Charge your gadgets with the power of breathing

Here is a project that MacGyver would be proud of. Picture a USB charger that gets its juice just from your breathing. What’s more amazing is that it’s not something that you have to blow into for a few hours, you just strap it around your chest and let your breathing do the work.

The project is not one for the novice, there is a lot of work, but thankfully most of the parts you need can be found quite easily. The “thorax expansion coupler” is actually just an old name tag holder. But the basic idea is to use a rechargeable AA battery to charge your device via USB, and the energy created by your breathing recharges the battery.

Unfortunately, the project didn’t work quite as well as the creator had hoped. The generator only puts out about 50mW of power, so you’d have to leave that battery charger around your chest all day just to get your AA battery recharged. He is going to continue with this project with the hopes of getting somewhere in the 1W range.

Breath powered USB charger [via make]