A Playful Energy Harvesting Based Teaching Platform for Physical Computing

With an increasing significance of climate change and the progressive development of new intelligent devices in the sense of an Internet of Things (IoT), attempts are being made to recover unused ambient energy and convert it into electricity in order to supply said devices, known as energy harvesting. To raise awareness to the topic among students and next-generation engineers, we propose an energy harvesting based teaching platform for physical computing that allows students to experience the concept and design of energy harvesting systems playfully and creatively. Therefore, a self-powered energy harvesting hardware (gaming) platform (EHHP) has been developed involving a variety of components and peripherals which enables a wide range of software and hardware development teaching possibilities in physical computing. Piezoelectric elements and amorphous silicon solar cells in combination with supercapacitors were selected as energy sources which sufficiently enable several hours of operation under gameplay conditions. Besides, a software framework is presented that can be adapted to the level of experience or age of the students and can thus be kept completely modular. Further, since the concept involves mechanical design, CAD construction in combination with rapid prototyping by means of 3D printing techniques can be conducted by students.