Energy Harvesting and Sustainability in IoT | IoT For All Podcast E129 | ARMOR’s John Fiske
you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcast on the iot for all media network i'm your host ryan chicone one of the co-creators of iot for all now before we jump into this episode please don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or join our newsletter at iotforall.com newsletter to catch all the newest episodes as soon as they come out before we get started does your business waste hours searching for assets like equipment or vehicles and pay full-time employees just to manually enter location and status data you can get real-time location and status updates for assets indoors and outdoors at the lowest cost possible with leverage's end-to-end iot solutions to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything.com so without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome john to the iot for all show thanks for being here this week yeah welcome ryan uh so i'd love to start this off by just having you give a quick introduction about yourself and kind of walk our audience through maybe your background experience a little bit anything you think will be relevant for them to learn okay so i'm john fisk i'm a business developer manager for armored server films today i'm in charge of business development or our product which is called asca and which is a very thin photovoltaic film that we use to uh to power all iot related devices in indoor and outdoor so that's we also have so other business unit and segment that we address with with armored therapy films because today armor is specialized in the industrial formation of ink and coating of thin layers onto thin films and we used these expertise to to develop to really develop this solar film in fact to address to address many segments such as the buildings the transportation and and also the iot because today there's a real programmatic the for iot to be able to be powered because most of them are using bay trees that are not very well sustainable absolutely um can you talk a little bit more about the technology itself kind of in its application and how you all use it right now so for instance and are there any use cases or deployments out in the world that you'd be comfortable sharing and talking a little bit more in detail about uh yeah yeah for sure for um for example so we are using today the the photovoltaic film on the workplace management system with one of our partners which is called the homes sa which is a swiss company that are developing a kind of ink screen which is used uh for the for meeting rooms uh in companies and so on to be able to book meeting rooms and they are providing this hardware screen with a very low energy consumption and today they worked with us to to make this uh this screen totally autonomous so which means that uh at the back of the screen we used very thin uh asca film to be able to uh to power and to charge the the inside bakery of the of the screen to make it uh fully autonomous so in fact usually the the screen is uh is put on on the glass at the outside the meeting room and then the light can go through this glass to uh to power the film and and also to power and to recharge the the screen so this is a brand new solution uh which is also a very low power resolution sustainable solution that has been developed with with homes and uh which also uh uh make uh them uh very proud of uh of this product because that's a first of its kind on the on the market and uh for sure having a fully autonomous product it means that they avoid all the problems for the maintenance of the bakery part of their screens so which is a very good for all the operators of such systems fantastic and when it comes to the technology that you all have built are there any particular industries that you all focus on when it comes to kind of selling into so uh yeah today the segment the segment i'm focusing on is the let's say the iot or all the connected electronics and hardware market which means that we will try to install and to power all kind of electronic device so which means that it can be some manufacturers of iot devices that can install the photovoltaic film to be able to power and to harvest energy from the environment in the uh or outdoor to really power their their devices so either make them fully autonomous when it's possible when it's a very low power device iot device such as a temperature sensors and so on or to be able to um uh to increase the lifespan of of their sensors uh if it's uh sensors that use a bit more energy uh we can be able to uh to increase the lifespan of the bay tree from two to three years uh from from five to seven years for example and again it will uh lower uh for sure the maintenance costs that's great and so i wanted to take a step back and talk a little more high level here for about a topic that we don't have the opportunity to speak to too many guests about but i think it's super important to um to inform our audience and and kind of could go a little deeper into and that is uh the conversation around energy harvesting can you talk uh at a relatively high level about what energy harvesting actually is um and just kind of how it works yeah so sure a hundred term of uh energy harvesting so there is a different technologies uh which mechanical piezoelectrical where you can collect energy so the basic idea is really to collect energy from your environment and here with with the solar fin for sure we collect energy from from the light either it can be sunlight or also artificial light from from led lighting for example in indoor environment and so the solar film in fact transforms the the light into electrons and into electricity to be able to power the device or recharge batteries gotcha okay that's awesome and what are the overall benefits of energy harvesting and by what i mean by that is why do companies kind of look towards energy harvesting as an element of an iot solution yeah so because uh today so the the iot market is a very huge potential market there is a let's say several billions of iot two days most of them are using bay trees first of all bay trees are not very sustainable in terms of recyclability and so it's really to be able to uh to lower the use of bay into the next generation iot and also it will allow to uh as i said increase lifespan of the of the equipment of the devices and by integrating lifespan of the devices so you you lower the maintenance cost and the financial and human cost associated gotcha and where are we kind of just as an industry as whole not necessarily just where you all focus but where are we seeing energy harvesting utilize the most and where in your mind do you see the biggest growth opportunity for energy harvesting is there a particular industry a particular use case application that energy harvesting maybe hasn't cracked into yet that you see as a kind of a big frontier for for the technology so yeah for sure so iot is a market that we target because uh we really think there is a huge potential no all the application or use case uh are good use case we have to find the right use case but uh such different kind of applications it could be uh for example uh iot tracker device uh that are usually working uh on the battery and that lasts for uh a few weeks few months that we can add energy and increase their their lifetime right and also for the smart building and indoor environment so yeah we can we can think of uh equip of uh solar film all kinds of uh of devices uh for sure that that are kind of very uh simple sensors such as a temperature uh pressure level uh co2 and so on right uh that usually we cannot uh guarantee that they are working because uh we have to change the the patriot once a year uh once uh every six months and so on so here we can really increase and make them totally autonomous so which means that for the the whole life span lifestyle of the equipment which could be uh 10 years 15 years you don't have to to take care of the energy and they transport that's fantastic and let me let me ask just um from your standpoint you mentioned batteries obviously you play do play a role here but the idea is to kind of help improve the battery life and within the sustainability element of it so how as you know as we kind of move forward in iot how do you see the role of batteries kind of playing a part in iot over time and you know do you feel like we get to a point where we stop using batteries or we just stop using less batteries focus more on the rechargeable with you know the energy harvesting component to ensure that we don't have to change them out uh and create more waste like what what is it about the battery element that um where do you think we can get to on that front from a sustainability standpoint yeah so yeah for sure so i think we will still use a battery in the future uh either for iot or for uh electric cars that's that's for sure uh but i think the point that we'll try uh to use it more efficiently and more intelligently just to be able to uh to minimize as much as possible the use of battery for sure there's a new battery technologies that will be held for for a different kind of application and use cases but really for for the sensor part uh the idea is really to to collect and harvest energy from from the environment because that's for sure that's uh less expensive than uh using battery either from a financial part and also for assessed enabled part and and for the planet right right and now if we kind of break that out into kind of a further discussion around sustainability for iot at a high level how do you feel like we can make iot more sustainable and kind of what does that even mean to make iot more sustainable in your mind so yeah in my mind so for sure uh before uh looking uh to have energy resting uh you have to work on the energy consumption of the the iot devices because everything has to to be anticipated uh at the first step of the the design of uh of devices and so on uh to really be able to uh to use uh less energy as possible and it's uh there was already a lot of work that has been done on that subject either for the sensor part or the communication part with uh with low bandwidth protocols such as sick fox and so on so that's uh that that's really something you have to think as a eco-conception design first and then for sure the last step uh you can add energies thing because your device uh will allow you to use these are energy arresting technology that collects very few energy but that will be enough because you worked before on the energy consumption and aside from the battery element that we've already talked about as it contributes to sustainability what other kind of things come out of us improving sustainability like when iot kind of reaches a higher sustainability threshold what kind of benefits do you see feel like we're going to see as an industry as an industry for sure you will have a let's say more more durable products more efficient products and a new yeah also the operators uh will be uh it will be the best for uh for operators uh to be to be able to uh to be sure uh that the product is is working well uh without uh without thinking of of energy part right uh yeah i think that's yeah that's really a breakthrough uh the next breakthrough uh point for the for iot devices to be uh to be able to be fully autonomous because iot makers uh they are selling the products but then it's not the one that are going to buildings and uh on-site uh to to change batteries so that's it will be for sure a unique value proposal for for them to sell this kind of product that that needs very very low maintenance yeah that makes a lot of sense and um one other question i had about kind of sustainability element of it is do you i guess do you see any use cases or applications where it's going to be difficult for us to get to or to see major improvements on the sustainability side and the reason i ask is because obviously when it comes to energy harvesting if we're pulling in energy from let's say the sun to help repower batteries and keep them charged for devices there are obviously a lot of iot applications out there where the energy requirement to run them efficiently is requires a lot of power and i'm just not sure from my own standpoint because i'm i'm not in i don't work in the energy harvesting space necessarily um how much power we can actually generate from from those types of situations and uh in order to power the devices so what i'm asking really is are there any use cases you kind of see besides like autonomous cars and things like that per se are there any kind of use cases or applications that you think need more technology advancements or technological advancements in order for us to be able to provide better results on the energy harvesting front in order to make those applications more sustainable i'm assuming things that require very high power consumption um are probably on that list yeah yeah for sure and for example the best example can be uh smartphones that are for sure there is a very high energy consumptions and uh today for sure we cannot uh use some uh some solar films to uh to power and to recharge a smartphone and because also the smartphone industry is a bit different because uh it tends to uh to transmit more and more data with a telecommunication network uh that yeah really send a lot of a lot of data and uh right i think in the future it will not uh decrease for sure so probably we need we need more and more power uh because the the need for a bandwidth uh will increase uh much than the the progress in the the telecommunication network uh with 5g and so on for sure maybe it will uh we will have a lower energy consumption but we will need much more uh data uh that i've been with so so this kind of thing it's uh it will be uh difficult to uh to advance for sure we'll have a progress and improvement on bay trees part right but we still still have the the cable to to charge the smartphone the seed of instead of a solar solar fin yeah yeah from a smartphone standpoint it's interesting because i've seen and i actually own chargers for smartphones that are solar powered so you can basically leave it out in the sun if you're camping or outside all day and it'll charge the battery within the recharge unit and then you can plug that into your phone to get you know some extra power i don't know how much it actually will you know what percentage it will charge the phone but um it seems like there's you know obviously some ways to kind of connect smartphones energy harvesting but um to your point being able to do it directly on the phone is is probably a major challenge yeah yeah that's really a major challenge because uh for sure when we are talking about energy harvesting uh we're not talking about uh let's see outdoor solar panels that can can get more energy from the direct sun when you are in the indoor environment so you have uh i mean one thousand ten thousand times less energy than in outdoor and even more so yeah that's a really very uh very low low power with uh with milliwatt and microwaves which is not the level of what the smartphone is needing but for sure we can have a kind of uh solar solar panels or solar films uh that we can use for outdoor to charge a smartphone but uh it will be an extra an extra equipment and extra bucks that that we can use but it will not be directly integrated on the smartphone gotcha okay cool one of the last questions i had for you was when it comes to energy harvesting what do you see as or what would you say are the biggest challenges that existed when you all kind of venture down this path to build your offering to the market and technology and then also going forward where do you see the biggest challenges for energy harvesting and then just kind of how how you overcome those oh yeah i think the yeah the main challenge in the the iot uh industry today is that um for sure uh everybody thinks that uh yeah using batteries is good because uh okay battery uh when you buy millions of batteries that's uh very cheap uh for sure uh so a lot of manufacturers so they do not care so much about uh changing the electronics and so on to be able to to harvest energy because that's so cheap to have to buy bay trees in fact uh so that's yeah that's the the thing we have to to change the mind we have to change to to make them think that okay we can have equal consumption of products uh we can anticipate uh on the next generation of products right to really be able to integrate uh such electronics and lower the consumption of the of the electronic of the device uh to integrate such technologies uh that can harvest energy directly and uh and avoid totally the the batteries or at least lower the size of batteries emitted that's fantastic well you know this has been a really interesting conversation for me i haven't released and we talked about this earlier haven't really spoken to too many individuals who um you know have focused on energy harvesting it's been mentioned obviously you know the importance of it and what it is but not into this detail so john i really appreciate your time and kind of coming in and you know educating our audience on energy harvesting and kind of the importance of of it now as well as kind of how can contribute to the sustainability of iot in the future um so as we kind of finish up here i wanted to see if there are any interesting maybe news or items on on the the horizon that our audience should kind of be paying attention for uh or paying attention to for coming out of kind of coming out armor yeah so i was just very glad to talk about energizing with you uh and thanks for the opportunity absolutely for sure in in the near future i will announce yeah new new partnerships new use cases uh with with new new applications uh new new devices equipped with uh with javascript and solar arresting technologies uh one of the next should be a solution that that is using the um the solar film for uh indoor geolocation uh and to develop a kind of a use case based on in larger location and on the on li-fi or li-fi type communication system right that the film can can directly collect uh li-fi communication to be able to to get information transmitted through through light so usually led light inside buildings and and then this this allows to have a indoor geolocation and and with indoor geolocation we can think of of infinite services such as a switch on lighting automatically called the lift and so on right well that's awesome um and if our audience is kind of interested to learn more maybe you know would one not just learn more about energy harvesting but maybe learn more about your offerings and kind of you know figure out this is something that works for their business what's the best way to get in contact with the company uh for sure either they can they can do go to the asca website and uh here we can have a we have a contact form uh where they can send any email and message and and then we'll get back to them and answer and have a call or look at their project right we'll be very glad fantastic we'll make sure we link all that up and make sure we provide the correct uh destinations for audience to get in contact but uh john this has been a fantastic conversation i really appreciate you taking the time um and thanks for being on the iot fraud show okay yeah thanks uh thanks ryan it would be a pleasure absolutely alright everyone thanks again for joining us this week on the iot for all podcast i hope you enjoyed this episode and if you did please leave us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe to our podcast on whichever platform you're listening to us on also if you have a guest you'd like to see on the show please drop us a note at ryan iotfrl.com
and we'll do everything we can to get them as a featured guest other than that thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time
2021-08-21 19:06
