TR Forums

Power over WiFi is coming and it actually might be good! This is going to change EVERYTHING when it comes to mobile tech!

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2485579,00.asp

No word of how many watts they can charge, so I'm guessing it's going to be hilariously low given that standard wifi routers output on the order of 100mW.

Not an engineer, but wouldn't it be an extremely wasteful way to provide any significant charge? Even with beam-forming. And as Superspy noted, I'm not convinced yet it could significantly slow the discharge of an idle smartphone even right next to a normal router.

While it may not be enough power to add to the battery of a higher-power device under all circumstances -- the Samsung S4's display consumes an average of 700mW during active use, for example -- it could still extend the battery life of the device between charging intervals. Which is not exactly revolutionary, but still a nice bonus if you can use it.

It would be cool to adapt this to wireless mice...

I don't buy it. Inverse square: not just a good idea, it's the law.

It's funny that when I was a kid my dad got me one of those basic crystal radio kits from Radio Shack.
I was shocked that when it was wired up I could actually hear an AM radio station... NO BATTERIES NEEDED!

Of course, it wasn't exactly a practical radio, but it was a useful lesson in the basics of radio, and it also makes me chuckle whenever I hear conspiracy nuts go on & on about how Tesla was the only guy on earth who understood that energy can be transmitted without wires (they also apparently think that transformers are suppressed by a huge conspiracy too).

I remember reading about this 5 or so years ago, Nokia was researching it and had come up with some small designs that could trickle power to a device.

At the time I thought it would be a great way to extend cell phone battery life - especially at night, when most phones are just sitting idle and not using a lot of power. I didn't think it'd be enough to actually charge the device, but depending on what they could pull out of the air, I could see it doubling or tripling time between charges.

As it improves I'd be real curious to see what they can do about integrating this sort of tech into low power devices, eliminating the need for batteries in some things. Like a little LED flashlight, ambient lighting in public parks, radios, etc.

Okay, I'll be "that guy"...

Any potential health risks to charging things across the room through my brains?

No more than sitting in that same room without wireless charging would do - these just gather power from ambient waves, they're not really beaming energy directly from one point to another.

That's... a little more dangerous.

deruberhanyok wrote:

No more than sitting in that same room without wireless charging would do - these just gather power from ambient waves, they're not really beaming energy directly from one point to another.

That's... a little more dangerous.

Holy cow... that picture totally brings back memories of playing C&C Red Alert. The sound of a tesla coil charging and then zapping something is forever burned into my memory, since there always ended up being dozens of them in every base (with dozens of Advanced Power Plants to back them up).

dododoDODODO....... KKzzzzcchheww... GUuuAAHHH!!

Now this is more dangerous...for its Cobra-la space spore germinating capability.