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Main Authors: Nayar, Shree K., Klotz, Jeremy, Nanda, Nikhil, Fridberg, Mikhail
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02246
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author Nayar, Shree K.
Klotz, Jeremy
Nanda, Nikhil
Fridberg, Mikhail
author_facet Nayar, Shree K.
Klotz, Jeremy
Nanda, Nikhil
Fridberg, Mikhail
contents We present a sensor that can measure light and wirelessly communicate the measurement, without the need for an external power source or a battery. Our sensor, called cricket, harvests energy from incident light. It is asleep for most of the time and transmits a short and strong radio frequency chirp when its harvested energy reaches a specific level. The carrier frequency of each cricket is fixed and reveals its identity, and the duration between consecutive chirps is a measure of the incident light level. We have characterized the radiometric response function, signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range of cricket. We have experimentally verified that cricket can be miniaturized at the expense of increasing the duration between chirps. We show that a cube with a cricket on each of its sides can be used to estimate the centroid of any complex illumination, which has value in applications such as solar tracking. We also demonstrate the use of crickets for creating untethered sensor arrays that can produce video and control lighting for energy conservation. Finally, we modified cricket's circuit to develop battery-free electronic sunglasses that can instantly adapt to environmental illumination.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_02246
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cricket: A Self-Powered Chirping Pixel
Nayar, Shree K.
Klotz, Jeremy
Nanda, Nikhil
Fridberg, Mikhail
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
We present a sensor that can measure light and wirelessly communicate the measurement, without the need for an external power source or a battery. Our sensor, called cricket, harvests energy from incident light. It is asleep for most of the time and transmits a short and strong radio frequency chirp when its harvested energy reaches a specific level. The carrier frequency of each cricket is fixed and reveals its identity, and the duration between consecutive chirps is a measure of the incident light level. We have characterized the radiometric response function, signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range of cricket. We have experimentally verified that cricket can be miniaturized at the expense of increasing the duration between chirps. We show that a cube with a cricket on each of its sides can be used to estimate the centroid of any complex illumination, which has value in applications such as solar tracking. We also demonstrate the use of crickets for creating untethered sensor arrays that can produce video and control lighting for energy conservation. Finally, we modified cricket's circuit to develop battery-free electronic sunglasses that can instantly adapt to environmental illumination.
title Cricket: A Self-Powered Chirping Pixel
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02246