The Lemon Powered Game Boy

[@Horatio2040]

The sound of the rain on the corregated iron roof actually gave the video a really cosy quality 😊

[@endeav0r_49]

Oh shit I thought it was the Gameboy audio glitching out

[@Crusader1089]

Nothing more ‘stralian than rain on a tin roof.

[@NotColaTai]

Also sounds like as if your in a car while its raining, some times i just go outside to a car and chill

[@ElectroNicko_]

Maybe I just have hearing loss and tinnitus but I can't hear what your talking about at all. I've heard it before but can't hear it in the video

[@yeetboy88YT]

my mum would agree

[@Artyomann]

This is alternative timeline where Cave Johnson decided to do this instead of making combustible lemons

[@FlyingCIRCU175]

I would trust James with running Aperture AND Black Mesa.

[@tomtrublu]

Lol

[@YaSheNePrydumav]

Also now we know how many batteries we need to power Aperture facility

[@clementpoon120]

​​@@YaSheNePrydumavwhen life gives you lemons, make lemon battrees

[@Cobalt985]

The damn thing works on as few as 1.1v too!

[@aspzx]

The speedrun world record for Super Mario Land is 12:21 so that's almost enough time to complete the game. Just need a couple more lemons.

[@trikholit7064]

VitaminC%

[@No_True_Scotsman]

Lemon%

[@LBJshowedmehisJ]

I was going to say this should be a speenrun category.

[@-Shinoray-]

@@No_True_Scotsman nice now i want a Lemon% from the Channel the Backlogs

[@kaitlyn__L]

Or a bigger piece of zinc, rather than zinc plating. Then 14 lemons would absolutely suffice, or possibly even 7!

[@St0rmcrash]

The Enrichment Center reminds you that although circumstances may appear bleak, you are not alone. All Aperture Science personality constructs will remain functional in apocalyptic, low power environments of as few as 1.1 volts.

[@corbonoboi6679]

PORTAL REFERENCE!!!!!

[@triggerhurt]

absolutely mad that the gameboy was still running at 1 volt, it's like that quote from portal where the announcer mentions all equipment will remain functional at as few as 1.1 volts

[@purpleneons]

Because that is how electronics usually work, Xbox One controller's voltage cutoff is right around 1.1V for example.

[@triggerhurt]

@@purpleneons yeah i know, it's pretty funny how it keeps showing up as a result. still really interesting to see it in action

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@purpleneonshonestly that’s pretty impressive, since the TTL logic high threshold is 2V and the transition is usually ~1.5. But the actual hard-limit logic low threshold is 0.8, so I guess a lot of chips can just-about discriminate between low and high with just a 0.3V difference.

[@GuyDude-hk8uy]

In a world of portable power banks and personal vehicles (and even some public transport in big cities) providing easy access to power on-the-go, this is truly the way to get the authentic "rushing through the level because the batteries are about to die" original GB experience.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Schoolyard Game Boy, when everyone’s batteries are already dead. So one kid sits on the rest to get a little more juice out, while someone else keeps swapping them in to try and finish their level before it dies again. (In my school at least, we did rock paper scissors tournaments to determine who got to slurp up the battery dregs in that manner!)

[@GuyDude-hk8uy]

@@kaitlyn__L My friend used to tell me that if you held the GB up to the sun, the batteries would last longer - and I believed it! Simpler times :)

[@MarioMonte13]

​@@GuyDude-hk8uy technically speaking, it may have made a slightly measurable difference. Diodes and photovoltaic cells are the same, just specialized differently. If you supply any PV with its forward voltage, it will emit light. If you supply any diode with its forward voltage, it will emit light (whether visible or not) LEDs aren't good at turning light into current, but they definitely produce a small current from light.

[@Zerbey]

I did the same experiment, ended up building a digital clock that ran off various fruits, or even some drinks, and used it for years. The best "battery" was actually regular coca-cola.

[@nickwallette6201]

Takeaway: Coca-Cola is basically battery acid that you can drink. Can. Maybe shouldn't, but can.

[@devinwg6777]

What happened to it?

[@Zerbey]

@@devinwg6777 It was 30 years ago!

[@jezusmylord]

every battery acid is drinkable but only once @@nickwallette6201

[@DUKE_of_RAMBLE]

​@@devinwg6777World governments confiscated it, and silenced him. Expect this comment thread to be deleted within the next 2 or 3 hours.... 😒

[@barflugnarven]

Get a bunch of these with some link cables and you've got yourself a Lemon Party

[@unnamedchannel1237]

Filthy just filthy

[@ShankatsuForte]

that's an old one

[@matmatician7]

You might think it's silly, but when Australia turns to Mad Max and you wanna play Gameboy, James is gonna have the last laugh

[@JonasC22]

yea for about 10 minutes per week

[@gluttonousmaximus9048]

A bicycle generator should probably be available somewhere...

[@knifefght]

How are you going to grow lemons in a wasteland though??

[@obsidianclorox]

@@knifefght Oasis

[@propheinx2250]

It'll cost so much for such a short play... he'll make a killing, lol.

[@doctortwilight]

"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! I'M THE MAN THAT'S GONNA POWER YOUR GAME BOY! WITH THE LEMONS!"

[@medicalbeverage]

“I’M GONNA GET MY ENGINEERS TO INVENT A COMBUSTIBLE BATTERY THAT BURNS YOUR GAMEBOY!”

[@catfish552]

Damn, that's a great analogy for capacitors. Bucket you can fill with a trickle and dump all at once.

[@SecretAsianMan2222]

I think the issue with the charge rate wasn't so much the lemons, but the zinc strips. The zinc ions were being stripped from the steel, so you basically consumed most of the coating. At that point your galvanic potential was lower because it was just steel to copper instead of zinc. If you had solid zinc strips they might have charged at a similar rate for longer. A fun V2 could be 316 stainless steel and zinc. A lot more galvanic potential. It should charge a lot quicker.

[@Games_for_James]

Yeah, pure zinc isn’t something I can just go out and buy though. Stainless also releases a poisonous chemical,I don’t need that in my life lol

[@AB0BA_69]

@@Games_for_JamesJames, your channel is less than a year old, but has almost 150k subscribers!! How does it feel, mate?!?! Also, when will you show off your Silver Play Button??

[@leonroscher860]

​@@Games_for_James zinc nails are working well and are availlable in most hardware stores. They are used for roofing.

[@sadmac356]

​@@leonroscher860so that's probably why the school experiment used nails then?

[@Psyched_Crow]

I'm suddenly realizing that the experiments of Mr. James Channel are what happen when you have the drive of a mad scientist, but without the fatal flaw of unfiltered ambition.

[@ShawnsTechRescue]

Ah, so this is the Lemon Party I keep hearing about.

[@faizanking5052]

When life gives you lemon you use them to power a gameboy ofcourse🍋🍋🍋💀💀

[@jerrysanchez5453]

Better than what I've been doing with them anyway lol

[@DQSpider]

I think the Gameboy is both blurrier than you remember but the LCD is also very old and probably way more sluggish than it was in 1989

[@nickwallette6201]

I suspect this is the case. Motion clarity was never very good. But, last time I tried on my own childhood Game Boy, it was pretty much unplayable with platformers that regularly moved the screen. There's a difference between "a screen so bad you prayed your parents would drive under a street lamp so you could see" and 38-year-old lethargic liquid in the LCD.

[@DUKE_of_RAMBLE]

​@@nickwallette6201I had mega attachment called the *Handy Boy,* which was a square magnifying glass, two small lightbulbs on each side, and two fold out stereo speakers. 😁🤘 _(folded closed, they protected the mag glass, like window shutters)_ It also had a controls attachment, where for the D-Pad it was similar to the Analog Stick on N64. Then the A and B were just larger and closer together. It was *super* clunky and I _never_ used it. (it cliped on separately) I don't remember if the speakers were powered by the GameBoy, or if it has a small amplifier... But it's been over 30 years. Based on pictures, it looks to have a power switch for the speakers, so it likely does, and used the GameBoy's own volume dial to do handle the unit's volume control. But yea, its added lighting was the REAL hero! Which obviously meant my GameBoy now required 6 batteries. lol

[@brandontechnerd]

Plus it's running below 2 volts with the contrast all the way up.

[@TechnicalJimActual]

It could be just regular degradation of the screen components. These things are over 30 years old, after all.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@DUKE_of_RAMBLEI had something similar but smaller, so no speakers. No convoluted folding mechanism. Just the magnifier and the light. Two incandescent bulbs, “grain of wheat” sized (because I guess millimetres would be too abstract? Gotta call em rice, wheat, barley, etc. Sure, whatever). It drained the one AAA battery it took in an hour, sometimes two. My brother had a more expensive one with a single, and still very new, warm-white LED. It was brighter and lasted over 10x as long. I was so jealous 😂

[@happymark1668]

“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade, make it power your gameboy” -Cave Johnson (probably)

[@Gojiro7]

0:25 you know Australia, the "hotdog bun" was invented quite a long time ago, you can just use that instead wrapping sausages in white bread

[@MightyMurloc]

When Life gives you Lemons, charge capacitors and play Super Mario Land for 10 minutes. Lemons well spent.

[@gamebuoygames]

If Cave Johnson from the Portal series were real, this existing would either bring him back to life or kill him more haha.

[@Thewaterspirit57]

The gameboy using such little power is amazing :P It’s no wonder why my color and also GBA SP did soo well for a long time.

[@thenarstar]

"Thank goodness I still live in a world full of; Telephones! Handguns! Lemon powered GameBoys! ... ...And many things - made of Zinc! "

[@gunier.j.kintgenanimations]

When life gives you lemons, Don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get Mad! I don't want your DAMN lemons; What am I supposed to do with these!? Demand to see life's manager; Make life rue the day it thought it could give James Channel lemons!

[@DUKE_of_RAMBLE]

haha I remember this quote. A classic as classical as the GameBoy Classic! 🤘

[@layeredchip3220]

So for every day you charge it, you can joyously play your game boy for just about 1.4 minutes.

[@teinkasrkin4667]

I hope you had a nice black tea with those lemons afterwards. Can't let them go to waste!

[@maliciousbugman]

Lemon black tea and Gameboy sounds like a grand time.

[@l0kaltpsykf4ll34]

lemon with a hint of copper & zinc 💀

[@maliciousbugman]

@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 I already taste copper though, so no biggie.

[@cool_bug_facts]

@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 and quite possibly mold

[@teinkasrkin4667]

@@l0kaltpsykf4ll34 Parts of the lemon without traces of zinc look delish. Honestly i would definetly feed them to the neighbours kids whom i appreciate for waking me up everyday at 5 AM. 😀

[@NotakerGaming]

Interesting fact about the original game boy!! The screens actually become blurrier over time. I believe it's because of UV exposure but I could be mistaken.

[@promaster424]

Turns out if you have a lemon farm you can play your gameboy forever

[@ScrimmyBingus42]

"so I went to Bunnings" the best way to start an Aussie story

[@jayyydizzzle]

I'm pretty jealous that variable power supply that juicy resistance though

[@alydev23]

Theres something incredibly satisfying about seeing how slowly the voltmeter was ticking up when the bank was charging, and then seeing it tick down at almost two hertz as you're playing

[@Pepperdaguy]

Ngl the portal screenshot made my heart happy

[@mrx_yai1991]

james do a potato powered virtual boy

[@Chloedasher]

In elementary school I did a science experiment for the fair. I found out that lemons are the second least efficient food item to produce power. The most efficient was the onion due to the chemical density and concentration. It produced over 3 volts!

[@Anarchic1989]

Speedrun category LEMON%

[@malcontender6319]

6:37 Your cat always makes me chuckle. What a talker!

[@umbrellacorp.]

Those old tech are made to last forever and are made to work forever. And seeing it run on almost nothing makes it better.

[@darkmagician1184]

We’ve all played that brightness gamble, trying to squeeze every last bit from the batteries.

[@Jamesaepp]

Hello, sir. May I please have an episode that is dedicated to the kitties? Thank you. :)))))

[@WeekdayWeekend]

Make life rue the day it gave James lemons. Have your engineers invent a combustible lemon.

[@GPCBuilder]

That "brightness" you are adjusting is actually the contrast.

[@ExperimentIV]

i would love to see a comparison with the same amount of lemons would do with a game boy pocket! your channel always brings me such joy. it’s nice to see a retro game channel that isn’t just doing the same mods all the time!

[@1MonoComplex]

Wow! Thats quite the lemon party! :)

[@Xch3l]

Probably using a simpler game like Tetris would last some more as that contains a single chip, while Mario Land is a large enough game to require a mapper chip. Might not be a lot but hey, 5 minutes is 5 minutes! :D

[@jbritain]

Capacitors also charge slower the more you charge them so it makes sense that after a week you basically stopped charging.

[@jamessellers7708]

If anything, the workstation probably smells much more lemon-y

[@zeliardforty-two4692]

I came for the video game experiment, I stayed for the cat meow 😻

[@stenh.6243]

Wow! Looks like you're having a Lemon Party!

[@propheinx2250]

It looks like you've came up with a new speed running category. The lemon percent speed run, lol.

[@dylanwahrheit872]

That’s some sour power but that the gameboy even ran off any power generated by the lemons for more than 30 secs is cool.

[@ZeroCrystal]

You know, the first video I watched here made me go, "Huh?" At this point, I'm fully invested in the weird...

[@jama211]

This was awesome! I now feel bad for that youtuber who tried to cook a potato using potato batteries... and didn't think of trickle charging a capacitor >

[@PiggyPorkchop]

James truly is an engineer for the common man (psychos). Love the content big man.

[@afellowguy1933]

that first gameboy is probably one of the best human inventions ever

[@LongPeter]

If you live in Adelaide, this makes it pretty clear which day he recorded on. It doesn’t rain for more than two minutes at a time very often 😂

[@Khardankov]

I was there Friday to Tuesday visiting mates and family, and it had rained earlier on the day I arrived (so Friday daytime I think?) it would've been the first time it rained there in months, cuz that's Adelaide in the summer. Though this year's been a weird one and I moved to Melbourne years ago so who knows

[@Ninnuam999]

Didn't know they had rain in Australia

[@cheesecurdactual]

Did you burn their house down? With the lemons?

[@realflushed]

portal reference :D

[@dirkdiggler9056]

I'm happy you took the smart route and put all the other people who have attempted similar experiments, to absolute shame.

[@kempy2]

When life gives you lemmons you power a game boy

[@TDGalea]

Portal 2 screenshots. Automatically favourite video.

[@UselessDuckCompany]

That's pretty cool. If you had 2 Game Boys and a link cable you could have a lemon party!

[@Calslock]

I very much enjoyed that Lemon% speedrun

[@jordandavies9195]

Now I can say my gameboy has run out of juice and be quite literal in the sense.

[@MoonMan1267]

James is REALLY charged up in this one

[@backcuetheoriginal]

Did I just watch you power a Nintendo Gameboy with lemons? 😲 I am impressed! I have been binging your videos! I like your video editing! I also like that you celebrate your accomplishments and that you make the video feel like I am sitting right there with you! Keep up the good work!

[@CaptainRex332]

This guy reminds me of DankPods I wonder if they know each other

[@SlavTiger]

I think if you do more than 2 probes per lemon in parallel, and closer spacing for the probes, the performance will increase. Everyone always forgets probe distance has a large impact on max current possible due to the internal resistance of the lemon flesh and more surface area will give better reactivity.

[@imrustyokay]

3:52 I know that's a joke but there's actually a problem with Gameboy screens being blurrier. It affects MB Microvisions as well, but basically the dot matrix display is starting to not work as good as it used to.

[@RestoreTechnique]

There's a lemon behind that rock! 🍋

[@mattwhaley1865]

Now I know what to bring to my lemon party

[@LenKusov]

If you wanna make a next-level lemon battery you can cut the lemons into thin rounds and stack them with discs or plates of copper and zinc, or better yet, ditch the copper for nickel and just glob lead-free solder onto the backs of a buncha nickel foil sheets (like for spot welding onto batteries). Stack em up like Luigi Galvani and you're really cookin with lemons.

[@Most_Jeffinitely]

It's weird how fruits and vegetables i.e. lemons, potatoes, and pickles, have the ability to keep a GameCube on life support

[@kaitlyn__L]

This is very nostalgic, for everyone in my school playing through faded screens, and sitting on batteries to warm them up a little and get 5 more minutes of gameplay. I never expected that meant we were sitting on 1.2-1.5V though! Haha. This is also a fantastic example of how capacitors are useful for voltage boosting circuits. Without getting too technical, or into super-fast switching. So well done! Though it does make me wonder if automated switching would improve the charge rate, along with an actual piece of pure zinc. Maybe not enough to play live, but at least to extend the play time by making it drain slower? I bet a cheap electrolysis kit, one with too many impurities for actual chemists, could do the trick.

[@eDoc2020]

If you use a more efficient configuration you should be able to get much more usable energy into the capacitors with the same lemons+electrodes. Only put as many lemons in series as needed to match the capacitor's current voltage. Putting more in series uses up more lemons but doesn't increase the charge rate.

[@QuinnKallisti]

You can get more current out of a single lemon, by plugging in multiple cathodes and anodes.

[@adamweb]

I'm honestly impressed you were able to play for over 10 minutes, considering how power hungry most electronics were back then! I remember Sega Game Gear needing approximately 812 AA batteries!

[@JJST9978]

James answers the many, many gaming related questions we never had

[@random_n]

I had an unreasonable urge to tilt my screen to see the Gameboy LCD better all throughout this.

[@Trn-u1n]

Thank you youtube algorithm, this channel is so amazing, I love everything about it!!🎉

[@skateecho]

Love that game and what a wild experiment! always love the mad science with James! PS that basement gaming cave is too awesome.

[@imperiallegionnaire8344]

So a Beatles Week of lemons = ten minutes of Gameboy

[@TechnicalJimActual]

Might have been more efficient to just use a Gameboy Pocket. Also, very surprised that the lemons didn't look too rotten after all that time.

[@thesnake1176]

How's it goin mates?

[@Creepin_Jesus]

Awh dude, this reminds me of when I was in a creche and we would charge the batts for the communal gameboy by holding them under a hand dryer! I guess the heating element charged them up a bit but man we enjoyed those few minutes of Wario

[@TheStickCollector]

This is probably something I would do to avoid using batteries. Nice to see it done.

[@BirnieMac1]

James encompasses the level of cromulent jank I aspire to once I get my engineering degree too

[@Games_for_James]

Oh I dropped out of engineering.

[@Khardankov]

@@Games_for_James not before learning the good stuff, apparently

[@FluffyBunnyCat]

Feels like this guy is gonna accidentally discover a new power source

[@HamguyBacon]

You should have microwaved the lemons for 60 seconds and squeeze it to get the juice flowing, you should have gotten around 1.2v per lemon, lemons have a thin skin that separates its pulp and can dry out. you could have also used a joule thief.

[@strays6731]

reminds me of that time BasicallyHomeless powered a computer off of jsut potatoes, not through capacitors like this but literally only potatoes

[@OzRetrocomp]

I'd love to see/hear explanations of electronics concepts using lemons. I suspect that had the lecturer used lemons instead of whatever textbook they used to teach Ohm's Law, I would've stuck with electronics at TAFE past the Cert III stage.

[@BesottenJenny]

so if a battery is nearly the same voltage as a lemon is it theoretically possible to eat batteries like lemons?

[@silpheedTandy]

dude, Australia's AussieBucks are so colourful and beautiful

[@maxhammick948]

Just whip out a capacitor bank with six 500F supercaps like it's no big deal. That's like $100 in caps alone

[@Unbreakify]

I was literally looking for Game Boy when this uploaded.

[@chairgaming1997]

6:13 "8 dayys, 8long dayys to bendigo"

[@casultaser]

"$30 back in the day, and can you believe no one bought this?"

[@notyourtipicaltechguy6438]

Try using lemons only in parallel and use a buck boost circuit to get to a higher voltage

[@How2BEpic]

capacity ticking down like old school mario seconds

[@Denis7947.]

Do with a solar pannel with 2 volts and 25mA you will need 3 in series and 6 in paralel to output 0,150 amps (0,300 w) (18 solar pannels require)

[@AliYassinToma]

Bro still put a portal reference even tho its about potatoes.. u get a like for that

[@drakesterX]

Insert “Cave Johnson Portal Quote about lemons” here.

[@zZFlaviusBoss]

Well you know what they say When life gives you lemons You power your gameboy with them