Bangalore: Next time when you talk on your mobile phone, you can also charge it simultaneously! Three students of Air Force School, Hebbal, have developed a device that can charge your mobile phone as you speak.
Class 12 students of the school Prajual P.J. and Ganeshsiva S. and Class Nine student Shriram have developed the circuit for the device by spending just Rs 10 with the material bought from SP Road.
The students told Deccan Chronicle that the circuitry can be built into a mobile phone or it can be an external dongle.
“Our effort is to find alternative and environment friendly methods to charge the phone while talking by extracting energy from the surroundings. This device uses radio waves transmitted and received during a call and converts into electrical pulses to charge the phone. Radio waves possess energy and our device taps this energy using a simple antenna, diode and a capacitor,” they said.
“During our experiment, the device recorded 0.9 volts of energy. Though it cannot sustain a mobile phone charge forever, it ensures that the phone is charged for 35.6 per cent more time than the normal, which ensures up to three hours of additional battery backup,” they said.
Shriram said that they spent just Rs 10 on the circuit. “This device can be built into mobile phones as it takes up very little space. It can also be used as an external dongle. We developed the device in two weeks. It has been selected for the finals of the Teenovators Competition organised by the Manipal University,” he said.
Prajual said that the cost of the prototype was just Rs 500 and was developed with the materials available at home. “We can provide this device for just Rs 350 if the production is taken up in large scale,” he added.
