Did you know that a single foot can generate in excess of 60 watts when walking, and even more when carrying a pack? Only a fraction of this needed to power a PDA device. The military have manufactured boots with these piezos incorporated into the midsole, but technically you can make your own. If and when you need your boots resoled that's the time to consider using some piezo sheets.

I dunno... electric power from shoes/boots is one of the "new technologies" that gets written up from time to time, and has been coming Real Soon Now for a very long time. One sort of has to assume that there's some problem implementing it. The energy is certainly there.

I don't think there is any problem implementing it. The problem is getting the public interested, and securing sponsorship. As I said the military make use of electic boots from time to time, but these would be too expensive for joe public. The price of piezo generators still need to fall in price, and their efficiency improved, but it'll happen. I think once battery heated clothing becomes popular then you might find the electric boots starting to appear.

Actually, the first time I saw the concept it wasn't piezo, it was an insole with a fluid-filled flat hourglass shape and a tiny turbine in the bottleneck. That was a LONG time ago.<br><br>I can't imagine battery-heated clothing becoming popular even if the cells themselves make some huge strides in efficiencey and weight reduction- and if they did, I would tend to think that would work against another source of portable energy in the marketplace, not for it. At one point I thought wearable computers might stimulate development of alternative portable energy sources, but we've now reached a point where practically everyone is carrying a battery-powered phone, and there's still almost no interest.<br>

There is no interest becuase people don't know about it, and manufactuer's don't support it. It's like ethanol powered cars- oil companies ask congress to not to back that research. In this case, I'd love to look at the books for the battery manufactures, see who've they've donated to.

Well, maybe. It’s certain every major industry has a lobby, and can’t do business without one- that says something about our system right there.<br><br>But I don’t think we need to invoke conspiracy theories to explain this not taking hold- either technology.<br><br>I don’t think I’d have any interest in battery-heated clothing myself- insulation is a great deal more reliable, and one thing I don’t need to be worrying about out in real cold is how much charge I have left.. or the software crashing... aside from weight, bulk and cost considerations.<br><br>As for cell-charging footwear, exactly how big a market can you envision for this? I think we can eliminate businessmen wearing wing-tipped oxfords or Italian leather loafers, and I think we can eliminate women with a collection of 50-100 pairs of fashion shoes. Backpackers? Maybe, but there’s probably no group on Earth more particular, and with less consensus, about their footwear. Who else is planning to be away from an outlet, on foot, for long enough for this to be appealing, and how big a market could they possibly be? Street people?<br><br>Don’t underestimate the resistance of society to new technology- you can grow old and die waiting for perfectly good technical advances to be adopted. Look at the people around you- the most high-tech device most of them have on their person is probably their watch, and no matter how high-tech that is on the inside, they still insist on the same 16th-century interface on the outside, or they won’t wear it. This interface was designed to make it easier for clockmakers, not users, hundreds of years ago. Many are now carrying cell phones, but most can’t use more than a tenth of the features, any more than they can program their VCRs. They haven’t mastered anything really new in phone interfaces since the introduction of push-button dialing, and there was considerable resistance to that.<br><br>So, I don't think we really need to postulate a conspiracy to oppose the cell-recharging shoe concept. Besides, if the Segway takes hold, who's going to be walking much? :-)<br>

Slashdot (www.slashdot.org, "News for Nerds", "Stuff that Matters", recommended) provided the link to this article that may be of interest and is pertinent to this thread:<br><br>http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/03/03/battery.challenged.ap/index.html