Batteries & low-power design
Product design & engineering
314 episodes across 26 shows cover batteries & low-power design. The shows that cover it most are The Amp Hour, Embedded.fm and Hackaday Podcast. The most recent, from 5 Oct 2026, is “#025: Powered by Sunlight, Fenced by Software: Inside Monil's Cattle Collar” from Coredump Sessions.
Battery chemistry, charging and safety, energy harvesting, and designing for long battery life.
314 episodes from 26 shows, most relevant and most recent first.
314 episodes
Perpetual Wearable Biosensing with Andy Kong
Andy Kong, founder of Chargerless, explains how his pre-seed wearable biosensing device achieves perpetual operation using just one minute of daily sunlight. He details the system architecture, which relies on a deliberately underpowered…
The Onio Batteryless Vision with Kjetil Meisal
Kjetil Meisal, CEO and co-founder of Norwegian semiconductor startup ONiO, discusses the ONiO.zero, a batteryless microcontroller powered by ambient energy harvesting. He explains the chip's custom RISC-V architecture, multi-protocol 2.4…
The case for sodium-ion
Landon Mossburg, founder and CEO of Peak Energy, argues that sodium-ion batteries, specifically using sodium iron pyrophosphate (NFPP) chemistry, offer a compelling alternative to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) for stationary energy storage…
Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage
Colin Campbell, CTO of Redwood Materials, explains how the company repurposes end-of-life EV batteries for grid storage through its Redwood Energy division. Campbell details the technical inspection process, noting that packs with ~20%…
GM's big new battery tech push
Kurt Kelty, GM's VP of battery, propulsion, and sustainability, explains how GM is commercializing lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries to offer high energy density at lower costs by swapping expensive nickel for abundant manganese. He…
Deep Dive into Arm’s Physical AI and Robotics Strategies with Drew Henry
Drew Henry, Executive Vice President of Arm’s Physical AI business unit, explains how Arm is shifting from component-level design to system-level architecture for robotics and autonomous vehicles. He details the critical engineering…
Supercharging Lithium-Ion Batteries with Gene Berdichevsky of Sila Nanotechnologies
Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies, explains how his team developed a composite silicon anode to overcome the energy density limits of traditional graphite in lithium-ion batteries. After leaving Tesla in 2008…
188. Powering Medical Devices With Body Heat
Hosts Daniel and Forbode discuss research from Carnegie Mellon University on the first health device powered by body heat using a thermoelectric generator. They analyze the technology's reliance on temperature differentials, the use of…
Changing the World One Wireless RF Chip at a Time
David Su, co-founder and CEO of Atmosic Technologies, discusses his career journey from HP Labs and Atheros to founding Atmosic, where he leverages decades of RF design experience to create ultra-low-power wireless chips. He explains how…
151. Battery Chemistry GPT
Hosts Daniel and For Bode discuss a University of Michigan project developing a GPT-style AI to design battery electrolytes, aiming to lower EV costs and improve energy density. The team utilizes the Polaris supercomputer and partners with…
Can the Nvidia Monopoly on AI Chips Be Broken?
Sally Ward-Foxton of EE Times discusses the AI chip market with hosts Dr. Sunny Bains and Dr. Giulia D’Angelo, analyzing the dominance of Nvidia and the potential for neuromorphic and specialized inference chips to break its monopoly. The…
Reducing Battery Waste with Low-Power IoT | Atmosic's Nick Dutton | Internet of Things Podcast
Nick Dutton, Senior Director for Product Marketing at Atmosic Technologies, explains how focusing on ultra-low power consumption enables energy harvesting, thereby reducing the massive environmental impact of battery waste in IoT. He…
A former race car engineer on battery safety and supply chains [partner content]
Tristan Doherty, Chief Product Officer at LG Energy Solution Vertech, discusses the transition from his career as an IndyCar race engineer to leading US-based energy storage manufacturing. He details LG's $1.4 billion investment in…
The promise and perils of sodium-ion batteries
Adrian Yao, founder of Stanford’s STEER program and former CTO of EnPower, explains why sodium-ion batteries face significant cost challenges despite their supply chain benefits. He details how lower energy density increases material…
ERCOT batteries: boom, bust, or rebound?
Shayle Kann interviews Brandt Vermillion, U.S. market lead at Modo Energy, about the Texas (ERCOT) grid-scale battery market, which has grown from 200 megawatts to 17 gigawatts, causing revenue to plummet by 84% due to ancillary service…
IBM Used Mathematics as Compass on Journey to NorthPole
Dr. Dharmendra Modha, IBM’s chief scientist for brain-inspired computing, explains how his team moved from the TrueNorth chip to the NorthPole inference system by prioritizing mathematical axioms over biological replication. He details how…
Will Photonics Loosen the Bottlenecks in Neural Systems?
Dr. Patty Stabile of Eindhoven University of Technology explains her all-optical neuromorphic computing architecture using semiconductor optical amplifiers and wavelength division multiplexing to achieve ultra-low latency processing…
Envisioning an Energy Efficient Tech Future
Greg Bailey, President of GreenArrays, discusses the company's approach to designing energy-efficient custom silicon by building from first principles rather than using standard libraries or FPGAs. He explains how GreenArrays creates…
IoT in the Marine Industry | Yamaha's Andrew Cullen & Siren Marine's Alex Joseph | Internet of Things Podcast
Andrew Cullen, Director of Marine Connectivity at Yamaha, and Alex Joseph, CTO at Siren Marine, discuss the integration of IoT into the marine industry following Yamaha's acquisition of Siren Marine. They detail the development of the…
When Nine Nines Isn't Enough
Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company, joined by Nathanael Huffman, Alan Hanson, Cliff Biffle, Eric Aasen, Robert Keith, and Jordan Hendricks, detail a two-and-a-half-year investigation into mysterious hardware…
Rubber Duck Incarnate
Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss the recent public falling out between SparkFun and Adafruit, which resulted in Adafruit losing the right to resell the Teensy microcontroller board designed by Paul Stoffregen. They analyze the…
What is batteryless IoT? | Everactive's Ben Calhoun & David Wentzloff | Internet of Things Podcast
Dr. Ben Calhoun and Dr. David Wentzloff, co-founders and co-CTOs of Everactive, explain their batteryless IoT technology which powers devices using energy harvesting rather than batteries. They discuss how their ultra-low-power…
The EV market’s awkward teenage years
Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies, explains that the EV market is in a 'trough of disillusionment' after automakers overestimated demand, leading to massive battery manufacturing overcapacity and spot prices as…
Enter the electric supercycle
Andy Lubershane, head of research at Energy Impact Partners, explains the 'electric supercycle'—a series of interlocking technological flywheels involving solar PV, lithium-ion batteries, EVs, and wide-bandgap power electronics that are…
The better mousetrap fallacy
Andy Lubershane, head of research and partner at Energy Impact Partners, joins host Shayle Kann to discuss the 'better mousetrap fallacy' in climate tech, arguing that in sectors like solar, batteries, and nuclear, scaling existing…
What NFC Means For IoT | NFC Forum's Mike McCamon | Internet of Things Podcast
Mike McCamon, Executive Director of the NFC Forum, explains how Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is evolving beyond simple payments to support IoT applications like car keys, digital product passports, and battery-less devices. He…
EP Systems: The Power Behind Electric Aviation
Michael Armstrong, CTO of Electric Power Systems, discusses the engineering and certification challenges of high-voltage battery systems for electric aviation, including his work on NASA's X-57 and the Diamond Aircraft eDA40. He explains…
3D electrodes for Next Generation Batteries with Moshiel Biton, CEO and Co-founder of Addionics
Moshiel Biton, CEO and Co-founder of Addionics, explains how his company creates 3D metal scaffold electrodes to improve battery performance regardless of chemistry. He details how this structure reduces internal resistance by 50% and…
138. How Thermal Batteries Will Scale Sustainable Energy ☀️🔋
Hosts Daniel and For Bode discuss Antora Energy, a startup founded by MIT alumni Kearns and Beerman, which uses thermal batteries to solve renewable energy intermittency. The technology stores excess solar and wind power as heat in carbon…
Wireless Power and the Future of Sustainably Powering IoT? | Ossia's Hatem Zeine
Hatem Zeine, founder and president of Ossia, explains how his company's Cota technology delivers wireless power to IoT devices at a distance, eliminating the need for batteries and wires. He details the evolution from his earlier Wi-Fi…
278: Bricks' Batteries Last Forever (Repeat)
Matt Liberty, founder of Jet Perch, discusses the design and development of Joulescope, a high-precision current measurement tool launching via Kickstarter. He explains the engineering challenges of measuring dynamic ranges spanning nine…
Who Let the Robodogs Out? Meet Swiss-Mile's wheeled quadruped
Marko Bjelonic, CEO and co-founder of Swiss-Mile, explains how his company transformed an academic quadruped research project into a commercial wheeled-robot product by integrating deep reinforcement learning for complex motion control. He…
Anduril's vision for powering maritime defense
Dr. Andrew Nuss, head of growth and strategy for the Maritime Division at Anduril, explains the unique energy challenges of maritime defense, where water's density requires 1,000 times more energy for propulsion than air. He details how…
Four ways to store sunlight
Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners, joins Shayle Kann to discuss four primary methods for storing solar energy: lithium-ion batteries, heat storage, iron-air batteries, and hydrogen. Lubershane argues…
What do you do with a 100-hour battery?
Mateo Jaramillo, CEO and co-founder of Form Energy, explains why 100-hour 'multi-day' iron-air batteries are necessary to displace mid-merit gas plants during prolonged weather events that lithium-ion cannot economically cover. He details…
Energy Harvesting and Sustainability in IoT | ARMOR's John Fiske
John Fiske, Business Development Manager at ARMOR, discusses the company's ASCA photovoltaic film technology designed to power IoT devices through energy harvesting. He explains how the thin film converts indoor and outdoor light into…
The RP2350 with the Raspberry Pi Team
James Adams, Chris Boross, Liam Fraser, and Luke Wren from the Raspberry Pi team discuss the RP2350 microcontroller, detailing its evolution from the RP2040 with a focus on new security features, low-power modes, and the addition of a…
S5E13 Paul Lee | Cities of the Future & Renewable Energy
Paul Lee, a renewable energy engineer transitioning from the City of Los Angeles to the US Department of Energy, discusses his role in the ASCE documentary 'Cities of the Future.' He details emerging technologies featured in the film…
Measuring Current with Matt Liberty
Matt Liberty, creator of Joulescope, explains the engineering challenges of measuring high dynamic range currents in low-power IoT devices, specifically addressing the difficulty of switching between milliamp active states and microamp…
Special Report: What RF Wireless Needs Now
Brett Brune, editor-in-chief of EE Times, and Gina Roos, editor-in-chief of Electronic Products, discuss a special report on the future of RF and wireless technology. They cover the rise of 5G Advanced and RedCap, the potential of…
121. Power Up Your Wearable Devices with Blood Sugar!
Hosts Daniel and Forbode discuss a breakthrough from ETH Zurich researchers, led by Dr. Martin, who have developed an implantable, self-powering insulin pump for Type 1 diabetes. The system uses a metabolic biofuel cell to convert excess…
Episode 151: Robots to study the ocean - Simona Aracri
Simona Aracri, a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy, discusses the design and deployment of robotic platforms for monitoring extreme environments like glaciers and polar oceans. She details specific projects including the…
Heavy duty decarbonization
Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners, explains why electrification hits physical limits in heavy transport due to battery energy density and grid infrastructure constraints. He argues that while battery…
Seeking the holy grail of batteries
Sam Jaffe, VP of battery solutions at E-Source, discusses the competitive landscape of EV battery chemistries, tracing the historical shift between Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) and Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) driven by Chinese state…
Can the V2X dream become reality?
Ty Jagerson, V2X lead at General Motors, discusses the potential for electric vehicles to stabilize the power grid through managed charging (V1G), vehicle-to-grid (V2G), and vehicle-to-home (V2H) technologies. He explains that while V1G is…
5 Ways Your Electric Car Could Be Continuously Recharged While You Drive | Hard Tech #7
Host Daniel Laporte discusses five methods for continuously recharging electric vehicles while driving: overhead cables, conductive rail charging, inductive road charging, solar roofs, and charging robots. He highlights specific…
Ep 367: Radioactive Weather, Continuous Pickles, and Moon Junk
Hosts Elliot Williams and Al Williams review a week of hardware hacks, including a low-power DIY smart button network using nRF52 microcontrollers and a rocket camera module stabilized by a spinning brass gyroscope. They discuss a…
Ep 360: Cool Rubber Bands, Science-y Stuff, and the Whys of Office Supplies
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos discuss the Green-Powered Challenge, a contest for energy harvesting devices, and review a series of hacks including security vulnerabilities in cheap WiFi extenders, a vintage…
The non-Stinky Car
Hosts Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss their experiences with electric vehicles, including Dave's Hyundai Ioniq and Chris's discontinued Chevy Bolt, focusing on charging infrastructure and vehicle-to-grid capabilities. They analyze the…
Connected Health in an Embedded World | Silicon Labs' Fritz Werder | Internet of Things Podcast
Fritz Werder, Senior Product Line Director for the Life Business Unit at Silicon Labs, discusses the evolution of connected health, highlighting the critical importance of security, miniaturization, and battery performance in portable…