Parasitic Power: When Your Phone Charges Your Artwork
Built over a weekend: a Qi wireless charging receiver feeds an ESP32, so a phone laid down to charge quietly powers the LEDs underneath it. No batteries, no wall plug. The visitor brings the power source.
2026 Soldering Table
Borrowed power
The receiver sits in a laser-cut and engraved wooden case, the kind of pad you would put a phone on anyway. The phone charges as usual; the ESP32 and its LEDs run on the few hundred milliwatts that come along with it, and the lights show how the charging is going. A small battery could be charged from the same trickle, but the point was to need none.
Why I built it
Installations die of flat batteries and missing wall sockets. If the piece draws its power from the visitor's phone, maintenance goes away, and the longer they stay, the longer it runs. There is something pleasing about the phone being both guest and generator.
- Build time: about 48 hours
- Power: Qi wireless charging, no battery
- Controller: ESP32
- Enclosure: laser-cut and engraved wood