I went out and bought a new digital camera today: the Creative PC-CAM 300. Why?  Because I wanted a camera that I could take almost anywhere and not worry too much about damaging or losing it.  The Canon is a nice camera, but too darned expensive to take mountain biking or on some of my other excursions.  The new camera has a couple of other nice features.  First, since it doesn’t have an LCD, its batteries will last much longer than the Canon’s little battery that burns out in a couple of hours.  The new camera also will record video (only about 75 seconds), and voice (about 30 minutes), and doubles as a web cam.  It’s the last that kind of intrigues me.  With Yahoo Messenger (or any of the other similar services), you have the ability to do video conferencing.  Sure, there’s a bit of delay in the voice and video, but for most things that’s just fine.

I had a little trouble installing the camera, though.  I originally plugged it into one of the USB ports on my keyboard, but the computer wouldn’t recognize it.  After uninstalling and reinstalling the software (to no avail), I finally checked Creative’s web site, and saw a note there about some devices requiring connection directly to the USB controller.  I plugged the device into the USB port at the back of the computer, and things worked just fine.

The thing comes with a whole bunch of software, most of which I haven’t installed.  The Creative PC-CAM Center, though, is a surprisingly good piece of software.  It’s not fancy or anything, but it has an attractive and very intuitive user interface, without all the bells and whistles that always seem to confuse users and make the programs unstable.  This is quite different from most hardware manufactures, whose software usually sucks like an Electrolux (the software that came with the Canon digital camera being a case in point).  I hear people bad mouth Creative from time to time, but I’ve been using their products for over ten years (since I got my first Sound Blaster and CD-ROM), and I’ve always been pleased.  Perhaps they’re not the latest and greatest things in technology, but they’re always solid and reliable performers.  I’ll take solid and reliable over bells and whistles every time.

I don’t normally do this, three days in a row discussing the same topic, but I keep running across more information.  According to this article on ZDNet News, Motorola yesterday announced “that they have successfully demonstrated a methane gas-powered fuel cell, which can provide enough juice between chargings for a month of cell phone calls.”  The thing is the size of a laptop battery (4″ x 6″ x 1/2 “).  Yes, methane.  No, we don’t need any more fart jokes.  NEC and Sony are working on similar devices.  NEC expects to have a salable product sometime in the next two to four years.  Motorola and Sony have not announced their plans.

Apparently, somebody is working on the “power shoes” idea.  According to this article on Discovery News, a company called SRI International is working on lacing a boot with electroactive polymers to convert the mechanical energy of walking into electric power.  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is one of the project’s primary sponsors.

Finally, on a somewhat related note, the 2001 World Human Powered Speed Challenge is being held this week in Battle Mountain, Nevada.  The vehicles used in this race resemble bicycles only in that they have two wheels and are human powered.  The world record for a single rider over the 200 meter course is 72.75 MPH, set last year by Sam Whittingham.  You get a “flying start,” which means you’re already up to speed when you cross the starting line.  You can see information on last year’s event (including some cool pictures of the vehicles) here. Some people are projecting a record of 100 MPH in the not-too-distant future.  That’s faster than I’m willing to drive my car!

After I posted yesterday’s entry, I ran across the Slashdot posting on the topic.  Most of the comments are typical uninformed reactionary B.S. or poor attempts at humor, but there are a few good posts.  One such pointed me at this article on Human Powered Wearable Computing that appeared in IBM Systems Journal some years ago.  (You can also view the article on the IBM SJ site at http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/353/sectione/starner.html.)  The article does a reasonably good job of identifying the possible ways that the human body could be used to generate power, and discusses some potential ways to harness the power.  Of particular interest to me were the discussions of piezoelectric materials and the use of piezoelectric shoe inserts to generate power–not continuous, but potentially enough to charge a small storage battery that could in turn be used directly in small electronic devices or perhaps to trickle-charge other batteries.  Granted, this isn’t the “human battery” that I’ve been pondering over the years, but it has the same effect.

I like the idea of using shoe inserts to harness the energy because it’s like free power.  Replacing the cushioning in a pair of shoes with piezoelectric materials allows you to harness energy that is normally just dissipated.  It’s the same concept that shoe manufacturers use to power the LEDs in those shoes that blink when you walk.  The article Parasitic Power Harvesting in Shoes, again from the MIT Media Laboratory, explores this concept in more detail.  MIT’s Media Laboratory lists a Parasitic Power project, but I’ve been unable to find anything more recent than the 1998 “power shoes” article.  Except for a news brief from January 2000 about a British inventor’s patenting the idea. 

Back in May I mentioned the idea of using the human body to power the myriad electronic devices that we carry on our persons. At that time, I’d never heard of anybody actually doing it. A friend today sent me this link to a press release from Applied Digital Solutions.  They have developed a miniaturized thermoelectric generator that converts low gradient body heat flow into electrical power. Supplying 1.5 volts at 10 micro amps, the thing won’t power a cell phone, but it’s plenty to power implanted medical devices and maybe even a wristwatch. So I’m not a total nutball.

Is it still more efficient to have a centralized electric power infrastructure than it is to have each building generate its own electricity?  Until recently, the answer to that question was an unequivocal “Yes.”  But today, especially in rural or semi-rural areas, I’m not so sure.  Consider the GE HomeGen system.  This fuel cell runs on natural gas or LPG and is designed to provide 100% of a home’s energy needs.  Current systems vent the waste heat, but systems now under development will use the waste heat to heat your water, or for other purposes.  This system is more efficient at extracting energy from the fuel than is a traditional coal- or gas-fired power plant, and doesn’t incur the 8% or 10% additional loss from transmitting the power from the generating station to your house.  True, you still need some way to get gas to your house.  Absent a pipeline that means trucking it in, which could be less efficient than power transmission–unless everyone in the neighborhood had one of these things.  Then a weekly neighborhood gas delivery service would make sense and you could keep your tank topped off.

There is still something of a centralized infrastructure in that the trucks delivering the gas have to get it from somewhere, but there could be many of those somewheres, so that a failure at any one wouldn’t completely disrupt the entire system.  In addition, with a tank outside your house that holds a month’s worth of gas, most people should be able to withstand a week or more interruption in service.  What’s more, with a little extra effort it’d be possible to build a neighborhood power distribution system in which those who have excess power could put it “on the grid” in times of emergency.  Think of a smaller-scale version of the power distribution grids that are formed by today’s large power plants.  Every house is both a producer and a consumer.  It’s an interesting possibility. 

I’m not completely discounting the possibility of solar, mind you, but it has some significant drawbacks.  Solar power generation depends on abundant sunshine and huge storage batteries.  A week or more of cloudy weather can render even the best solar energy system inoperable, and the last time I checked storage batteries of this size involved lots of dangerous chemicals, with the associated environmental hazards throughout their lifetimes from manufacture to disposal.  Solar may be a good supplemental system for non-essential needs like heating a swimming pool or running an outdoor barbecue, but it’s not yet practical as a primary power generation system for most applications.

This cell phone thing has gotten completely out of hand.  As I was doing my business in the airport bathroom this evening (I was on my way back from Chicago), I had to listen to the guy in the next stall calling his wife to say that he’d be home at 11:00.  First he had to talk to his daughter to find out how her first day of school went, and then his son got on the phone and they discussed the kid’s soccer game.  Sheesh.  Is there anywhere that I can get away from these idiots and their incessant yakking?

Back in November of last year I was wondering why I couldn’t get a combination PDA/mobile phone.  I said that I’d pay $500 for one.  Guess it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.  Sprint PCS recently released their Kyocera Model  QCP 6035 phone/PDA with Palm OS.  One of the guys at the office has one, and it looks pretty sweet.  And at $399, it’s well under the $500 I said I was willing to pay.  I’m looking into it, and will report when I finally obtain one.

And now I have an HTML formatting question that I hope somebody can answer.  If you’re viewing this on a wide screen (like 1600 pixels), then the phone image at left probably overlaps the date line below.  How do I stop that?  If I use a table, then I don’t get the text to wrap below the phone when the screen is narrower.  Any ideas?

How about a Scarecrow-Bot that swims around commercial catfish ponds scaring away pelicans and other birds that poach the fish?  This is a very cool application of robotics.  I sure would have enjoyed working on that software.