And the winner is...

The radios! Well, the old school radio in particular will be my subject for vivisection, which will commence tomorrow morning. My interest with the radios doesn't lie in simply receiving or transmitting the radio waves, but in generating power using radio waves.

I first became interested in the idea of harvesting radio waves when I was watching an old episode of Mythbusters(Number 24, to be exact). In the episode, Jamie and Adam, the protagonists of the show, were testing myths involving free energy. Most of the free energy devices claimed to be perpetual motion machines of some kind, but the one that harvested radio waves was the only one that was even remotely successful, although a little disappointing. Using a 100' antenna, Jamie and Adam were only able to get enough energy to be able to power a small watch LED screen.

I had some problems with this test when they did it, but I refuse to be one of those people who writes letters to TV shows expressing my nerdy disgust. The main problem was that they never made more than one device. If you made several of them and tuned them to various channels, you could hook them up in series and hopefully get a little bit more energy. They also never experimented with different kinds of antennae, instead opting to use a 100' insulated wire. Perhaps a smaller, more efficient antenna could be used. I don't know all about it yet, but I do have some ideas for experiments I'd like to try.

I do, however, have some resources to draw on in my quest for radio knowledge.

Something Awful Shortwave Radio Uberthread
An amazing post by a short wave radio enthusiast and dealer. It explains all kinds of things, from how to use a short wave radio to number stations. Very interesting, and probably worth checking out.

Radio Module
A project I found in Good Magazine by a designer named Carolina Pino. Her project is a homeless shelter made of cardboard and based on origami. The shelter can be folded up when the person wants to move, but the thing I found interesting was that the project included plans for a $30 two-way radio. The plans are located on this site, but I don't think I'll be using them, because you have to send the micro-controller to Pino's team to be programmed, and I think I can make something a little bit simpler.

Something a Little Bit Simpler
These are plans for an antique style crystal radio on instructables.com. The interesting thing about a crystal radio? No power source. The entire thing is powered solely by the radio waves it receives, and it's this type of device that I want to start my research with later on.

Interesting stuff for sure... For me, anyway.