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by baybal2 1806 days ago
Even device's own ground plane some times works. Though, it's near impossible to do with isolated power supplies. Modern ULP MCUs are incredibly power efficient, and can run for a day on a power of a single LED blink.

Anything wireless is still out of the question unless real ground is there though. Without ground, a dedicated power harvesting circuit would certainly provide more power.

We experimented with harvesting, with 10cm antennas, it's just enough to do a single beep once 20-30 minutes using specialised ULP UHF radios, or RX for a few seconds once a minute.