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The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
 Posted - 07/23/2009 : 14:25:45
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Wireless power and recharging system
Prediction: the same people who ignore the scientific evidence against a cellphone-cancer risk are already gearing up to fight this.
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Bailey's second law; There is no relationship between the three virtues of intelligence, education, and wisdom.
You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church? - The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Blackadder II
Baculum's page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=3947338590 |
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2009 : 15:25:07 [Permalink]
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I'm sure that the Tesla-worshipping woo contingent will also be tickled pink.
I used to have an electric toothbrush that recharged in a very similar way- the base plugged into the wall socket, the toothbrush was placed on the base and the base transfered power to the brush the same way- simple magnetic induction, or what an electronics geek like myself might call a "coreless transformer". |
"The Republican agenda is to turn the United States into a third-world shithole." -P.Z.Myers |
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2009 : 15:39:44 [Permalink]
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I'm sure that the Tesla-worshipping woo contingent will also be tickled pink.
I used to have an electric toothbrush that recharged in a very similar way- the base plugged into the wall socket, the toothbrush was placed on the base and the base transfered power to the brush the same way- simple magnetic induction, or what an electronics geek like myself might call a "coreless transformer". |
"The Republican agenda is to turn the United States into a third-world shithole." -P.Z.Myers |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2009 : 16:02:54 [Permalink]
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It exploits "resonance", whereby energy transfer is markedly more efficient when a certain frequency is applied.
When two objects have the same resonant frequency, they exchange energy strongly without having an effect on other, surrounding objects.
For example, it is resonance that can cause a wine glass to explode when a singer hits exactly the right tone.
But instead of using acoustic resonance, Witricity's approach exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.
The system uses two coils - one plugged into the mains and the other embedded or attached to the gadget.
Each coil is carefully engineered with the same resonant frequency. When the main coil is connected to an electricity supply, the magnetic field it produces is resonant with that of with the second coil, allowing "tails" of energy to flow between them.
As each "cycle" of energy arrives at the second coil, a voltage begins to build up that can be used to charge the gadget. |
Does the Earth itself have a "resonance" and could we design our electronics to just recharge off of that? Now that would be cool.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2009 : 20:36:30 [Permalink]
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The difference between this and the toothbrush is that this new system will recharge your phone while you're walking around in your house, using it.
Inductive charging systems have been around for years, but the key has always been close proximity. I saw a medical show many years ago highlighting a pacemaker which used inductive charging of lithium batteries instead of the old atomic batteries using Plutonium. An inductive coil was laid just underneath the skin, and once a week the patient had to sit with a charging paddle held next to the coil (flat against the skin) to charge up the batteries.
With this new system, a resonant coil buried anywhere in the body could pick up a charge from a transmitting coil anywhere in the same room.
Of course, we've had this technology for years, also, just on a very small scale, in the form of battery-less RFIDs, in which the chips pick up just enough energy from the incoming radio signal to transmit their ID numbers back out. Of course, to get long range out of an RFID, it really needs a battery. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2009 : 21:01:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Of course, we've had this technology for years, also, just on a very small scale, in the form of battery-less RFIDs, in which the chips pick up just enough energy from the incoming radio signal to transmit their ID numbers back out. Of course, to get long range out of an RFID, it really needs a battery.
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Oh, is that how those things work? Neat.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2009 : 21:19:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Oh, is that how those things work? Neat. |
Yeah, that's what's happening when the alarms start beeping as you leave a retail store like Best Buy with something that's both expensive and small, and the clerk forgot to erase the chip (which is inside the little strip of plastic, maybe one inch long by a quarter inch and about 1/16th thick, buried somewhere within the product packaging, since it wouldn't do much good if the customers could just peel them off and head for the exit).
In clothing stores, RFID-like devices used to be stored inside those clunky white plastic clamp-on things, that the clerks would need to unlock after you'd handed over payment. When I was 12 or so, my mom and I left a Sears store with a pair of pants with one of those still attached, thanks to the clerk simply forgetting about it. Actually, we stood next to the beeping alarm for a full ten minutes waiting for a bus to take us home (we waited inside the store because it was raining), and nobody from security seemed to take any interest in us that day. We only realized the alarm was beeping because of us after we got home and found the clamp still clamped to my pants (we also saw the pants listed on the receipt, so we could prove they weren't stolen). It took me two friggin' hours to pry that damn thing off with pliers and a screwdriver and whatever else I though would work, without damaging my nice new pants, because hidden underneath the plastic were steel bars and a steel pin. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 01:53:18 [Permalink]
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When I visited Atlanta for Dragon*Con last time, MARTA (the subway) had RFID chips in their tickets.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 09:03:23 [Permalink]
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This is a remarkable breakthrough, especially as it is apparently simply an elegant refinement of well-known electrical induction principles. Who would have expected that a "mere" refinement of hundred-year-old-plus technology would come at this late date, and with such a potential impact? The applications may be broad and deep.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 10:49:19 [Permalink]
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| I could see this working if the transmitting device were highly directional, that is, the energy being transferred along a fairly tight line to the receiving device. If you are going to try to power devices all over your house, then the transmitter will need to transmit the power in a spherical (or at least hemispherical) pattern. Since the intensity of the flux (equivalent to the amount of power available) at any point would be bound by the inverse square law (double the distance and you have only one quarter of the power available), this would seem to be terribly inefficient. For low power devices such as a cell phone, the actual loss may not be much, at least until you multiply it by millions of homes. In addition, it is estimated that 75% of the power used by home electronics is used when they are "off". For power hogs like TVs for example, it seems to me that your energy use would would skyrocket. |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Rubicon95
Skeptic Friend
USA
220 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 11:16:46 [Permalink]
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| Nokia, IBM, and Panasonic have been developing RFID Chips that are powered by harvesting energy from ambient radio waves. |
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Zebra
Skeptic Friend
USA
354 Posts |
Posted - 07/24/2009 : 22:52:45 [Permalink]
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Oh, dear - what is this going to do to psychic powers?
(Or, at least, the claims of people who claim to have psychic powers, if they know they're in the general vicinity of one of these devices)
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I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone* -Dick Cheney
*some restrictions may apply |
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sailingsoul
SFN Addict
2830 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2009 : 20:46:59 [Permalink]
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| Just another invention and a power vampire to boot. Doesn't save energy. Connected to the grid 24/7 whether it's in use or not, to make our lives more convenient. I'm not buying the claims of benefit, didn't hear any real one's. Just like plugin wall transformers waste power when plugged in and are not connected to any device. World wide 100's of Millions of these add up. Yep, don't stop the carnival. What the hell, no one here is going to live forever. Does it really matter to anyone reading this if the polar bear is extinct 100 years from now? If I owned a power plant I'd love this. SS |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2009 : 21:33:25 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by sailingsoul
Just another invention and a power vampire to boot. Doesn't save energy. Connected to the grid 24/7 whether it's in use or not, to make our lives more convenient. I'm not buying the claims of benefit, didn't hear any real one's. Just like plugin wall transformers waste power when plugged in and are not connected to any device. World wide 100's of Millions of these add up. Yep, don't stop the carnival. What the hell, no one here is going to live forever. Does it really matter to anyone reading this if the polar bear is extinct 100 years from now? If I owned a power plant I'd love this. SS |
Actually, the really neat trick would be to couple this with a little Bluetooth, and you get cellphones and whatnot that tell the house, "hey, I need to be recharged, in this room." You program the devices to only ask for recharging when they're at 25% capacity or so. That way, the resonant chargers only run when they need to, and "when they need to" will really mean when they need to.
A (very) little more smarts, and your entire home shuts down to its bare-minimum power consumption (plus a single Bluetooth receiver) while you're away, and simply walking up to your front door carrying some electronic device wakes the whole house up again. It'll even turn on the CFL porch light for you.
Done right, the house reads your TiVo recordings schedule, shuts off the wall outlet your entertainment system is plugged into, and five minutes before the show you want recorded comes on, the main home computer shunts battery-backup power to the TiVo box just long enough to record the show, then turns it off - hard - again afterwards.
And the primary computer running the whole show could easily run in low-power mode on just a few tens of watts - literally pennies a day. If I've done my math right, 41.67 watts corresponds to 1 kWh per day, which at the U.S. Average would be 11.59 cents (as of April 2009). Call it $3.60 per month.
Unfortunately, to do it right, the entire home would need to be re-wired. But that'd just be a one-time cost which would probably pay for itself in a few years.
So the only problem is security. Don't want your neighbors hacking into the system and shutting off the recharger for your pacemaker, now do you? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2009 : 21:33:40 [Permalink]
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| I see your point soul. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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This could be BIG
