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jaap_null t1_jc4d21t wrote

Just hooking up a graphing calculator to an actual potato battery would get you the same result it seems...

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other_usernames_gone t1_jc4jhpy wrote

Not as long a battery life though.

This isn't meant to be a serious product, it's a hobby project. The why is because they wanted to see if they could.

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TheRageDragon t1_jc4ud3t wrote

Yeah, but you can at least eat the potato when it's out of power and fast reload a new one. Potato charges computer, then potato charges you. Circle of life.

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Ursa_Solaris t1_jc5gfeu wrote

But when no potato, no computer. Such is life.

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blahblahrasputan t1_jc5h677 wrote

I don't even know what is a potato.

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Contagious-Laughter t1_jc5q82o wrote

TIFU flashback

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Kodama_prime t1_jc7easa wrote

Go watch a World of Warships game. Plenty of potato there....

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thedirtydeetch t1_jc5nmed wrote

Not true. Once the potato is drained of ions, the Heinz reaction can not occur, so the nutrients don’t metabolize properly when you cook it. That’s why you don’t see deionized potatoes as an industry, because even the cows can’t be sustained off them.

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GigaPuddi t1_jc66ufa wrote

.....I honestly cannot tell if this is true or not.

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atticlynx t1_jc68zvf wrote

/r/VXJunkies

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__Overthinking t1_jc6hlev wrote

What is that sub? Is it supposed to be a joke? I've scrolled through and my brain hurts

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AtypicalSpaniard t1_jc5jzbf wrote

Fast reload has to be my new favorite word when talking about potatoes.

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mr78rpm t1_jc5zeu0 wrote

Sorry, not true.

Chemical reactions between the potato and the metal things you jam into the potato cause electrical energy to be made. If you ate the potato, you'd be eating the residue of these chemical reactions, which, by the way, are probably poisonous.

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TheRageDragon t1_jc63er7 wrote

I've seen enough superhero movies to know that this is how one becomes Tater Man

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Emu1981 t1_jc5sl9t wrote

>you can at least eat the potato when it's out of power

That would likely depend on how long that potato provided power for lol

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dsnineteen t1_jc6ix7c wrote

Now I need to know if there’s enough chemical energy in a potato for it to theoretically cook itself.

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alaskarawr t1_jc85g89 wrote

>>then potato charges you.

Tell that to the Irish.

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Redeem123 t1_jc7ei68 wrote

> This isn't meant to be a serious product, it's a hobby project

It's so weird how often people don't seem to understand that concept on these kinds of builds.

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WontFixMySwypeErrors t1_jc7zv7f wrote

Now that it's proven, I'd love to see a usable one, even still as a hobby project.

Something like a non-backlit tft display, perhaps in vertical orientation for coding, would make things much more usable, and there's room in that case for many times more battery capacity.

A similar soc should still have enough grunt to run Linux and an IDE, and now you've got a decent dev box with the same or more runtime.

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Somepotato t1_jcqqi2l wrote

It's weird tho there are substantially more energy efficient MCUs you could use that are easily accessible, and the keyboard likely takes a chunk of energy compared to what it could be

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tomistruth t1_jc65y2d wrote

It's not the potato that actually runs the computer but the metal sticks you put into the potato. The potato just provides the water and salt to transfer the electrons.

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3226 t1_jc6l9yl wrote

Yes! Thank you! It drives me barmy when people seem to think you're getting the power from the potato, rather than a copper and zinc strip reacting. It's just a salt bridge. It's not the source of the energy. +

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