At 11:04 AM 11/23/2005 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi:
>
>I got a Honeywell Q313 series "750 millivolt Powerpile Generator" and have 
>measured it's output when in one finger of a gas stove flame.
>It puts out about half a volt at 100 ma with a 5 Ohm load (50 mw) and 
>probably would produce more power with a lower resistance load.
>See: http://www.pacificsites.com/~brooke/batt.shtml#Heat
>
>Is there a circuit that would transform this into say 3.3 volts at 10 ma 
>that would be suitable to power a PIC?

Although it's not a complete solution, you may find this IEEE paper of 
interest:
http://power.ece.uiuc.edu/chapman/papers/LVpaper.pdf

Startup is the difficult issue with such low voltage circuits, after the
circuit is started it can bootstrap enough voltage to run. Note the novel
unijunction transistor method used in the paper, and also the mechanical
switch idea.

Although it's not as elegant, you could consider using button cells
(perhaps you need a real-time clock anyway) for the startup and then
run off of the thermopile when power is available.

>Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
->> Inexpensive test equipment & parts http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZspeff


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