Among the many laptops and desktops that Lenovo announced at CES 2025 is an intriguing peripheral: the Self-Charging Bluetooth Keyboard. This unique productivity keyboard ditches the traditional battery, instead utilizing solar and ambient light to charge and store energy.
The Lenovo Self-Charging Bluetooth Keyboard might seem like your run-of-the-mill keyboard, but it comes with a party trick that might just save you a buck in the long run. Using advanced photovoltaic technology and fast-charging supercapacitors, the keyboard actually harnesses ambient light to store energy, eliminating the need for disposable batteries.
Huh. That’s neat I guess.
My initial guess was it would somehow capture the energy from hitting keys. I guess that’s implausible? Too little energy without making the key press resistance too high?
Yeah that was my first thought as well for some reason. Obviously solar calculators/etc have been around for longer so that makes more sense, but I fully clicked on this hoping it was energy from key presses.
yeah me too, I was curious what sort of mechanism they shoved in the switchea
There already exist wireless doorbells and smart home light switches that harness the energy of clicking the button using a piezo crystal to use for transmitting the signal. But at least the one I have has way too much resistance to use for a computer keyboard