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Puzzle Series: What is this, or what do you want it to be?
28 responses to “What’s That? (83)”
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Oh, I wish I could guess. I just hope it is not the inside of something you own and that broke.
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What I think: Looks like a couple of lithium cells (or super caps or zinc-air batteries) + LED backlight… Too small for an e-book reader but perhaps everything else necessary for a bistable display?
What I want: power harvesting (near transparent solar) bistable electronic display for an electronically rotating credit card…
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The board has multiple + and – connections and only minimal electronics, but apparently comes with a whole lotta battery power. Therefore I’m going to guess it is one of those portable adjunct power-supplies/chargers that you can use to extend power to your Kindle, iBook, Mp3 player,… or whatever when you need more than the battery life that comes built-in to those devices.
The bit on the right is just part of the casing, while the led is an indicator of charge level (remaining available power)
Useful on those long flights to Singapore
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I see a demo/development board.. almost every trace is connected to a big easy test point, and there’s not much on the board. Clearly not a part of any consumer product. Its purpose appears to be to show off the gray things, which I suspect are either thin-film batteries, some new variety of flexible high-density capacitor, or wireless power receivers. The traces are quite large for such a little device, which possibly hints at surprisingly large current capacity. I can’t read the chip clearly enough to try and identify it. The panel on the right is of no interest; just a light diffuser there to prove the gray things can power it.
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Looks like a garden-variety solar-powered (recharged) light. Interesting that it has eight independent outputs. Firefly mode?
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The thing on the right is not a solar panel, touch screen, or OLED display because it only has two wires and those are for powering the LED.
There is only one input, the pushbutton, and eight outputs, of which only one is in use. So it can’t be doing anything terribly useful.
The gray ears on the left have to be the power source. They are a bit strange so my guess is the rest of the circuit is there to show off the power source.
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Jim Rees makes a good point about it only having two wires going to the business end… Perhaps it is one of those newfangled OLED Windows, clear when turned off and lit when turned on like Philips is developing.
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An electrical power source, storing the electricity generated by photovoltaic cells ?
The two flat, gray rectangular elements on the left might be a new variety of solid-state ultracapacitors that don’t require organic electrolytes, resulting in high long-term reliability even in harsh temperature environments.
The smudged mirror-like element on the right might be a photovoltaic cell. The circuit board seems designed to support the simultaneous connection of eight such PV cells.
The black IC might be an adaptive DC/DC converter that will sum the electrical currents generated by the PVs.
If the gray elements are indeed capacitors, the black IC’s role would be to adapt/ramp up the DC charging voltage as the capacitors get charged. -
I think I’ll venture a more specific guess now. This is a demo board to show off the gray things, which are thin film carbon nanotube capacitors. Because of the extraordinarily high internal surface area provided by a ‘forest’ of nanotube stumps grown onto the capacitor plates, energy storage densities are on par with chemical batteries, but can charge in seconds, and effectively last forever. These are designed to take up a minimum of space in small gadgets; phones, MP3 players, and so on. The thing on the right is just an LED on a diffuser.
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I believe it is a demonstration unit for a photovoltaic charger for batteries. The green LED indicates battery charge level. The black and blue item is actually a clear piece of acetate I suspect, as upon closer examination you can see wood grain through the back of it and a few fingerprint smudges.
The key is likely the other side of the board. If it contains a new type of photovoltaic cell, then this is a prototype photovoltaic. If it is a standard photovoltaic, then the gray items are a new type of high density electric power storage cells. The gray button triggers the LED to display the charge level. We built some of these LED’s into our rocket avionics power indication systems to validate LiPoly power levels prior to arming electronics for pyro-separation charges.
If I had to bet, having worked with LiPoly batteries, and understanding their power densities, my bet is this is a solar charging system for a new high density power storage system.
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rocketmavericks beat me to it: those gray elements I’d guess are not supercaps, but rather Lithium polymer batteries.
It’s hard to judge the size, but if it’s supercaps you’ll store less than a joule in them, or a few minutes of LED power. LiPolys the same size would store hundred of times more energy, for hours of light. -
I want it to be a flat-panel Theremin. I’m clever enough to appreciate all the other ideas, but too thick to have any more suggestions.
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I think we have a composite of an answer.
Bingo AMagill & Rees – it is a demo board to show off the gray things… but then the team kicks in…
mPosementier and Ladyada were the first to identify the unusually thin Lithium cells on the left. And Posementier’s aspiration for active credit cards is one of the applications of that battery technology. Our first programmer (Ada) is also correct that we have edge-lit plastic on the right.
Rocketmavericks and P^2 correctly identified the special subcomponent – the LiPoly batteries.
Jim Rees is right in his functional analysis and conclusion that “it can’t be doing anything terribly useful” and “the rest of the circuit is there to show off the power source.”
And the scotch tape used in the construction was a clue that these are disposable electronics…
Back in December, I received an interesting Holliday card with a blinking backlit winter scene. The intriguing part was that the entire card felt like a normal Greeting card (note the clues embedded in my prior comment). So after the beauty of the scene finally wore off, I had to take it apart. The power and electronics were on one panel and the red wires crossed across the fold to provide light to the other side.
(I assume that the unused solder pads could drive other lights, and so this could be a decent way to add lights to our night rockets.)
The batteries are thinner than typical greeting card stock paper. They come from Solicore and use a unique lithium polymer matrix with a solid electrolyte. These are conformable to arbitrary shapes and non-toxic. Most batteries have volatile liquids inside which present design limitations and temperature limits.
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I had wondered if they were LiPoly batteries, but I assumed that if you were involved, it must be something a little more exotic. I’ll be interested to see when these start getting combined with flexible printed circuits and flexible displays. I’m imagining complete, simple computers with e-paper displays that look and feel like card paper.
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Recall that I said: I just hope it is not the inside of something you own and that broke. So I guess I was close in that sense. I am impressed by all the answers. This is quite funny that it was a greeting card!
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