Scam or Credible product?

[krish2487]

Hello,
I ran into this website after a colleague referred to it for energy harvesting.


https://www.enocean.com/en/technology/energy-harvesting/


I suspect it is another snake oil scam..


Maybe someone more experienced can comment on whether such claims of extracting energy from motion and RF energy is practical?
I suspect their modules are the low power and ultra low power modules hooked to a supercap and a COTS energy harvesting IC.
 

[larsdenmark]

As long as the power consumption is extremely low there is nothing wrong with energy harvesting. A button press or a single sensor read doesn't consume a lot of energy.

There are more than 8000 videos on YouTube on "enocean" - a lot of these are made by themselves or their partners, but there are also a lot of videos I would consider independent. E.g. the one by Peter Oakes from 2014:

I'm sure that someone would have figured out by now if it is a scam and written about it.

[krish2487]

I stand corrected.. and got to learn something along the way! :-)


Thank you @larsdenmark
It didn't strike me to maybe check on youtube..

[Maxlor]

EnOcean are for real, they've been around for many years, and their products are commercially available.

I dimly remember Dave briefly checking out some of their hardware when it came as part of some energy harvesting kit from... Silabs maybe? Unfortunately I can't find it right now.

[BrianHG]

EnOcean are for real, they've been around for many years, and their products are commercially available.

I dimly remember Dave briefly checking out some of their hardware when it came as part of some energy harvesting kit from... Silabs maybe? Unfortunately I can't find it right now.

Dave doing a video on Peltier TEG device energy harvesting:

[krish2487]

@brianHG and @maxlor.


Thank you. I was uninformed. :-)
Now I am little richer in information.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The Enocean products have been around for many years. their main innovation was a RF receiver that could reliably receive very short packets produced by th eenergy-harvesting transmitters. The switch is a nice solution to avoiding batteries. I have one of their generator modules somewhere - it will produce a fairly bright LED flash when toggled.

[innkeeper]

energy harvesting is real and has been around for a long time.

[mikeselectricstuff]

...but if anyone claims they can charge a phone with it, that's total BS