use case. If you regularly swam through frigid bodies of water, and didn't want to get lost, you could have a magnetometer implant that is only charged while you're swimming. Pretty niche, though.
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This might sound ridiculous, but imagine a heat sync, right? Like, you'd go running to cool the one side, and obviously you're going to heat up, and it could charge whatever it is you're using. I know the gentleman with the built in "GPS" in his chest has the transdermal implant so he can transfer information. Why not a heatsync?
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I'm not saying you can't do that, I'm saying it will be extremely inefficient. The temperature differential would be very small if you want to avoid frostbite in the skin cells at the interface. We're talking microamps.
Also, I presume you would want to have a portable, battery powered cooler to charge the implant. TEGs require high wattage (100W). That and a fan is going to put a huge burden on a battery powered unit. It won't last long.
You should look into RF energy harvesting if you want to do something like that. You can get a constant output of 6mA at 2.4V no problem. Low losses to the environment, too. Not like heat transfer
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I could see that, and it makes sense. I don't know about storing a battery inside of my body, but I'll look into it more. Thanks, Jefe.
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I know there was a woman that made Jewelry that used circulating blood to generate a current. The project ended up making people dizzy, and I'm not sure why it failed.
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It looks like her designs were just looks like, they didn't actually function. Neat idea though. There are piezoelectric generators used to top off pacemakers, but I haven't seen a blood vessel turbine like that. Neat idea, although putting it in parallel with a vein probably won't work well, because the vein itself is a path of less resistance. There's also glucose biofuel cells, although their output is very small.
