Wireless with batteries

[ketil]

I had a thought... Wireless controllers need batteries, and every time they run out it's equally irritating. How difficult would it be to incorporate Seiko Kinetic style charging into a wireless controller? It's not like the controllers aren't thrown around during gameplay. But is it enough?

[drventure]

Interesting idea, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be enough. Watches suck +very+ little power, so it doesn't take much to charge them. but a wireless controller likely would be orders of magnitude more power required.

However, something like this might be a good fit.

http://www.powermat.com/us/home/

What'd I'd probably investigate is one of their phone or nintendo backpanels. You could likely tear it apart and relocate the guts into a wireless controller of your own.

but that's a guess.

What'd be cool is someone making a "component" backpanel, ie, all the pieces with power out that you could wire up however you need, sort of like the Aimtrack.

[SirPeale]

It would definitely not be enough.  Here's an example - you know those flashlights that you have to shake to use?  You have to shake the heck out of them to use them - then you get like 15 minutes of usable light out of them before you have to shake them again.  And that's powering a tiny little LED.  Try doing that for something that has a rumble motor and transmitting wireless. 

Even if you removed the rumble motor, the drain would be tremendous.

Watches AFAIK use the same principle but they use /very/ little power, plus your arm is moving ALL the time, so it gets constantly charged.