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Steampunk isn't just for enthusiastic live-action role players with a fondness for Victorian aesthetics - it's a viable way of powering a Raspberry Pi.

A user with the handle "Alexzpro" took to Swedish tech forum Svenska Elektronikforumet to brainstorm his ambitious contraption: an actual steam driven engine used to supply power to the microcomputer.


Instead of simply plugging into the mains, Alexzpro's alternative steam machine uses twin propane torches to heat water in a copper boiler. Steam passes to a twin-cylinder engine mounted on a metal plate, before being fed into more cylinders where the pressure drives pistons, in turn powering a crankshaft. The crankshaft's connected to the flywheel, powering a small DC motor.

But the path of a mad scientist does not always run smooth. Asking for assistance, Alexzpro's explains that the project is for school, making them some sort of wünderkind (or 'underbarn', given they're in Sweden). Power cycling seemed to be a problem, with the Pi frequently restarting. Alexzpro had tried soldering on larger capacitors, but to no avail.

The engine itself worked, with a video showing it in action available on YouTube. Alexzpro later explained that a stepper motor and regulator switch helped the power problems, too. A note of scepticism: exactly how well the system worked remains unclear as the Pi is never shown.


Further, if building a steam engine from scratch seems a little extreme for a school project, well, it is. The young inventor said that his grandfather had built it years before. That doesn't detract from the ingenuity of trying to use it to power a computer, though - whether it's real or not.

Although Alexzpro's SteamPi is Swedish, the idea is more in keeping with chindōgu, the Japanese art of useless inventions. Such creations are characterised as being more troublesome (or often, embarrassing) to use than the problem they attempt to correct. A steam-powered computer certainly fits that remit: it works, it's impressive to see in action, but it's as fantastically impractical as it is simply fantastic.

Updated 19/03/16, 16:13: This article originally translated wünderkind into Swedish as 'undrar barn'. The correct translation is 'underbarn'.