No Batteries Required - New Camera Runs Forever
Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 17:20
in Physics & Chemistry
A research team has created a prototype video camera that is fully self-powered. Solar panels and digital cameras obviously have different purposes - one converts light to power while the other simply measures it - but both are constructed from essentially the same components. At the heart of any digital camera is an image sensor, a chip with millions of pixels. The key enabling device in a pixel is the photodiode, which produces an electric current when exposed to light. This mechanism enables each pixel to measure the intensity of light falling on it. The same photodiode is also used in solar panels to convert incident light to electric power. read more