Mains hum powered beacon

Recent tests with earth electrodes at VLF have got me wondering about a simple QRSS HF/VHF beacon TX powered entirely from the rectified mains hum and other crud coming from a couple of earth rods in the ground.  Not sure of the available power, but I suspect it would be in the 0.1 to 2uW region, maybe more. This may be enough to drive a low voltage QRSS beacon for example. You can buy power harvester ICs these days for this purpose, but with a step-up mains transformer there may be a volt or two available at a few tens of uA and that alone may be enough to drive a keyed oscillator. The ultimate in free power beaconing!

Shoe power source (from Elector Newsletter)

A novel way of generating a small amount of power using a piezo-electric generator within a pair of shoes is shown in the latest Elector Newsletter.

Power harvesting IC - runs off 20mV produces 5V

This week's Electronics Weekly has a link to Linear Technologies new power converter IC (LTC3108) that can run from 20mV and deliver 5V. It is designed to be used with Peltier effect devices and similar sources of low voltages, but it could be used with the DC power derived from a crystal set.