Just bought a new DVD player/recorder? Worrying about what to do with your old scrap VCR? Well Greek electrical engineer Basil Dimitropoulos reckons that he has the perfect solution – use it to produce power. More specifically he believes that by recording a sawtooth wave onto a magnetic VHS video cassette he can generate around 12V of DC using special playback heads.

‘Although all the commercially available VHS tapes (5 �m coating thickness) are suitable to my project, the Panasonic SP, HG and XD videocassettes are preferable because of these tapes do have high power and nonporous magnetic particles. But some newly developed VHS and S-VHS tapes have 4 �m and 3 �m coating thickness, respectively. This results in lower �r and lower output voltage.’