[Carlhole]

Popsci.com

It’s the summer, which means swarms of bugs. And if you keep your window open to get cool summer breezes, it means swarms of bugs in your house. Artists James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have designed a clock that puts those bugs--and the energy created when they're digested by the group's special fuel cell--to work for you.

The clock is equipped with a conveyor belt of flypaper that traps insects and transports them to a chemical bath where they are broken down in a microbial fuel cell. The chemical reactions that develop from this digestion are used to power a small clock and the conveyor belt itself. Why not rid your house of flies while telling the time?

I submitted this article to News but it wasn't posted.

Well, geez... How big an insect digester could you make? How much potential energy is there in a big swarm of crickets?

[smallpoxgirl]

This is along the same lines as the potato clock. It's a novelty not an energy source. I bet the EROEI is 0.0001 or less.

[smallpoxgirl]

Combined with a form of fusion the machines had found all the energy they would ever need

Eeeep!

[TWilliam]

This is along the same lines as the potato clock. It's a novelty not an energy source. I bet the EROEI is 0.0001 or less.

Still, you have to admit that it's a pretty dang novel novelty...

[evilgenius]

It reminds me of the machines in the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds.

[Narz]

I need one of those that eats mosquitos!

[jedrider]

Seems like a very useful technology if you are a machine! Lots of humans out there. Sort of like the roaming DARPA or DOD injestor that does not need to be refueled because it seeks and acquires it's own biofuel