Among the many laptops and desktops that Lenovo announced at CES 2025 is an intriguing peripheral: the Self-Charging Bluetooth Keyboard. This unique productivity keyboard ditches the traditional battery, instead utilizing solar and ambient light to charge and store energy.
The Lenovo Self-Charging Bluetooth Keyboard might seem like your run-of-the-mill keyboard, but it comes with a party trick that might just save you a buck in the long run. Using advanced photovoltaic technology and fast-charging supercapacitors, the keyboard actually harnesses ambient light to store energy, eliminating the need for disposable batteries.
Huh. That’s neat I guess.
My initial guess was it would somehow capture the energy from hitting keys. I guess that’s implausible? Too little energy without making the key press resistance too high?
There already exist wireless doorbells and smart home light switches that harness the energy of clicking the button using a piezo crystal to use for transmitting the signal. But at least the one I have has way too much resistance to use for a computer keyboard
Yeah that was my first thought as well for some reason. Obviously solar calculators/etc have been around for longer so that makes more sense, but I fully clicked on this hoping it was energy from key presses.
yeah me too, I was curious what sort of mechanism they shoved in the switchea