RCA Charger Draws Electricity from Wi-Fi Signals

Free energy here I come!!

But won't the Wi-Fi connection be compromised?

Ehh.. why not use cell networks? They are much stronger.

Oh, I know why.

good, solar sucks anyway. using solar chargers means being in the sun, and who wants to go out there? now i can stay inside more. but i would like to know something, would the amount of wi-fi make a diff? or is it just signal strength?

That is verrrrry cool.. I like that idea...

nope wifi is not effected as a transmitted signal can have an unlimited number of listeners, as long as they don't broadcast they wont hinder the signal for others.

they need to include this technology in all battery powered devices, it will be sure to increase the run time.

Its pretty frikkin cool me thinks

As said, miniaturise the device and design it to be able to pull power from cell/mobile phone towers too, then implement it in mobile phones etc.
Even a tiny charge running day and night would certainly make a huge difference to battery life.

Hmm, Nicola Tesla perfected this technology almost a century ago. He was able to drive a car around New York City from power being transmitted from inside his lab. Just goes to show new technology is not always a new idea.

This is awesome technology

Yea, Nicola Tesla tried this, but he certainly didn't perfect it. In fact, his setup was so inefficient he was called crazy to even try it. He was almost shunned from the scientific community for it. I'm glad they finally came up with something that is efficient enough to be effective.

This is so cool, considering most everyone is within a wi-fi source at all times.

Hello people?!?!? Anyone really believing this??? This looks like complete snake oil to me. Capacity of a blackberry battery is 1,3Ah x 3V= about 4Wh. 70% charge of this is 2,8Wh. A WiFi signal normally is 0,1W (20dBm) peak power. In reality it is much lower since it is a pulsed signal with a very low duty cycle. Anyway, if you manage to capture 100% of this signal at 100% duty cycle, it will take 28 hours to charge from 30% to 100%. So these bastards are bunch of LIARS selling SNAKE OIL!!!!!!!

That's right, among other things. He also


No, they haven't. Several laws of physics would have to be very, very wrong if they could do what they claim the way it's made out to work. At best, by setting this thing right up against the wireless hotspot's rubber ducky, you might be able to overcome the self-discharge and slowly, slowly trickle-charge the internal battery. It would likely take hours, probably days, and that's for a best-case scenario. It would be far more efficient and convenient to just plug the charger's battery into its own mains charger; in other words, RCA is most likely bullshitting us.

The start of a new era... imagine what will happen in the next years, this could move to Cell phone cells.

Awesome!

Damn, forgot to write that Tesla "...also laughed off Special Relativity and generally got increasingly loopy in his old age." He once berated Edison for not taking the time to do some math before committing inventions to prototypes, but he himself often made claims that solid theory couldn't support.

Do you people even read the article before commenting? The Blackberry was charged from a battery that was charged from the wifi charger. Who knows how long the battery took to charge off of a wifi signal, but the Blackberry was charged fairly quickly from the battery. 90 min is not bad coming from a battery that got juiced off of air. Completely plausible if you read the article and understand what is said.

Good analysis.

You can never go wrong accusing marketing/sales of selling snake oil. New and improvedd.

But.. "The rechargeable battery resides within the Airnergy device, and will automatically begin charging once it comes in contact with Wi-Fi signals." the battery is what charged the blackbury. And if I need to carry a separate battery it'll be wall rechargable. ... Now an emergency LED flashlight that was always charged ...

Nikola Tesla invented this tech a century ago.

It'd be neat to power small PCs with this... HTPCs or netbooks... without the need for power cords.... that would rock!

[citation]But.. "The rechargeable battery resides within the Airnergy device, and will automatically begin charging once it comes in contact with Wi-Fi signals." the battery is what charged the blackbury. And if I need to carry a separate battery it'll be wall rechargable. ... Now an emergency LED flashlight that was always charged ...[/citation]

exactly, it was the battery inside that device. They never mentioned how long it takes for that battery to recharge by wifi, only that it is possible.
Now, if you know even High School physics, you know that the more components introduced into a circuit, the less efficient it becomes. Wifi -> battery -> cell battery is inefficient.
Now, what would be interesting would be if this device could use multiple Wifi sources. In my dorm, I have over 10 wifi networks that i can connect to.

It doesn't matter which battery it's supposed to be charging, it's still not going to be enough charging to make it practical. Are you going to leave the RCA unit next to your wifi for a week just so you can recharge your phone's battery in an hour?


The best case scenario for wireless transmission is that power drops off as the square of distance, or in other words VERY quickly. In reality, with omni-directional non-point-source antennae like the ones in 802.11 wireless networks, if your charger is even a few yards away from the antenna of any wifi hotspot, you'll probably get no useful power to overcome the resistance of a partially charged battery enough to recharge it, even if there are ten hotspots all in the same floor. These wireless transmitters are just extremely low-power radios, they only have to be able to push a detectable signal a few tens of yards.

@ Eric and Wheels

I will refer you to basic texts on electronics and electricity.

There are ways to take a charge and use it to create bigger charges.

Many.

I will not go into it here because it could fill an entire lecture course, but it is obvious you have nothing more then a pedestrian understanding of electricity.

(transformers, capacitors and using a small charge to create a magnetic field that creates a larger charge, you also leave out the obvious that a .1 charge is out there but there is an exponential effect in energy harvesting when taken in from all directions. By your logic, generators would not work because there is not enough free electrons in the air to be coaxed into the copper cables by the magnetic fields created by the generators. As in, generators do not generate anything but a spinning magnetic field that coaxes electrons out of the air, it does not actually create electricity)

I find that one of the most misunderstood physics by anyone is electricity and magnetic fields.

Yes it will. Every wireless signal has a limited number of listeners and a range based on where those listener are and how much power they're drawing from the signal. For example, you have an antenna, and 2 listeners in a straight line. The antenna is a 1W antenna and person a has a 500mW draw on that signal. The second person is only going to be able to draw the other 500mW and no more. If the first person increases his draw to 1W, that second person wouldn't even know a signal was being generated. TV, Radio, WiFi, etc don't have this problem (yet) because they are pumping out extra wattage to increase range. If people started running around drawing signals out of the air this will become a huge problem because it will severally decrease the intended range of the signal and hamper its target listeners.

This has never been used as a power source because it is horribly inefficient. An antenna can only direct it's signal so much before it spreads to unintended areas (like outer space) and the antenna can't detect where more power is needed, its just always on. With wired power, you lose some in the transmission but most of what you're sending goes directly to its intended target and it can determine based on the amps drawn where more wattage needs to be added.

Did anyone else think someone shot the charger right in the middle when they first looked at the picture?

If this technology works properly and charge batteries live while picking up wi-fi signals, the first thing I can think of is that a wifi-emitting device that powered with battery (eg mobile phones and portable computers) will immediately get the benefit.

I will not go into it here because it could fill an entire lecture course, but it is obvious you have nothing more then a pedestrian understanding of electricity

....

generators would not work because there is not enough free electrons in the air to be coaxed into the copper cables by the magnetic fields created by the generators. As in, generators do not generate anything but a spinning magnetic field that coaxes electrons out of the air, it does not actually create electricity)

What? Electrons from the air? The magnetic field shoves electrons already in the wire through the wire, it doesn't grab them out of the air.

The amusing part is that you have the gall to bash someone else's understanding of the subject...

Yes it will. Every wireless signal has a limited number of listeners and a range based on where those listener are and how much power they're drawing from the signal. For example, you have an antenna, and 2 listeners in a straight line. The antenna is a 1W antenna and person a has a 500mW draw on that signal. The second person is only going to be able to draw the other 500mW and no more. If the first person increases his draw to 1W, that second person wouldn't even know a signal was being generated. TV, Radio, WiFi, etc don't have this problem (yet) because they are pumping out extra wattage to increase range. If people started running around drawing signals out of the air this will become a huge problem because it will severally decrease the intended range of the signal and hamper its target listeners.

Uhh, no. The signal emits to a point in space at a constant rate, decreasing exponentially at the square of the distance. The way to get a larger signal is a bigger antenna, thus covering more radiated "points" in space. The number of antennas is irrelevant, since it is the physical space itself that determines the recieved signal. Note that this does not account for blockage by a closer antenna, it assumes clear line of sight for everyone.

It is certainly "snake oil". Many years ago, when TV stationstarted transmitting on UHF, 1 electronic market outlet started selling the simple " Loop Antenna ".

The Demo at the Electronics Centre produced SUPER reception of the TV Signal - the shop owners even REMOVER the back cover ot the TV sets - to show the didnt modify the TV sets.

In reality - they had a UHF antenna on the roof top and put 2 boaster TV Antenna amplifiers Coaxial cable and connected it to another UHF antenna INSIDE the shop.

No one knew about it because the shop also sell UHF TV antenna that were on display in the shop.

The " Loop Antenna " cost only 50 cents to produce but was sold at $15.00. HUGH Profit.

I was skeptical and knew that in reality, it CANT work. There must be some hiden thing in it.

ALL the shops were in the BASEMENT of a shopping complex !

Another " Snake oil " was the Cellular antenna re-transmitter - 1 cell antenna stuck on the glass outside your car, another cell antenna stuck INSIDE you car next to the outside antenna.

It claimed to "Improve" your cell signal by re-transmitting the Cell signal from outside.

Total failure after some iDiots bought them from manufacturers and failed to sell them.

[citation][nom]dawolf74[/nom]@ Eric and Wheels
I will refer you to basic texts on electronics and electricity.There are ways to take a charge and use it to create bigger charges.[/quote]
You cannot just take a certain wattage in and put out a bigger wattage without using up a store of power from another source, that would violate the conservation of energy. You may be able to store and build up a charge over time, but you are still confined to the amount of power going into the system.

With EM coming off an antenna (which, in 802.11, is capped at 1 Watt MAX), the energy is dispersed in several directions at once, and as it moves out to cover a larger volume of space the power at any given point in space drops off sharply.

What the Hell are you talking about? Electrons stay (hopefully) within the wiring while FIELDS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE go through the air. Generators do not take electrons "from the air," it's the electrons present IN THE WIRING that get moved through the circuit! This happens to work because the electrons in a metal (like coppery wire) are particularly free to move from atom to atom, hence the property of metals being generally good conductors. If electrons were actually being stripped from the air itself the oxygen would be ionized, O2 would become unstable and subsequently turn into toxic Ozone (O3) and nobody would be able to work at power plants ever.


If you define "electricity" as a flow of electric charge like most SANE people do, then yes it does create electricity. The electrons are moved in the form of charge as the magnetic field pulls them around and pushes them through a conducting medium (air can conduct electricity, but does this so poorly that it's generally an insulator unless you overcome the resistance with very high voltages). Magnetic fields, not electrons, are what move "through the air," or at least in relation to the conductor. In a generator, the wires move relative to the magnetic field and so induce a current. In a radio antenna, the electromagnetic field of the radio waves induces a current in the antenna.


"No no no, the Earth actually stands still while the Sun goes about it in a big circle! I find that this is one of the most misunderstood aspects of physic!"

has anyone seen the charger in the process of re-charging itself from Wi-Fi? Didn't think so...