Who are "we"? Do you know that you just positioned yourself as a frontfigure for the whole forum?
I would define a selfrunner as something that runs for weeks or years and delivers power during that time. Taken that it's just a cople of hours to charge that battery up again.
If I can make it run for a week on a cap, isn't that a selfrunner?
People have different definitions for many things. My definition of a self runner is a device that once started by a minimal amount of operator applied energy the device will produce it's own motive power indefinitely, it needs not provide a usable output just self run. The device should need to be stopped purposefully after any reasonable length of time, no one expects a self runner to be able to run without maintainence for months. But a self runner cannot be supplied a constant supply of user provided energy. If running from a cap there should either be a net gain of potential energy in the capacitor or an unchanging value, if the cap loses charge then the device will eventually stop and so cannot be called as self runner. Efficiency itself is not really based on the smaller the input the more efficient it is. If the tiny input of even 1 hundredth of a Watt was all wasted and no useful work is gained from it then it is very inefficient. Things that would seem to be efficient at very low power levels often are not at higher power levels, so the usefulness is limited of many low powered circuits. It is also much easier to make measurement errors with lower levels of power so many are not convinced by LED power level device efficiencies. If you think you may be onto something don't let a couple of opinions hold you back. Cheers
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