When a body-fat scale has no power, most people do not immediately look for a new battery. They skip one measurement and may forget again a few days later. The indoor-light-powered scale presented by 高登智慧科技 at the forum was designed around precisely this small but recurring interruption.
The perovskite photovoltaic module sits beneath the scale's transparent glass panel. No separate solar panel is visible; the surface a person stands on also becomes the light-admitting area. The team designed it to collect energy under ordinary indoor lighting and use that energy for brief measurements. The scale operates for less than a few minutes each day, while indoor light may be present for hours. That mismatch creates usable time between generation and consumption.
The talk considered a four-person household taking several measurements a day and compared the available indoor-light energy with each use of less than 30 seconds. Turning that estimate into a full-device specification would still require operating voltage, storage losses and a safety margin. The team worked backward from daily household use to the necessary light-admitting area and storage. Nighttime and dim corners also have to be included: self-powering cannot work only on the brightest day.
Product material from 高登 and 友來新能源 lists an indoor-light module efficiency range of 35% to 42%. A separate flexible perovskite research cell reached as high as 42.46% under a 3,000 K LED at 1,000 lux. That was a different research sample under different test conditions, not the system efficiency of this scale. Whether the scale can operate continuously in different homes still depends on light-admitting area, energy storage, standby consumption and placement.
The talk described a back-end AI service that uses continuous measurements to analyze health trends. For that service, a dead battery is not merely time spent waiting for a replacement; it is a missing point in the time series. Whether indoor light can let the measurement finish every time someone steps onto the scale is the product question this prototype has to answer.
Sources and further reading
Product and talk context
- TPRIA: Taiwan's first light-powered AI body-fat scale: Product-launch material from 高登智慧科技 and 友來新能源. The product arrangement, household-use scenario and AI health-data service described here primarily follow the forum talk.
Research and policy
- Spontaneous bifacial capping of perovskite film for efficient and mechanically stable flexible solar cell, Nature Communications (2024): The flexible research cell, light source and illumination conditions associated with the 42.46% result.
- EU Batteries Regulation 2023/1542: Policy context mentioned near the end of the talk, including the 2027 removability and replaceability requirement and the 2030 assessment of non-rechargeable batteries for general use.