Offbeat

Young evil genius forces hamster to run on wheel to power his gadgets

Okay, the rodent was a willing participant - after all, who turns down treats for a spin that charges a phone?

Who needs power outlets when you can charge off of animal labor? The next time someone asks you if a hamster running on a wheel can produce a measurable amount of energy, you can point them to one inventive young YouTuber who has proven that the answer isn’t just yes - it’s also enough energy to harvest.

Flamethrower, a Spanish YouTuber whose channel is full of experiments and DIY projects, most recently took to the video platform to post about his experiment in turning his brother’s hamster’s wheel into a machine he could use to charge his smartphone.

“After my parents prohibited me from genetically or cybernetically modifying it,” Flamethrower explained in the video, “I deemed its existence … unacceptably useless. So what did I do? Exploit it for energy production, of course.” 

As anyone who’s owned a hamster knows, midnight runs on a squeaky wheel can be obnoxious to say the least. Sleepless nights, combined with memories of cartoons where hamster wheels powered the contraptions of evil geniuses, gave the young maker an idea: Strap a turbine to the wheel and make that hamster earn its keep.

Of course, it’s not as simple as just attaching a 5V electric motor to use as a turbine and wiring it up to a USB-C plug. Hamsters can’t exactly be cajoled onto a wheel for regular charging shifts, and even if they could be, keeping them running at a charging pace would be pretty much impossible. 

“Say you have one of those common 5V DC motors,” Flamethrower explained. “Unless you spin that at over 10,000 RPM you wouldn't even reach the standard 15-watt charging speed” of most modern smartphones. 

“Forget about quick charging,” he added. “The motor would probably melt before that.” 

To get around those limitations, Flamethrower turned to the CJMCU-2557 low-power energy-harvesting chip. Energy harvesters like the 2557 (albeit larger ones) are designed to boost and regulate tiny amounts of input power, from sources such as solar cells or generators, into a usable voltage suitable for charging components like a capacitor or, in this case, a single lithium-ion battery cell.

After doing some wiring work and putting the contraption together, Flamethrower left it to run overnight, and woke to a battery with enough charge in it to provide juice to his phone, though the amount wasn’t substantial. 

“I haven't measured exactly how much battery it can charge,” Flamethrower told us in an email. “It's not a lot, so it certainly won't fill the entirety of a phone's battery in a single night, although of course the energy generated each day can vary a lot based on the hamster's mood.” 

“I did a very rough calculation and the current generated might be like around an amp when the fella is running,” Flamethrower added. In other words, as frenetic as a hamster can get, it’s still not producing that much energy. 

Regardless, the young inventor told us that he is still using the device, and that it’s proved to be fantastic for providing energy to charge the family's smartwatches. As for whether he might consider attaching a bigger battery, that might be a bit overkill, he told us. 

“In any case, the CJMCU-2557 is only meant to charge 1 cell,” Flamethrower said. “There are, admittedly, slightly higher capacity cells, but I use it frequently enough to not have to care about reaching their limit.”

A useful invention, then, if not a bit of an on-the-nose realization of a science-fiction dystopia trope. Hey, at least the hamster is happy and putting all that necessary calorie burning to work for a good cause - if we all used our pets' episodes of the zoomies to charge our devices, think of the load on the grid we could save. ®