_______ Recharge cellphone battery while walking _______

COEP students built device to recharge cellphone battery while walking!

Now your regular 20-minute morning walk can also help in recharging your cellphone battery. Don’t miss a step. It’s true! A team of six students from College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) has made this possible for those who are always on the run.

Isha Nag, Aditya Nanavaty, Rushikesh Pande, Shachi Pande (all third-year production engineering students) and Sarvesh Patil, Tejas Narasimhan (second year students from the same stream) teamed up for the venture.

The portable walk-in charger that they have made works on energy produced while you walk and within 20 minutes your cellphone battery could get fully charged.

Their device bagged the first prize in the recently-concluded Tech Fest at IIT Bombay. Tejas said, “Our task at Techfest was to construct a device which uses only renewable sources of energy to produce at least 3 watts of electric power.

And it was for this that we got the prize.” But even before giving in their entry for this national competition, the team was working on manufacturing an easy-to-use portable charger which uses alternative source of energy.

The device they made comprises a small spring coil attached to belts. This compact device has a single casing enclosing all necessary components along with the charging circuit with an output power of around  3.5 W. A brief walk of 20 minutes (not necessarily a constant walk) could give you a fully-charged mobile battery.

The COEP team has already applied for a patent for their walk-in charger. “We have applied for the provisional patent now. During the Mumbai Techfest, some venture capitalists such as DGlight and Mellagro approached us and expressed interest in our device,” Isha said.

When asked if they are ready for its commercial launch, the team expressed full confidence. According to them, the production cost of the charger is around Rs 250.

“With a much more attractive and portable design on a commercial level, it could be available for Rs 350 as per our calculations,” she added.

While talking about the device’s manufacturing details, Shachi and Rushikesh said, “The spring design was the crucial part of the device.

We tried the device with a tin outer cover earlier. But it took whole of last week to design it to make it more attractive.” They did all the experimentation in COEP’s workshop. “The material was provided by the college which supported us throughout the venture,” they said.