Epiphany One Puck coffee cup as a power plant?:

The Kickstarter project One puck of Epiphany to load smartphones by heat energy is converted to electricity.

If one, for example, a cup of hot coffee in the office at One puck, which looks like a finger-thick coaster, the current begins to flow, and smartphones can be loaded into the USB port. Turning around Puck, so that the blue side up, met an iced drink the same purpose.

The greater the temperature difference between the cold (blue) and warm (red) side, the greater the current that is generated. This is stored in a small built-in battery, which in turn loads the connected smartphone.

One puck is under ideal conditions, ie with a fresh cup of hot coffee on the red side, producing 5 Watts (1,000 mA at 5 V), equivalent to the electricity, which most smartphones need to be charged quickly. The following video shows how one puck.

One puck charger

Oddly enough, the developer says in another video of it on the Kickstarter page that one puck on the principle of the Stirling engine is based. However, I can hardly imagine that two chambers are stuck with gas in the puck, and a piston converts the heat energy into electricity. It's probably more likely that the puck One Seebeck effect exploits, like the Biolite Camp Stove cooker, which we have previously reported.

In any case, by now already almost $ 80,000 have come together on the required $ 100,000, and the financing is still about 7 weeks.

Anyone wishing to support the project pays $ 115 (the equivalent of around 85 euros) plus $ 15 (11 euros) for shipping. There are then from March to not only one puck, but also a t-shirt.

More info you get on the Kickstarter project page . On the side of the company Epyphany Laboratories happened not much.