Budding engineers can now build and program sustainable, battery-free energy-harvesting devices with a new tool from Northwestern University.

Young designers can use Battery-free MakeCode to drag and drop blocks of pre-made code to build games like Tetris or devise apps that connect sensors, screens, buttons and motors. The tool also transforms Microsoft's MakeCode into a version that supports programming electronic devices that harvest energy from vibrations, movement, the sun and other ambient sources.

Developers hope that Battery-free MakeCode will be incorporated into school curricula to instruct a new generation of programmers and imbue them with an understanding of sustainable computing and programming practices. The platform does not require any custom-made hardware and is available free online.

The platform can be used to build a solar-powered step counter. Source: Josiah Hester/Northwestern University

A research paper about Battery-free MakeCode was published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.