Wireless Power’s 2009 Debut : Wireless Power Comes Home
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: wireless, power, powermat | Themes: Digital Entertainment
- 1. Wireless Power Comes Home
- 2. Light and power: eCoupled
- 3. Charging Surface
- 4. Powering Pans and Blenders
- 5. Powering TVs
- 6. Transmitting Status, Not Big Files
1. Wireless Power Comes Home
If you use an electric toothbrush, then you’re already using wireless power. The technology, called magnetic inductive coupling, isn’t new, but making it efficient and scaling it up to higher voltages is. Getting companies from Bosch to Energizer to Motorola to get on board and build it into their products is thus a new development as well. This year, we’ll see the launch of wireless power systems that were demonstrated at CES earlier this month, which will drive everything from flashlights to power tools as well as laptops and PDAs.
Light without cables: Energizer is bringing out a solar battery charger and an eCoupled flashlight.
![[176724 - thetidydesk] Without a tangle of cables, your desk could look very tidy–the eCoupled areas can power everything from a flashlight to a phone, camera, mouse, or laptop.](http://media.bestofmicro.com/wireless-power-powermat,D-0-176724-13.jpg "[176724 - thetidydesk] Without a tangle of cables, your desk could look very tidy–the eCoupled areas can power everything from a flashlight to a phone, camera, mouse, or laptop.")
Wireless power doesn’t always mean you can get power anywhere. Instead, it usually means you don’t have to make a physical connection and that means you don’t have to deal with several different connectors. Wireless power could actually be more efficient than standard charging, with intelligent systems that identify devices and monitor the power level, replacing multiple adapters, and turning off the power when a device is charged. And it’s certainly more convenient, because you can drop devices down onto a mat or charging area rather than plugging them in and put equipment where you want it–not where you happen to have an outlet.
However, making wireless power work requires adapters and connectors, charging surfaces, and a certain amount of setup, because somewhere along the line you still have to connect to the mains. Here’s how the different systems will shape up this year and what you’ll need to do to power up without the plug.
- Next page Light and power: eCoupled
Great article!
I would like to know more about the technology actually works (I am assuming some sort of bluetooth, given the speed rating of 1.1Mbs)
This idea had popped in to my noodle a couple years ago, didn't know companies were actually developing the technology.
raven, it's electromagnetic induction - one coil produces an electromagnetic field and the other picks it up using near-field conductivity; the same property used by radio and gps antennae. You modulate the field to provide different voltage; you can also modulate it to transfer data in the signal (think HomePlug).
To misquote (I think) Marconi:
The telegraph is like a cat with its head in New York and its tail in London and when you pull the tail, the cat miaows. Radio is the same, but there is no cat. Wireless power is the same; there still is no cat but its eyes light up.
don't be too much enthusiastic
is just another source of money for theme
and another source of cancer for us
Would be awesome to have those bosch tools! Always fully charged, and no worries about where you put the charger!
Induction is the same principle as having a house near high voltage power lines. Sure, you can put a bundle of wire on your front lawn to harness the radiation but is it worth it to live so close? I'd rather manage power cords than deal with the health complications involved. Wireless power is a misnomer: it's unfocused inductive radiation. Check out health issues from exposure to electric fields and you'll steer clear of this technology.
A much better idea: Universal interface, highly efficient, plug-n-play AC to DC converts:
http://www.greenplug.us/
If you have space for a wireless charging pad I can't see why you can not accomodate a DC power hub instead. Hopefully you may even start seeing these built in to wall oulets everywhere.
I am amazed that this article mentions nothing of possible health issues of wirless charging. It does not even mention at what frequency the induction wave is transmitted at. That 98% efficiency claim sounds suspect. That probably only applies to two large coils aligned perfectly in a waveguide assembly. What if there are surrounding metal objects, especially those having metal rings? What if devices are placed perfectly on the pad?
If the greenplug concept takes off we can finally throw away all those inefficient, product-cost-increasing, easy to loose, ugly, landfill clogging, wall warts.
mm question:
wouldn't stealing wireless power be cool? i mean, it'd be like stealing internet, right? lol
Isn't ANYONE concerned about the health effects from this? Wireless energy transmission will send energy throught the air, and that energy will unquestionably be absorbed by the body in some way or the other. This should be a main concern.
All mobile phones and other transmitting devices up until now has been approved and considered quite "safe" all because of the extremely low power they use in the transmission, but these thing will per definition transmit with HIGH power in comparison.
Am I the only one thinking this?
Isn't ANYONE concerned about the health effects from this? Wireless energy transmission will send energy throught the air, and that energy will unquestionably be absorbed by the body in some way or the other. This should be a main concern.All mobile phones and other transmitting devices up until now has been approved and considered quite "safe" all because of the extremely low power they use in the transmission, but these thing will per definition transmit with HIGH power in comparison.Am I the only one thinking this?
Nope. I just forgot the health concerns in my excitement for the tools.
I suppose you're right. But I expect, naively perhaps, that those producing it will test it for any influence it has on peoples health, pets health and interference with life saving tech like pacemakers.
For all but the last few pages in this article (about RF powering devices), the energy transfer technology described uses a magnetic field. This is non-ionizing radiation, which is different than ionizing radiation like that used by cell phones, wireless networking, x-rays, CT scans, etc. Exposure to magnetic fields is not known to have same risks for humans and other organisms that ionizing radiation has. The basic tenets of the technology are described pretty well here: http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium [...] sion.html. Safetey implications have also been studied and are detailed on another page at this site. Humans are already exposed to much higher magnetic fields than those mentioned here when they undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which is generally considered very safe. Wireless power transmission using inductive power transmission has a promising future.
A static magnetic field has not been found to cause health problems. But these are highly-dynamic magnetic fields. I thought that the Maxwell equations that govern this stuff state that a changing magnetic field is necessarily associated with an electrical field. That then could be harmful to living organisms.
I'm not all that concerned with the plate-style chargers. They are basically transformers in which 1/2 of the transformer is in the charger, and the other 1/2 is in the device being charged. No big deal, provided that the "lost" portion of the transmitted energy isn't high enough to hurt anything.
I'm very concerned about the RF power delivery. I suspect that these work by having receiving antennae that are highly tuned to the power transmission frequency, kind of like water molecules in a microwave but on a much larger scale. The problem is, what else also happens to be somewhat tuned to that frequency? Certain DNA segments? Mitochondrial proteins? It doesn't have to be perfectly tuned - just enough to cause it to capture and accumulate energy, and then cause electrons to change orbits and chemical bonds to break.
This industry seem poised to take off. I found some good info at www.wirelesspowercompanies.com as well.
wouldn't it be quality if the energy transmitted through the air was absorbed by us and stored by our bodies and we became a sort of super-electro people, with powers like Blanka from Street Fighter (only a little less green)....
Helllll yeahhh am I buyin one of these!!