Power’s no joke – with the rise of the Internet-enabled hardware, nearly anything is only a sensor & a network connection away from becoming a connected object – a tire, a remote control, or door handle – and yet, for objects without their own power supply, optimizing battery life is critical.
That’s where EnerBee comes in. The Grenoble-based CEA project just raised €2.5 Million from Robolution Capital (a robotics/hardware VC fund), Emertec, from BNP Paribas & Credit Agricole. The company’s main product: sensors that can be powered indefinitely by minimal amounts of movement.
As seen in their video, this can be anything from the jiggling of a door handle to the rotations of a tire on the road. Although proprietary, the technology leveraged is similar to that of Pilo, which we met last year when they launched at the Summer 2014 edition of Paris Founders Event.
The opportunities for low-power sensors to be self-sustaining by leveraging existing motion is enormous. Enerbee shows that you don’t need a lot of power, especially if you’re not looking for constant real-time updates. This philosophy has been the genesis of SIGFOX as well, with their low-bandwidth, low debit communication network, which has amazing battery life and a growing networking of countries that are enabled.