Charge Your USB Device by Breathing
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin 
on 11. 3.07
TreeHugger has teamed up with Instructables to get great ideas such as the 5$ Solar Water Heater. We've enjoyed Instructables' tips on making our own wind turbine or homemade microwave mitten warmers. This time we surfed past a piece we just had to bookmark to share with you: how to make your own breath-powered USB charger.
We will warn you: the instructions start out suggesting that you might have everything you need to make this gadget lying about your house right now: parts from an old CD-rom drive, a non-stretching belt or band, a broccoli binder. (And if you don't have a broccoli rubber band, eating a little broccoli won't hurt you, you can hear your mother echoing in your head.)
But it turns out to be a bit more complicated than that. You will have to brush up your circuit board building skills, you may need more than one trip to radio shack (take your bike, you'll help the environment and build lung capacity for your charging). For the engaged junior scientist or budding engineer, it is a challenging project with a super impress-your-friends payback.
For the rest of us, it is merely inspiration. Surely there is a generation of scientists and budding engineers building these gadgets who will make these part of the everyday off-grid reality sometime soon. Energy independence, here we come. One breath at a time.
Via ::Instructables
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First of all, that is a fantastic idea and very original (something you don't often say on the web). But does it really produce above five volts though and to what amperage? I have played with a small windmills etc and they produce next to nothing. I have a hard time believing this could produce any power. But Like I said, great idea though.
Interesting. Clearly it has some ways to go, but I think its a viable concept for something that could be clipped to your chest and used to generate power for devices. It could even be built into an undershirt, and piezo electrics used to eliminate the mechanical gears.