Xiaomi introduces first over-the-air charging system called Mi Air Charge

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 40
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.

    If man was meant to fly God would have given him wings....
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  • Reply 22 of 40
    dewmedewme Posts: 6,104member
    zimmie said:
    144 antennas means 144 amplifiers, and a 144-path phase modulator (unless it clusters them into sectors such that when in one quadrant of the device, the other three quadrants' antennas are inactive) or 144 coherent oscillators. The radiation precision would also depend on the tolerances of several components in each of the amplifiers. It's basically a track-while-scan RADAR.

    Based on the last time I dealt with active phased array tech, that base station is likely over $750 in parts alone.
    This unit may be fairly large, but if you look at where this technology started take a look at the SCANFAR (SPS-32+SPS-33) radar panels used on the USS Long Beach and USS Enterprise built in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Each panel was about the size of a small house. The newest equivalent, the SPY-1 radar array variants, are much smaller but still very large and consume a significant amount of the power budget on their host platform. But while sharing the technology these are also solving a different problem. Wireless power transfer (WPT) is much more narrowly focused and the beamforming is targeted at increasing the power transfer efficiency, which at 5 watts per device is still far less efficient than plugging in a USB or Lightning power charging cord.
    edited January 2021
    watto_cobra
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  • Reply 23 of 40
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,357member
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Nice. Now I can get rid of my microwave oven.
    Your coffee will be constantly heated no matter where you leave the mug. 
    ravnorodomwatto_cobra
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 24 of 40
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,357member
    Glad to see the world finally catching up to Nikola Tesla from 100 years ago.   He recognized the relationship between radio and electrical waves and their connection to the wireless transmission of power.  He even built a tower to do it -- but ran out of money when JP Morgan lost confidence in him and pulled his funding.   Tesla, one of the world's greatest innovators died broke.
    Tesla Broadcast Tower 1904jpeg
    He may not have died broke if he enforced some of his patents. Marconi built the radio using Tesla’s ideas in part. Tesla didn’t care about making money anyway. 
    Imagine what he’d have been able to do with more modern technology. 
    GeorgeBMacwatto_cobra
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  • Reply 25 of 40
    hexclock said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Nice. Now I can get rid of my microwave oven.
    Your coffee will be constantly heated no matter where you leave the mug. 
    ...and I no longer have to plug in to power my Mac. Win. Win.
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 26 of 40
    I think it is not so much the case as apple waiting to see the technology improve but they seem to have to reverse engineer it to try and make their own  
    Ie camera chips were Sony ( best in world ) then they decided to buy a cheaper option from China 
    I’m actually a bit miffed and embarrassed by the fact that my iPhone has parts maybe made from forced labour from Chinese companies ( lenses) 
    and now apple setting up production lines in India when the government is beating its own people  and foxcon not looking after it’s workers in India 
    and what I’d really like to see is NZ getting the speakers for our homes we can’t even buy them here but they are in Australia they have been out for years now . Even with all the staff at apple all of those incredibly talented engineers can’t even make the Apple TV use voice recognition in NZ . 
    I love apple products I’ve used them for decades but it just wears me down a bit when other companies  catch on to what they are up to and they can produce it faster on there own production lines apple was first but now we get old tech and huge prices wrapped up in old revamped designs. 

    My wife offered me her iPhone 12 Pro but I’m happy to stick with my iPhone max  ( which can’t restore my Face ID app and I’ve restored it but it now has glitches. 
    Sorry to get grumpy and rant . Hard day 
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  • Reply 27 of 40
    zimmiezimmie Posts: 651member
    dewme said:
    zimmie said:
    144 antennas means 144 amplifiers, and a 144-path phase modulator (unless it clusters them into sectors such that when in one quadrant of the device, the other three quadrants' antennas are inactive) or 144 coherent oscillators. The radiation precision would also depend on the tolerances of several components in each of the amplifiers. It's basically a track-while-scan RADAR.

    Based on the last time I dealt with active phased array tech, that base station is likely over $750 in parts alone.
    This unit may be fairly large, but if you look at where this technology started take a look at the SCANFAR (SPS-32+SPS-33) radar panels used on the USS Long Beach and USS Enterprise built in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Each panel was about the size of a small house. The newest equivalent, the SPY-1 radar array variants, are much smaller but still very large and consume a significant amount of the power budget on their host platform. But while sharing the technology these are also solving a different problem. Wireless power transfer (WPT) is much more narrowly focused and the beamforming is targeted at increasing the power transfer efficiency, which at 5 watts per device is still far less efficient than plugging in a USB or Lightning power charging cord.
    It's the smallest 144-path active phased array I've ever seen. And it isn't really solving a different problem at all. Both are intended to deliver a lot of RF energy to a remote point with moderately high precision. A TWS RADAR looks for the reflected energy, while this is sending the energy to be harvested at the destination, but that distinction doesn't matter to the power transmission part.

    The only functional difference I see is that this doesn't use information from the transmission to determine target location. It instead uses a side-channel. Compared to building a 144-path active phased array antenna in the first place, repurposing this for hobbyist RADAR would be trivial.

    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.
    No, there aren't. There really, really aren't. People have worked around far higher levels of RF energy for nearly a century with zero long-term health effects. With long exposure to high levels of power (significantly more than 5W), you can get something vaguely like a sunburn. A bit higher than that focused on your eyes, and you can boil your vitreous humor. The heat is the only real risk, and that's mostly a risk because you can't see it to avoid it. I'm an Extra-class radio operator and have been dealing with kilowatt-range RF for over a decade.
    Fidonet127GeorgeBMacfastasleepwatto_cobra
     3Likes 0Dislikes 1Informative
  • Reply 28 of 40
    dewmedewme Posts: 6,104member
    zimmie said:
    dewme said:
    zimmie said:
    144 antennas means 144 amplifiers, and a 144-path phase modulator (unless it clusters them into sectors such that when in one quadrant of the device, the other three quadrants' antennas are inactive) or 144 coherent oscillators. The radiation precision would also depend on the tolerances of several components in each of the amplifiers. It's basically a track-while-scan RADAR.

    Based on the last time I dealt with active phased array tech, that base station is likely over $750 in parts alone.
    This unit may be fairly large, but if you look at where this technology started take a look at the SCANFAR (SPS-32+SPS-33) radar panels used on the USS Long Beach and USS Enterprise built in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Each panel was about the size of a small house. The newest equivalent, the SPY-1 radar array variants, are much smaller but still very large and consume a significant amount of the power budget on their host platform. But while sharing the technology these are also solving a different problem. Wireless power transfer (WPT) is much more narrowly focused and the beamforming is targeted at increasing the power transfer efficiency, which at 5 watts per device is still far less efficient than plugging in a USB or Lightning power charging cord.
    It's the smallest 144-path active phased array I've ever seen. And it isn't really solving a different problem at all. Both are intended to deliver a lot of RF energy to a remote point with moderately high precision. A TWS RADAR looks for the reflected energy, while this is sending the energy to be harvested at the destination, but that distinction doesn't matter to the power transmission part.

    The only functional difference I see is that this doesn't use information from the transmission to determine target location. It instead uses a side-channel. Compared to building a 144-path active phased array antenna in the first place, repurposing this for hobbyist RADAR would be trivial.

    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.
    No, there aren't. There really, really aren't. People have worked around far higher levels of RF energy for nearly a century with zero long-term health effects. With long exposure to high levels of power (significantly more than 5W), you can get something vaguely like a sunburn. A bit higher than that focused on your eyes, and you can boil your vitreous humor. The heat is the only real risk, and that's mostly a risk because you can't see it to avoid it. I'm an Extra-class radio operator and have been dealing with kilowatt-range RF for over a decade.

    It's not clear to me that the unit described is even a scanning radar. It sound like it is simply broadcasting a beacon signal and a transponder in the target device is used to determine its 3D coordinates. If you wanted to repurpose the array for general purpose radar scanning operation, sans the transponder dependency, it seems like you would have to implement all of the receive side signal processing including receive beamforming functions. This would not be something that I would personally consider a trivial hobbyist exercise. Plus, it's not clear to me how many concurrent transmit beams can be supported from a power budget standpoint, so you may have to sequence/scan the transmit beams as well. Again, this doesn't sound trivial - to me. 

    From a hobbyist standpoint I'd be waiting for something like Echodyne's metamaterial electronically scanned array (MESA) radars, which start at sizes not much larger than a smartphone with effective ranges in the hundreds of meters to drop into a price range that would be attractive to hobbyists. With the number of emerging applications that rely on radar, including autonomous vehicles and border security, become more pervasive I have no doubt that the costs of this technology will come down substantially.

    Xiaomi's wireless power transfer (WPT) is a novelty and interesting first step in a direction that has a lot of potential. But it's going to seem like a wringer washing machine in no time flat. I suspect that future WPT technology will be integrated in a conformal way into building/home designs, much like current light switches and power outlets. It's not like you have to plug every appliance and electrical fixture in a room into a single power outlet (I hope!) so having multiple and less intrusive WPT arrays located in a single room should not be an issue, especially when coupled with other forms of proximity sensors to know when they are needed or can remain idle. 


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  • Reply 29 of 40
    Beatsbeats Posts: 3,073member
    Duplicate post.

    but will add that Elon Musk claims the wireless technology that Nikola Tesla had in mind has been glamorized by modern people. I faintly remember Musk saying it will take a lot of wireless power to charge a light bulb.
    edited February 2021
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  • Reply 30 of 40
    Beatsbeats Posts: 3,073member
    Been telling iKnockoff morons for years that “wireless charging” is just a marketing term.

    True wireless charging doesn’t have *ahem* wires.

    Would be crazy to see a knockoff Apple company create something original. 
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 31 of 40
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    Beats said:
    Duplicate post.

    but will add that Elon Musk claims the wireless technology that Nikola Tesla had in mind has been glamorized by modern people. I faintly remember Musk saying it will take a lot of wireless power to charge a light bulb.

    I have no idea if Musk said that -- but it sure sounds like something he would say.
    If Musk didn't invent it or design it, according to Musk, its no damn good.   That's not to trash Musk, I have a great deal of respect for the guy.   But humility is not one of his strong points. And, to his credit, he speaks his mind without pulling punches -- its refreshing.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 32 of 40
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 8,329member
    Beats said:
    Been telling iKnockoff morons for years that “wireless charging” is just a marketing term.

    True wireless charging doesn’t have *ahem* wires.

    Would be crazy to see a knockoff Apple company create something original. 
    It wouldn't be crazy at all. It happens all the time! 

    As for wireless being wireless, at some point there's a wire but not between the power source and the device being charged. That, gasp, is totally wireless. 

    https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-laser-wireless-charging-1160495/

    This kind of technology if proven to be cost effective, would be a godsend for things like remote controllers. 

    Imagine being able to charge a drone - in the air. We might be a way off that still, but.... 
    muthuk_vanalingamGeorgeBMac
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 33 of 40
    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.

    If man was meant to fly God would have given him wings....
    If man was meant to fly God would have given him the brains to build airplanes...
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 34 of 40
    Yay!  Evan more power wastage than inductive charging!

    Awesome!  Go green!
    muthuk_vanalingamwatto_cobra
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 35 of 40
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,772member
    Beats said:
    Been telling iKnockoff morons for years that “wireless charging” is just a marketing term.
    https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all/wireless-chargers
    edited February 2021
    muthuk_vanalingam
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 36 of 40
    gatorguy said:
    Beats said:
    Been telling iKnockoff morons for years that “wireless charging” is just a marketing term.
    https://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all/wireless-chargers
    Lol. Good information for @Beats to reflect upon. But I don't think it is EVER going to happen. He will be stuck in 2007/2008 forever in his life. Whatever happens after that does NOT matter to him.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 37 of 40
    zimmiezimmie Posts: 651member
    dewme said:
    zimmie said:
    dewme said:
    zimmie said:
    144 antennas means 144 amplifiers, and a 144-path phase modulator (unless it clusters them into sectors such that when in one quadrant of the device, the other three quadrants' antennas are inactive) or 144 coherent oscillators. The radiation precision would also depend on the tolerances of several components in each of the amplifiers. It's basically a track-while-scan RADAR.

    Based on the last time I dealt with active phased array tech, that base station is likely over $750 in parts alone.
    This unit may be fairly large, but if you look at where this technology started take a look at the SCANFAR (SPS-32+SPS-33) radar panels used on the USS Long Beach and USS Enterprise built in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Each panel was about the size of a small house. The newest equivalent, the SPY-1 radar array variants, are much smaller but still very large and consume a significant amount of the power budget on their host platform. But while sharing the technology these are also solving a different problem. Wireless power transfer (WPT) is much more narrowly focused and the beamforming is targeted at increasing the power transfer efficiency, which at 5 watts per device is still far less efficient than plugging in a USB or Lightning power charging cord.
    It's the smallest 144-path active phased array I've ever seen. And it isn't really solving a different problem at all. Both are intended to deliver a lot of RF energy to a remote point with moderately high precision. A TWS RADAR looks for the reflected energy, while this is sending the energy to be harvested at the destination, but that distinction doesn't matter to the power transmission part.

    The only functional difference I see is that this doesn't use information from the transmission to determine target location. It instead uses a side-channel. Compared to building a 144-path active phased array antenna in the first place, repurposing this for hobbyist RADAR would be trivial.

    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.
    No, there aren't. There really, really aren't. People have worked around far higher levels of RF energy for nearly a century with zero long-term health effects. With long exposure to high levels of power (significantly more than 5W), you can get something vaguely like a sunburn. A bit higher than that focused on your eyes, and you can boil your vitreous humor. The heat is the only real risk, and that's mostly a risk because you can't see it to avoid it. I'm an Extra-class radio operator and have been dealing with kilowatt-range RF for over a decade.

    It's not clear to me that the unit described is even a scanning radar. It sound like it is simply broadcasting a beacon signal and a transponder in the target device is used to determine its 3D coordinates. If you wanted to repurpose the array for general purpose radar scanning operation, sans the transponder dependency, it seems like you would have to implement all of the receive side signal processing including receive beamforming functions. This would not be something that I would personally consider a trivial hobbyist exercise. Plus, it's not clear to me how many concurrent transmit beams can be supported from a power budget standpoint, so you may have to sequence/scan the transmit beams as well. Again, this doesn't sound trivial - to me. 

    From a hobbyist standpoint I'd be waiting for something like Echodyne's metamaterial electronically scanned array (MESA) radars, which start at sizes not much larger than a smartphone with effective ranges in the hundreds of meters to drop into a price range that would be attractive to hobbyists. With the number of emerging applications that rely on radar, including autonomous vehicles and border security, become more pervasive I have no doubt that the costs of this technology will come down substantially.

    Xiaomi's wireless power transfer (WPT) is a novelty and interesting first step in a direction that has a lot of potential. But it's going to seem like a wringer washing machine in no time flat. I suspect that future WPT technology will be integrated in a conformal way into building/home designs, much like current light switches and power outlets. It's not like you have to plug every appliance and electrical fixture in a room into a single power outlet (I hope!) so having multiple and less intrusive WPT arrays located in a single room should not be an issue, especially when coupled with other forms of proximity sensors to know when they are needed or can remain idle. 


    You don't really need a phased array on the receive to pick up reflections from normal objects. Take the current targeted sector from the transmission system and work out the distance to an omnidirectional (or very vaguely directional) receiver. Doing it that way, you don't have to chirp the transmission to deal with self-interference in the signal path; you can practically transmit CW. You only need steerable receive on military RADAR to try to defeat stealth.

    My real interest is less in hobbyist RADAR per-se as it is in certain other applications of phased array antenna tech.
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 38 of 40
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,357member
    hexclock said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Nice. Now I can get rid of my microwave oven.
    Your coffee will be constantly heated no matter where you leave the mug. 
    ...and I no longer have to plug in to power my Mac. Win. Win.
    I used to set my mug on top of my G5 case. That kept it pretty warm. 
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 39 of 40
    GeorgeBMacgeorgebmac Posts: 11,421member
    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.

    If man was meant to fly God would have given him wings....
    If man was meant to fly God would have given him the brains to build airplanes...

    ....  Or to pick up on sarcasm....
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 40 of 40
    qwerty52 said:
    Enjoy having your brains and internal organs being cooked with microwaves.
    Yes, there are concerns about eventually radiation effects for the users, due to the wireless connection between iPhone and AirPods, what in fact is a child play compared to this. Hot to mention the possibility for unauthorized access to the users phones this way.

    If man was meant to fly God would have given him wings....
    If man was meant to fly God would have given him the brains to build airplanes...

    ....  Or to pick up on sarcasm....
    There's a commonly used notation for that...
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
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