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eTV Reruns: Energy Harvesting with the MAX17710

July 10, 2025
ED's Bill Wong chats with Brian Hedayati of Maxim (ADI) about energy harvesting, using the MAX17710.

EngineeringTV was a groupwide YouTube channel that included Electronic Design. We now have our latest videos on the Electronic Design YouTube channel, but here we highlight some great videos that still reside on our EngineeringTV channel, including "Maxim MAX17710 Energy Harvesting Power-Management IC" hosted by Bill Wong, our technology editor at the time. 

What's in This Video

In this episode, Bill talks with Brian Hedayati, Executive Director at Maxim (now ADI), about Energy Harvesting technology. The information is still relevant today. 

Here's a breakdown of the key points made in this timeless video from our engineeringtv.com archive:

  • The MAX17710 is a power-management IC designed for energy harvesting applications, enabling devices like powered smart cards to operate using ambient energy sources (0:00).
  • A demonstration shows a smart card with a solar cell that harvests light energy, which is then stored in an ultra-thin, flexible battery and managed by the MAX17710 to provide regulated voltage for a microcontroller (0:42).

  • The system can fit into very thin form factors and eliminates the need for multiple traditional power management components, simplifying the design (1:35).

  • The MAX17710 evaluation board includes solar cells and a thin-film battery, allowing users to emulate a complete wireless system powered by harvested energy from various sources (2:22).

  • The IC can manage all power aspects for battery management and sensor operation, consuming less than 500 nanoamps—an order of magnitude lower than typical market solutions (3:08).

  • It accepts input voltages as low as 0.8V and provides multiple regulated output voltages, making it suitable for powering wireless sensors (3:30).

  • The thin-film battery used in the demo is flexible, as thin as paper, and capable of supplying high peak currents despite its small size (3:56).

  • Key applications include powered smart cards, wireless sensor networks, remote irrigation sensors, and building or machinery power management, all benefiting from reduced wiring and increased reliability (4:42).

About the Author

Andy Turudic | Technology Editor, Electronic Design

Andy Turudic is a Technology Editor for Electronic Design Magazine, primarily covering Analog and Mixed-Signal circuits and devices. He holds a Bachelor's in EE from the University of Windsor (Ontario Canada) and has been involved in electronics, semiconductors, and gearhead stuff, for a bit over a half century.

"AndyT" brings his multidisciplinary engineering experience from companies that include National Semiconductor (now Texas Instruments), Altera (Intel), Agere, Zarlink, TriQuint,(now Qorvo), SW Bell (managing a research team at Bellcore, Bell Labs and Rockwell Science Center), Bell-Northern Research, and Northern Telecom and brings publisher employment experience as a paperboy for The Oshawa Times.

After hours, when he's not working on the latest invention to add to his portfolio of 16 issued US patents, he's lending advice and experience to the electric vehicle conversion community from his mountain lair in the Pacific Northwet[sic].

AndyT's engineering blog, "Nonlinearities," publishes the 1st and 3rd monday of each month. Andy's OpEd may appear at other times, with fair warning given by the Vu meter pic.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form. 

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below. 

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.  

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence. 

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