[Shahriar] devoted the lastest episode of The Signal Path to looking at energy harvesting chips. These parts are designed to gather energy from non-traditional sources as efficiently as possible. The full episode, which is embedded after the break, is about one hour long. It starts with a bit of background about the nature of these parts, and a brief overview of the wide-range of chips available. Each is suited for a different type of energy source.

He moves on to test and explain the LTC3105 and the LTC3109. The former is shown above on a development board. [Shahriar] hooks it up to his bench equipment to compare its performance to the published specs. This culminates in a circuit that uses a solar cell as the source with a super capacitor used as storage. The latter is connected to a Peltier cooler and used to convert the potential energy of ice cubes to electrical energy which charges his iPhone for about thirty seconds. This might be useful in that Peltier generator we saw last week.

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