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After nearly a decade of development and public prototypes, the Mizaru company is ready to unveil the cybereye. A fully cybernetic eye that provides its user/host with high definition vision, enhanced zoom for the more expensive models, and ability to take photos with a special blink.

Originally the cybereye was for the visual impaired or amputees who lost their vision in an unfortunate accident, but now the market has opened to people with rather poor vision wanting a permanent fix, the rich and vain wanting different eye colors or patterns in their eyes.

But Mizaru has run into a problem: what could be a small and compact power source for the cybereye that isn't intrusive (by intrusive I mean further surgery) preferably it would be within the eye socket.

Note:

Near future tech. Fusion is available however I don't know how effectively nuclear can be miniaturized.

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    $\begingroup$ Human eyes consume energy. Why doesn't the artificial eye use the same source of energy, namely the glucose in the blood stream? It must already be able to interface with the optical nerve to send encoded pictures to the brain, and with the motor neurons which carry commands from the brain: and for this it needs to be able to manufacture the required neurotransmitters; so it must already have a means to tap into the blood stream for proteins etc. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 12:51
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    $\begingroup$ @AlexP is glucose enough to run electronics? I do agree using already made sources of power in the body is a good idea $\endgroup$
    – Celestial Dragon Emperor
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 13:12
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    $\begingroup$ The human body consumes between 100 watt at rest and 150 watt doing light work. A compact digital photocamera consumes about 2 to 3 watt in movie mode. I'd say there is plenty of power to spare. How to convert the chemical energy of glucose into electric power is a simple engineering problem. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:48
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    $\begingroup$ @AlexP: Fuel cells that run on glucose already exist, and are being developed for biomedical applications, e.g. chem.utah.edu/news/glucose-biofuel-cell.php WRT power consumption, a lot of the digital camera's power is used for non-imaging things, like running a backlit display and writing the video to memory. One could also assume a couple of generations of improvement in low-power electronics... $\endgroup$
    – jamesqf
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 17:15
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    $\begingroup$ You mention nuclear power - this would be infeasible for 2 reasons. One is that nuclear power does depend on scale - if you don't have enough material to maintain fission, the amount of energy produced is practically 0. The second is that nuclear power depends on temperature differential - that's why they have massive cooling towers. Nuclear power generates heat, you need to dissipate that heat. Your eye socket will burn at 44 centigrade (109 Fahrenheit). $\endgroup$
    – AMADANON Inc.
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 19:31

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Although I like the classic cyberpunk concept that states that nanomachines build a small turbine generator in one of your biggest veins (like the inferior vena cava), I understand you want something built into the eye...

What about an enzymatic generator? It extracts energy from the sugars and fats of your body. You can make it tap into the bloodstream, and wouldn't need a battery (although you probably want to combine with one so if you start using the advanced functions it won't leave your user craving junk food or worse, in a hypoglycemic coma).

SIDENOTE: The enzymatic generators DO exist. It's something the army has been researching because theoretically they can be fed anything organic, so can be very useful. Of course the army ones tend to be on the big size, but can be made today as small as an AA battery, if fueled by pure sugar. They have organic compounds (the enzymes that break down the sugars and fats) that degrade over time (or worse, can overgrow), so your cyberenhanced user will need to do regular maintenance (maybe once or twice a year) to keep the battery enzyme levels on check.

SIDE-SIDENOTE: As I noted in the comments, right now we have the technology to make a decent camera the size of an eyeball and power it, we lack the way to interface it to the brain (and we are reaching there, although right now this tech is very inaccurate and the size of a kidney pouch). The other main problem we have to deal is temperature: CCDs and CMOS are sensitive to temperature and the first are specially prone to overheating. I thought about the enzyme generator because we can use the blood to take away some of the heat in the process, too. For similar reasons I discarded induction, as the efficiency tends to be very low and the rest of the energy dissipates as heat.

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    $\begingroup$ I kinda like the cravings idea. Maybe the social media personalities would all be addicted to some sort of energy drink or flavoured fat $\endgroup$
    – Celestial Dragon Emperor
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 13:13
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    $\begingroup$ @CelestialDragonEmperor "bbq flavoured fried chicken skin snacks... all the energy your implants need" $\endgroup$
    – Stormbolter
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:00
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    $\begingroup$ @TracyCramer that's a pity: I like the idea of feeding my electronics sugar better than feeding them alcohol. Let's hope someone else picks up the research. $\endgroup$
    – Stormbolter
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 16:24
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    $\begingroup$ Yes, disappointing. I was interested in the tech for a different reason and just wrote VT (my alma mater actually) to find out if anyone continued the research and/or if anyone is leasing the tech from them. $\endgroup$
    – Tracy Cramer
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 16:30
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    $\begingroup$ @Stormbolter At least we can still have Bender. $\endgroup$
    – JAB
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 19:15
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Batteries can be made quite small today, and batteries can be recharged wirelessly by magnetic resonance. So feasibly, the battery could be implanted in the temple near the eye and be recharged by putting a charger against the temple.

It might also be possible to charge the eye simply with the light that enters it. If the battery is running low, just stare at the sun for a few minutes.

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    $\begingroup$ +1 only for staring at the sun as a solution. $\endgroup$
    – IT Alex
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:17
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    $\begingroup$ Suggestion: Rather than placing a charger against your temple, why not embed it into a pillow? You place your device (head) on the charger every night... $\endgroup$
    – rsandler
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:50
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    $\begingroup$ Clearly the answer is to embed a plug in the nasal cavity. $\endgroup$
    – User1000547
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 15:08
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    $\begingroup$ You assume there will be much sun in our nice smog-filled city... :D $\endgroup$
    – Stormbolter
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 16:45
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    $\begingroup$ This makes me curious why solar-powered cameras aren't more of a thing. $\endgroup$
    – Skyler
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 17:14
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Body Heat AND Solar Power

This has already been done successfully with this smart watch. For solar power, eyes are open for the majority of the time you are awake and a cybernetic one could charge through light energy as you go about your day.

Of course, this would just be a supplement to the main source of energy, body heat. The eye socket is inside the body, which is always much warmer than our outer-layer of skin, especially our wrists.

If the smart watch mentioned above can have so much functionality (step tracking, time, gps, heart rate, calorie counter, etc) while only running on body heat from an extremity, imagine the power that could be generated from a place closer to the center of your body and embedded in it.

And technology will only increase in ability in the future, so I think this would be a very plausible solution.

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    $\begingroup$ That smartwatch uses the temperature difference between the body and the surrounding air to harvest energy. It's not as simple as putting it on or in a warm environment, you need heat exchange with a colder medium (air). For an eye which is mostly residing within the body, it would be tougher to implement than with the watch since the surface of the eye in contact with the air that could be dedicated to heat exchange is quite small. Not impossible though. $\endgroup$
    – Aubreal
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 18:30
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    $\begingroup$ @AlexandreAubrey not only that would be tougher, the inside of the body is supposed to stay more or less at the same temperature. If you succeed in removing inner heat, you have just added a place in your body where all kinds of biology can go wrong. $\endgroup$
    – Gnudiff
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 22:12
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    $\begingroup$ @Alexandre Aubrey: I wonder how well that body heat-powered device works in the summer, when air and body temperatures are close to equal. $\endgroup$
    – jamesqf
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 1:10
  • $\begingroup$ All things considered I don't think you can get more than 1mW average useable power out of a solar panel the size of an eye. $\endgroup$
    – user4574
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 23:18
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    $\begingroup$ THIS! Everyone else is making it unnecessarily complicated. @AlexandreAubrey its more than enough, given that the tech has advanced quite a bit. Remember: you need hardly any energy. All you need to do is trigger some nerves, that's it $\endgroup$
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Apr 17, 2019 at 8:46
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Muscle movements

In an automatic quartz clock, the wrist movements cause the rotation of a small pinion, which is connected to a small power generator.
I think that somebody willing to implant an artificial eye in place of his own one, wouldn't mind having another dozen of small implants in some other places of his body plus a more invasive surgical operation.
So, he could implant small mechanical generators in some of his most-used muscles of the head (neck, jaw, shoulders), which would be cabled to the eye in order to power it.
The daily movement should generate enough energy to power the eye, while during the sleep there would be no need to power it. Morevoer, in case of low voltage, the wearer could move his head or jaw to generate extra power (which, of course, could make him look a bit awkward in public).
The only diffulty would be how to connect the generators to the eye: they could implant some under skin cables to the eye (simpler but less elegant solution), or they could have developed a technic of using organical tissues as electric waveguides

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    $\begingroup$ Could you generate enough power from the frequent movement of the eye in its socket? Similar to a self-winding watch? $\endgroup$
    – Robin Bennett
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 10:53
  • $\begingroup$ @Robin Bennett it was the first idea that came to my mind. But I think that the muscles of the eye socket alone couldn't generate enough power for a photocamera to work properly. $\endgroup$
    – McTroopers
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 15:57
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    $\begingroup$ The eye is making small but abrupt movements (saccades) all the time while you're looking at things. "Abrupt" means "rapid acceleration and deceleration", which means "easy to tap into with an inertial mass and coils". Not clear that that would be enough power, but as this is SF, low-power electronics don't require that much suspension of disbelief. (Shooting a damaging laser beam from the eye, on the other hand, is right out.) $\endgroup$
    – jeffB
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 17:40
  • $\begingroup$ I wanted to suggest something similar. One of the most active muscles in the human body is the eye. However, we can't really use the same muscle that we wanted to use to power, as power. How about rather using the other eye's movement as a power source? $\endgroup$
    – WynDiesel
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 11:59
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A glucose based fuel cell would be a good fit. The fluid around the brain is full of glucose. The fuel cell and a brain/machine interface circuit would be placed somewhere inside the skull. The fuel cell would use that glucose to generate small amounts of electricity to power both the eye and the interface between the eye and the brain. The eye would plug into that interface using a plug at the back of the eye socket.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/ho2/

With respect to a solar powered eye:
 The sun puts out about 1000W/m^2 at sea-level in the middle of a bright sunny day. Assuming the sxposed surface on the front of the eye availbe for a solar panel is about 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch then that equates to about 1/6W of available energy. Todays solare panels are about 20% efficient at best, so you would be able to caputure about 32mW peak if staring right at the sun in the middle of the day.

On aveage the suns output is closer to 340W/m^2 averaged over a day so the average delivered power would be closer to 10mW if the eye stared at the sun all day. Of course if the eye is indoors or looking away from the sun most of the time then the eye is likely to receive less than 1mW of average useable power, and for solar to be viable the eye would on average need to consume less than 1mW.

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  • $\begingroup$ +1 for the 2014 Stanford link, but other answers and comments have already provided other links. $\endgroup$
    – Law29
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 21:37
  • $\begingroup$ "and for solar to be viable the eye would on average need to consume less than 1mW" which will probably be the case. Unless we're talking about manipulating/filtering the image you see, there is amlost no power needed $\endgroup$
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Apr 17, 2019 at 8:53
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Try using the same thing which powers a cybernetic ear, or what boring people call "a hearing aid", which is typically a tiny lithium battery.

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  • $\begingroup$ Which is great. Until your year (or maybe two) is up and you have to replace it... $\endgroup$
    – Cyn
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:14
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    $\begingroup$ I agree with @Cyn, replacing the battery of a hearing aid without being able to hear wouldn't be nearly as difficult as replacing the battery of a cybernetic eye whilst blind. $\endgroup$
    – Levi C. Olson
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 16:07
  • $\begingroup$ @DJSpicyDeluxe-Levi There's that. I was also thinking, how do you replace the battery that's inside your eye socket? $\endgroup$
    – Cyn
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 16:20
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    $\begingroup$ I've met two people with glass eyes who love to pop them out as a party trick. Would there need to be much more to this than a surgically installed dock at the ocular nerve? $\endgroup$
    – Alex H.
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 21:31
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Owner's blood! + Light + Blood additives

Because:

  • It does not requires much space, which you don't have.
  • It is abundant in the body.
  • It does not interferes with mechanisms of vision.

Additionally:

  • Photovoltaic panel.

  • Blood additives that makes blood more efficient.

See also:

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    $\begingroup$ I like this idea. Especially because you could just use the blood for transporting tiny battery like things which you charge elsewhere in the body. $\endgroup$
    – genesis
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:48
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    $\begingroup$ @ESL I like the added health benefits like more efficient blood $\endgroup$
    – Celestial Dragon Emperor
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:55
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    $\begingroup$ If you need more electricity than these produce, remember: the eye is shut at least 6 hours a day on average, so you could have an internal small battery which is charged up from glucose by night $\endgroup$
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Apr 17, 2019 at 8:52
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Glass eyes have existed for a while, and can be removed and re-inserted at will. While a cybernetic eye would need to have an interface into the nervous system, that piece could remain inside the skull, powered by the cyber-eye. This lets you pop the cyber-eye out at the end of the day, put it in the charger, and go to sleep. All of this is basically within our current technology; we just need to figure out how to interface with the nervous system and get better battery tech.

It also lets the company sell you a variety of cyber-eyes without needing surgery to swap them out.

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  • $\begingroup$ With a low power magnet to pull the eye into place in the socket and pull it into alignment after it is inserted? $\endgroup$
    – Underverse
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 11:41
  • $\begingroup$ @user3757614 I'm thinking Mizaru would have a apple style scheme instead of "updating" or changing the physical appearances of an eye you have to buy a new one. This method works pretty well with that idea. $\endgroup$
    – Celestial Dragon Emperor
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 12:17
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Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) driven from motion of the eyelid. There is a cool little article on the U-TENG from Clemson Univeristy, which you could build yourself. Blink a few times and simple static electricity buildup between two conductors (one in the eyelid, and the other in the eye) would be enough to the boot the eyeball OS, otherwise known as Eye-OS, which is incredibly cool just by itself.

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    $\begingroup$ Eye-OS... hold on there mac, I see where you're going with this. $\endgroup$
    – Ruadhan
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 9:06
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Battery, changed daily.

As part of her wake-up ritual, your cyborg will swap out her eyeball.

The swapping probe goes straight into the pupil, so it's easy to do it oneself. The eek factor passes after the first dozen times.

(optional: after a few unfortunate accidents, the swapping probe has a camera and AI to sound a loud alarm if a sleepy cyborg with a single cyber-eye is about to poke their other eye)

Some hygiene applies, but no surgery-grade stuff. The eyeball is detached from a machine-machine interface. Except for the eyelid, all machine-meat interfaces are fixed and unexposed and take surgery to mess with. The fixed machine parts take energy from the swappable part.

The optic lenses and other components are in the eyeball and are swapped out with the battery for engineering tradeoff reasons. The new eyeball has a new set of each of these, a duplication that would otherwise be unnecessary.

The old eyeball spends the day in a wired charger and becomes a new eyeball.

A more cost-conscious consumer with one good natural eye could make do with taking their eyeball out to charge overnight and get it back in the morning. It's not like you need both eyes to dream.

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    $\begingroup$ I'm suddenly remembering those trackball mice with the removable ball you could pop in and out over and over again when you were bored. $\endgroup$
    – Muuski
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 22:27
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Since we're already doing invasive surgery to hook it up to the eyeball..

Lets go Bio-punk!

How about getting some cardio tissue (like that found in the heart) and building a sort of electrical generator using the body's existing autonomic nervous system to trigger it.

Essentially you'd have a muscle pumping in time with your heart, mechanically pulling a little electrical dynamo to generate power for your implant(s)

Properly hooked up, the tissue would operate off the body's existing biology with no further effort, no caustic battery fluids, reliable power for as long as your heart keeps beating and minimal maintenance or heat-buildup.

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  • $\begingroup$ and thus was born bio punk. Honestly I love the sci-fi tech that is a fusion or organic and mechanic. $\endgroup$
    – Celestial Dragon Emperor
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 12:13
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Clockwork.

Just have a little clockwork generator in the skull with a key socket accessible in the temple. You can wind yourself up at night.

My solution has the advantage of looking extremely cool/ridiculous, and of being usable on long camping trips away from the grid.

The only very minor issue is if you overwind, the spring snaps, and twangs into your brain instantly lobotomising you.

ClockEye Inc. accept no responsibility for out-of-parameter use of their products, however as a goodwill gesture, any customer or representative presenting a doctor's certificate for severe frontal lobe trauma linked to any of our products will receive a free six month subscription to The Reality TV Channel.

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    $\begingroup$ I am never buying any of your products should you ever invent and sell anything. Just saying. +1 for the key windup idea though. $\endgroup$
    – Underverse
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 11:42
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    $\begingroup$ @Underverse In normal operation* our products are perfectly safe and covered by our comprehensive** guarantee. (* +/- 10%, ** Optional purchase) $\endgroup$
    – Whelkaholism
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 11:47
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I'm surprised no-one here uses an electric toothbrush, or has seen contactless phone charging.

So your eye has a rechargeable battery in it which gets topped up wirelessly at intervals. The charging coil would most likely be built in round the outside of the iris. Every so often, you'd put on a glasses frame with a charging surface over one eye to recharge it, of course only charging one eye at a time so you can still see.

The eye has to be very low power, otherwise the heat dissipated will cook the flesh around it. So we already know we don't have much power drain on the battery. Hearing aids tend to be a yearly battery swap. Allowing that cameras and associated electronics use more power, you might only need to charge your eye every month.

Note that although the battery is small, charging will have to be relatively slow compared to regular electronics. Batteries warm up when they're being charged, and again we don't want to cook ourselves.

So once a month, you put on your "charging glasses" for the evening and watch TV with one eye, while the other eye charges up. Pretty simple really.

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  • $\begingroup$ The problem is heat dissipation. If it wasn't they had artificial hearts without external battery nowadays $\endgroup$
    – yunzen
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 8:57
  • $\begingroup$ @yunzen Yep, that's why charging is going to have to be slow. It'll just need careful monitoring of battery temperature to stay safe. Unlike a heart though, you can physically touch the charger to the eye (or at least get it close) so you don't have the problem of a charger needing to work through skin. $\endgroup$
    – Graham
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 9:08
  • $\begingroup$ "no-one here uses an electric toothbrush, or has seen contactless phone charging"? The top answer right now is a small battery charged wirelessly... $\endgroup$
    – Aubreal
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 13:25
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There's some advanced tech today that can run on body heat, but as this is sci-fi, you can take that much further and run with that idea.

So ideally instead of building a storage system that has to run infinitely or be replaced, you'd have it get energy from the body's own systems. Maybe from the beating of the heart, or glucose in the blood stream, or even oxygen in the blood stream. I mean you've got a power source right there in the human body, so why not use it.

But some of the functions are far beyond what regular eyes do, so I would think those functions would take extra energy. In that case, you'd want storage. Basically a tiny re-chargeable battery that temporarily stores energy (like a solar battery) but can't hold a charge for very long and constantly has to be renewed.

Either it stores energy while you sleep (in which case the extra functions are limited in a per-day capacity) or it stores excess energy as you go, in which case the capacity to use the extra functions will "recharge" in a few minutes/hours or whatever.

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I'd suggest a small thermogalvinic cell it uses low heat differential to generate electric current directly. You just siphon off a little bodily heat and create energy. Furthermore it would use liquid/fluid so it could look and act like a real eye ball full of jelly and everything.

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  • $\begingroup$ Siphon the heat off into where? $\endgroup$
    – jeffB
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 17:44
  • $\begingroup$ @jeffB from the body (warm) to the air in front of it (cold): Or if you live in a desert, reverse it. When the eye is closed, no heat could be transfered, true, but you also don't need power when its closed $\endgroup$
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Apr 17, 2019 at 8:50
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Plutonium powered RTGs (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) were used in pacemakers in the 1960s.

Betavoltaics were used in pacemakers in the 1970s.

Not the most practical method per se, but nuclear powered eyeballs has a cool factor that's hard to beat.

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Just plug it in

Let's face it - what could be more cyberpunk than an illustration of someone with a cable stuck in their eye?

Use standard rechargeable cells within the eye. Have a power socket in that eyeball that becomes accessible by rolling your eyes. Impose a requirement to plug it in for five minutes every X days, with X determined by the needs of your story.

Alternatively, the eye can be removable, just as current cosmetic eye prosthetics are. In that case, someone could be using just one eye while the other is recharging, or a rich person could have a spare eye or two to use during charging. But the cable-in-the-eye visualization is a powerful, gritty image that sets the tone for the entire setting, so it may be a stronger tool story-wise.

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  • $\begingroup$ might not even need to be a socket, or to roll the eye. There could be two unobtrusive contacts on the surface of the eye, and a specialized eye patch to designed to connect to them. $\endgroup$
    – user42528
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 14:14
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Depending on your power draw, it may be possible to run your implant entirely from the patient's own body heat. If it's particularly high you may still need to replace the battery, but having it constantly recharge will extend its life, reducing the number of battery replacement surgeries required.

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Just make the eyeball removable. I have a friend with a glass eye and he can pop it out whenever he wants.

Mizaru surgically implants the "port" in the skull and interface to the brain, then the eyeball just slots into the socket/port. The eyeball could contain a battery and it could easily be replaced or recharge with the eye out.

The best part of this is that you could have multiple eyes with different aesthetics and functions.

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  • $\begingroup$ Doable, but absolutely not elegant enough for futuristic implants. $\endgroup$
    – Hobbamok
    Commented Apr 17, 2019 at 8:49
  • $\begingroup$ @hobbamok why do you say that? He's writing fiction, he can make it as elegant as he wants. $\endgroup$
    – DMfiend
    Commented Apr 22, 2019 at 13:20
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Blinking

Blinking is a reflex reaction that happens multiple times per minutes (15-20). Coopting the blink reflex for energy production could be as simple as adding a piezo-electric element to the muscles responsible for blinking.

Of note, this could be done with much larger muscle groups as well. For example, chewing food could generate electricity, at the moderate cost of just a slightly harder bite, which the body would compensate for in a matter of weeks anyway.

A separate mechanism could be used to couple/uncouple the piezo-electric elements so that the resistance could be turned off and on, in order to remove forces that impair movement. For example, you gluteus maximus (butt muscle) could have its generating elements disengaged in response to high adrenalin (Fight or flight) so that all of your body's resources can be used free from resistance in an emergency.

Secondary would be that piezo-electric elements can be used to generate force using power instead of the reverse. In essence, you could use an external power source to increase resistance to motion, getting muscle training using everyday actions. You could then deactivate the resistance for maximum muscle power.

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Radiowaves

The actual energy requirements for an eyeball are pretty tiny, and much of it is directly provided from photons hitting the "retina", so you power source doesn't need to be high voltage. Meanwhile, our world is bathed in a whole range of electromagnetic waves both deliberately produced for TVs, Radios, and mobile communication, and spewed out as waste by a host of electrical equipment. A small antenna, located on the front side of the eye behind the iris, could yield sufficient energy to charge the small battery that then drives the eye's additional functions.

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    $\begingroup$ The power received by antennas for the purpose of telecommunication is incredibly small. This won't work. $\endgroup$
    – Aubreal
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 13:30
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexandreAubrey: It is incredibly small. But it doesn't need to be more than incredibly small, there's almost nothing to power. $\endgroup$
    – Jack Aidley
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 13:34
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    $\begingroup$ I don't think you know just how small the received power is. For example, my phone is currently receiving -52dBm of power from my router through my wifi connection. This translates to 0.0000000063 Watts. This is actually quite a high amount for a wifi signal, I'm fairly close to the router. For a sense of scale, a typical quartz wristwatch runs off roughly 0.0002 Watts of power, and that's one of the lowest-power everyday items most people have. Harvesting power from electromagnetic signals meant for telecommunications is futile. $\endgroup$
    – Aubreal
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 14:07
  • $\begingroup$ I kinda like this idea, imagining a cyberpunk city where there's just so much excess EM around that people are using it as a supplementary energy supply :P $\endgroup$
    – Ruadhan
    Commented Apr 18, 2019 at 9:13
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Compressed Gas Energy Storage

The challenges and risks of integrating this storage solution are minimal at best and can be overcome in the initial phase.

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    $\begingroup$ Whilst it would be possible, you need a lot more detail of why it's a good idea, and how you'd recharge it. $\endgroup$
    – Graham
    Commented Apr 16, 2019 at 9:13
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A quartz crystal

We used quartz crystal to make watches before electronics and batteries were invented. The quartz has a properties that allows to transform mecanical forces into electric charges, and vice versa. For old watches, you had to move the wrist a few seconds to "recharge" the quartz for a few hours.

In your case, the quartz could be linked to the muscles of the eyes: when the muscles move, the quartz charges itself. You wink between 10 to 20 times a minutes, and your eyes moves a lot more, even in your sleep, you could thus have an infinite source of energy for the quartz.

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    $\begingroup$ The quartz in a quartz clock is used as the timekeeping device, not the power source. These devices were invented in the 1920s and popularized in the 1960s, well after electronics and batteries were available. Automatic, self-winding watches use natural movement to wind a mechanical ratchet, not to "recharge" a quartz crystal. $\endgroup$
    – Nuclear Hoagie
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:24
  • $\begingroup$ @NuclearWang, you are correct, but it is still true that small amounts of pressure on quartz creates electromotive force which if properly harvested, can charge a small cell. I am skeptical, though, that body movements provide enough pressure. On the other hand, the grooves in vinyl records were able to cause a quartz crystal to reproduce enough signal to drive an amplifier for music. $\endgroup$
    – WGroleau
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 15:45
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    $\begingroup$ the piezoelectric effect produces very small amounts of energy, and is not what powered watches. $\endgroup$
    – Aubreal
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 19:11
  • $\begingroup$ @WGroleau the crystal at the end of the stylus is just a guiding device to stay in the groove, the electric signal is produced in the cartridge by a magnet and a coil. $\endgroup$
    – Aubreal
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 19:13
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    $\begingroup$ A typical piezoelectric generator produces nanowatts of power. Typical camera power consumption is measured in milliwatts. There's a bit of a scale difference there. $\endgroup$
    – Mark
    Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 20:43

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