Getting energy from unusual places is the mission of many YouTubers, but today nobody beats these crazy Ukrainians from the war on the Kreosan channel. The video below has been out for a while, but it basically tests the possibility of charging a mobile phone using the voltage present on train tracks…
An old trick that has been presented thousands of times on the web tells us about using the electrical energy in a phone line to charge a mobile phone's battery. The charging is very slow, and many devices reject it outright, but it should be enough to receive or make a call in emergency situations (assuming the traditional phone doesn't work and the smartphone battery is drained).
Others have used the same source with LED lights and obtained very positive results. Definitely the idea is not to get into trouble with the phone company, but to experiment a bit. Now… what if, instead of using a phone line, someone did the same with train tracks?
Energy from train tracks
No, I'm not referring to the third rail of high voltage, but to the energy in the main tracks. As far as I understand, that energy belongs to the block system, and it's used to determine whether there is a train on the tracks, which in turn helps avoid collisions. But Pavel Pavlov and Aleksandr Kryukov, better known for their YouTube channel Kreosan, decided to drive some operator crazy for a while and charge a mobile phone using the tracks.
The 'sacrifice' was a battered Nokia that, despite everything, accepted the improvised charging circuit, made up of a diode and a capacitor that rectify the alternating current from the tracks. According to the multimeter, the voltage oscillates between 2 and 3 volts, and when a speaker is connected you can hear its pulse.
As always, Kreosan's videos generate controversy. On one side are those who point out the illegality of interfering with the block system, and on the other are those who say: 'They live in a war zone, leave them alone.' The point is that the experiment was a success… with that phone. Some comments suggest creating a much more efficient circuit (a step-up regulator, maybe?). What do you think?
