PowerCast: Wireless Freedom
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 by Jonathan LauWireless communication is already all around us – IrDA, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. How about having wireless power? Wireless would never be complete without a wireless power source. Don’t you find it a hassle to plug in your laptop to a power socket in order to surf the net? With PowerCast, the dream of transmitting power wirelessly has become a reality!
Remote Power
A Powercaster transmitter chip, running on conventional current, broadcasts a low-power radio (RF) signal at a specific frequency across several feet of empty space. Powerharvester receiver chips built into one or more remote devices capture enough energy to continuously recharge batteries, or to power devices directly.
Contactless Power
Running on conventional current, a Powercaster element generates a safe energy field designed to be a few millimeters or centimeters deep. A matching Powerharvester element entering the field captures energy and generates useful current, even if the elements are separated by open space or solid matter. That current can recharge a battery or directly power an electronic device.
Wireless Christmas Tree
This Christmas season, innovators have come up with a high-tech Christmas tree that will light itself using power harnessed wirelessly! No more cables to your lights!
The Wireless Christmas Tree from Front Gate nixes wires and uses this technology to transmit energy from a power source to the LED bulbs on the tree. The tree comes in a golden urn and stands 4.5 feet high. It’s available starting today for $395.
December 11th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Nice post. At Powercast, we believe that RF wireless power is all around us in an ambient way. TV signals, Radio signals, garage door openers, cell phones, WiFi, WiMax, CB/Paging radios, garage door openers, baby monitors and a wide range of electronics all use RF.
One of the problems is that this RF is often unpredictable and ill-suited for the task at hand. However, Powercast has also patented the transmission of RF energy, for the purpose of power distribution systems. So the predictability issue is solved. Transmitter and reciever.
The examples you posted above only scratch the surface of our technology. There are three unique attributes that make Powercast the “last” generation of wireless power.
1. Any to any powering. Most wireless power distribution systems are set up to be point to point (Piezo, Solar, inductive, magnetic, etc). RF wireless power is point to multi-point, multi-point to multi-point and so on.
2. Power over distance. We are now seeing useful power transmission out to well over 50 feet. Granted, this is only a few milliwatts of power that is harvestable. But our patented Powerharvester is 70% efficient with any available power. Combining RF harvesting, capacitors, rechargeable batteries … even at 10 milliwatts of continuos harvesting … provides a surprising amount of power.
3. Powercast solutions can be transmit and receive … or ambient receive only. And these solutions can work indoors, outdoors, in walls, through walls and so on.
This is what is really cool about Powercast.
December 11th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Yeah but? would we need like a WEP code or something lol?
You get leechers who suck up unprotected networks, and i guess there are more than 2 front doors within 50 feet.
Free power for some i think.
A good example of wireless chargers are razors, rechargeable eletric toothbrushes, mobile phones and iPod docking stations :D
- Although they arent very powerful…
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:48 am
No Pecky. We need to open up the view a bit. You are right in looking at razors, toothbrushes and phones as an initial perspective of the value of wireless power. But in truth, the vision has to be substantially larger, optically speaking.
If the world is saturated with RF energy, then harvesting/transmitting more useable energy is something that is very real. But it still requires that electronic designers have to alter their perspectives.
This means that designers have to establish goals of lower power consumption over feature and lower operating time per task. We have found that it is really easy to get a task (like a device handshake) to occur in less than 50 mSec, but that the given device designer has this occuring over 3 seconds. If this were to change, 400% power saving would occur. This kind of design logic has to be adopted by major equipment vendors. If so, then some really exciting things can be done.