Intermittent and batteryless devices are a relatively new field of exploration in computing: as a result much of the field is still in flux, with various research groups often forced to reinvent the wheel and slowing new developments as a result.
Sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation, CICADA aims to serve as a central hub for information and research artifacts in the intermittent computing space by ensuring the dissemination of new findings, artifacts, and utilities to the community, common standards and datasets to assist with replicating new findings, and an on-ramp for individuals and groups looking to become involved in this new area of research and development.

The Wiki is open to all members of the community to provide research, information and tutorials on components, their properties, and their applications in batteryless and intermittent devices.
The directory contains a curated list of hardware and software artifacts, tools, and data for developing and building batteryless and intermittent devices. Contact us if you have an artifact for inclusion in the directory.

WHAT IS A BATTERYLESS DEVICE?

Intermittent/batteryless devices forgo the batteries used in traditional embedded systems and electronic devices: in their place, energy harvesters (such as solar panels) and capacitors (as energy storage) are used to gather, store, and supply power to the device.

WHY BATTERYLESS?

As connected electronic devices continue to proliferate in an ever-growing array of applications, maintaining and powering them becomes an increasingly pressing issue. Batteries tend to be the component with the shortest overall lifespan in an electronic device, and the need to service and replace them places limits in both time and resources on the ability to deploy such devices. Batteryless computing seeks to not only cut down on the resulting e-waste batteries bring, but also allow for deployment of these devices in situations where maintenance and physical access is difficult or impractical.
However, forgoing batteries in an electronic device brings an array of unique challenges in both circuit design and programming, challenges current research seeks to address and resolve.