Power Lines
By "coupling to a power line," I mean that you're extracting usable energy from a nearby power line via inductance. Simply put, AC power lines emit waves just like a radio station. By placing a coil, or better yet a tuned LC circuit (coil and capacitor) near a power line, the energy around the power line will be coupled into your coil/LC circuit. The process is similar to striking a tuning fork and placing it near another tuning fork that's tuned to the same frequency. Both will vibrate, the second being affected by the first.
Through this method, if you're simply lighting up an LED, nobody will complain. However, if you start extracting serious power, it creates an imbalance in the grid and be assured the power company WILL investigate. If they trace it back to you, you're screwed. There are plenty of court cases related to such activity and plenty of people who went to jail for it. That's why I said earlier, DON'T do it.
Having said all that, there's plenty of electrical "noise" in the air, especially if you're in a big city. The challenge is to figure out an economical way to "funnel" all that noise into a circuit that will combine it all and produce a usable amount of electrical power.
Like I said previously, study up on crystal radios. They're the basis of such a device. The crystal radio tunes to one frequency at a time (radio stations, for example). Once you've done that, use your intuition ("Use the Force, Luke!") to figure out how to receive multiple frequencies at the same time. Then you'll be on to something!
Chris
By "coupling to a power line," I mean that you're extracting usable energy from a nearby power line via inductance. Simply put, AC power lines emit waves just like a radio station. By placing a coil, or better yet a tuned LC circuit (coil and capacitor) near a power line, the energy around the power line will be coupled into your coil/LC circuit. The process is similar to striking a tuning fork and placing it near another tuning fork that's tuned to the same frequency. Both will vibrate, the second being affected by the first.
Through this method, if you're simply lighting up an LED, nobody will complain. However, if you start extracting serious power, it creates an imbalance in the grid and be assured the power company WILL investigate. If they trace it back to you, you're screwed. There are plenty of court cases related to such activity and plenty of people who went to jail for it. That's why I said earlier, DON'T do it.
Having said all that, there's plenty of electrical "noise" in the air, especially if you're in a big city. The challenge is to figure out an economical way to "funnel" all that noise into a circuit that will combine it all and produce a usable amount of electrical power.
Like I said previously, study up on crystal radios. They're the basis of such a device. The crystal radio tunes to one frequency at a time (radio stations, for example). Once you've done that, use your intuition ("Use the Force, Luke!") to figure out how to receive multiple frequencies at the same time. Then you'll be on to something!
Chris
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