At last, the begining of the True Wireless Revolution

lazzyass86

Apple was the first company to integrate 802.11b in to laptops, meaning that you could be completely wireless, that is until your laptops battery was dead, then you had to rush to the nearest power outlet, and then be tethered to the wall by your charger.



Nikola Tesla was the first person to create a means of wirelessly transmitting electrical power, power that could light up neon tubes, put the problem was that the way to do that was having a loud, and very dangers tesla coil in the middle of your house, so needless to say it didn't take off.



So what is my point?



Inductive power is here.

This is a technology that allows power to be transmitted via a electromagnetic field. I saw and discussed this in another Thread , but I felt it was going downhill, and more people must know about this new technology.



Right now there is a company in England, Splash Power , they are trying to get companies to use this technology, but it offers short range, it's fine and all for use in pad, and desktop form, but I want, more.



So this is my idea.



1. A small device that would fit in a bag, or a purse. that would transmit enough power to power any thing that the user has, and a range that would just power what is on that person.



2. A larger device that would transmit power, and WiFi signals to a large area, for any user in that area.



This technology could power anything, OLED diplays, Laptops, Keyboards, Mice, Cell phones, Cameras, Camcorders, PDAs, maybe even lamps, and plates with small heating elements in them.

neutrino23

I am extremely skeptical about this. Sure it can work, but is it practical and is it desirable? The radiated power would be very unfocused unless you use something like microwaves which can be focused. In either case do you really want sizable amounts of power floating around your body? People are already upset about the small amount of power radiated by cell phones and WiFi base stations. All sorts of things on your person would absorb power and change it to heat draining power from your battery. Anyone who wanted to could stand near you and suck up all your power at will.



Actually, in a sense, we are using radiated power, but the fields are restricted to the insides of the wires we use. That is the nature of conductors and electricity. You apply a field to a conductor (a sea of electrons trapped in a lattice). The electrons adjust themselves so that there is no net field inside the conductor. The effect is to transfer the electric field to some other location.



For example, if we had a battery separated from a resistor by one meter we could transfer the electric field between the battery terminals to the ends of the resistor by using conductors (aka wires). Using wires we can deliver that power very precisely to even a very small resistor. Using radiated power would be much more cumbersome.

ebby

The large version has some important problems to work out, but the smaller version should be used all the time in medical work. Recharging electronics inside the body without surgery or wires. Put a charger in your kid's bed and you never have to tell them you had a GPS tracking transmitter installed when they were born.

lazzyass86

Quote:

Originally posted by Ebby

The large version has some important problems to work out

like what?

airsluf

Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.



Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.



Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.

lazzyass86

That's the thing, E/M feilds don't have to be deadly. Like for example when you stop at a stop light, it is an inductive E/M feild that tells the traffic light that your there. I'm talking about a weaker feild that can be pumped up by a device useing the power in the feild.

dangil

almost 100 years ago, some fine gentleman used Galena crystal based radio... basically it's a radio receiver that works without a internal power supply... it powers itself using the eletromagnetic waves from the radio signal...



check it out



if we could design equipaments with lower power requirements, this could be acomplished easily, without a 10MW eletromagnetic coil in the middle of your house....

lazzyass86

Quote:

Originally posted by dangil

almost 100 years ago, some fine gentleman used Galena crystal based radio... basically it's a radio receiver that works without a internal power supply... it powers itself using the eletromagnetic waves from the radio signal...



check it out



if we could design equipaments with lower power requirements, this could be acomplished easily, without a 10MW eletromagnetic coil in the middle of your house....

That's what I'm talking about

amorph

This sort of technology sounds interesting for powering milliwatt devices. The battery is the albatross around the neck of portable technology right now; people who abandon land lines for cell phones (an increasing number) are constantly worrying about charge.



If there were a sort of pervasive, low-charge infrastructure, then all your (small) portable devices would just work, at least within that infrastructure (calling your mom from the heart of the Rockies is another issue entirely). Obviously, scaling this up to the level of powering microwave ovens is a non-issue. The work that's being done carrying network traffic over power lines might carry over in interesting ways as well, although I say that from a non-technical, 30,000 foot point of view.



From a technophilic standpoint, this sounds grand. My principle reservation comes from working in epidemiology, Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Public Health: What are the long-term consequences of being bathed in all this, on top of the microwave radiation from existing wireless tech? The radiation by itself will almost certainly be low level enough not to have any directly harmful effects, but that doesn't mean it won't be harmful. The presence of any immunodepressant adds to the presence of other ambient immunodepressants (stress, pollution) and makes it more likely that, say, a lethal illness will jump species, or an innocuous coronavirus will turn deadly, or an otherwise serious influenza outbreak will turn epidemic. And, of course, each such introduction bumps the cancer rate up that much more.



That, and there's research into influencing the brain via magnetic fields, e.g. to treat depression. Again, it probably won't be enough to reliably turn us all into ravenous zombies, but what will it do? Given the butterfly effect, what could it do in isolated cases, or in combination with other factors?



(And before anyone asks, yes I'll set up an AirPort network just as soon as I get a laptop. I'm not paralyzed by these concerns, but I do think they should be addressed.)

709

Quote:

Originally posted by Amorph

The presence of any immunodepressant adds to the presence of other ambient immunodepressants (stress, pollution) and makes it more likely that, say, a lethal illness will jump species, or an innocuous coronavirus will turn deadly, or an otherwise serious influenza outbreak will turn epidemic.

You scare me Amorph.

ebby

Quote:

Originally posted by dangil

check it out

Checked it out. Neat, but I'm not selling my iPod.







EDIT: I HAVE 1000 POSTS!!! I HAVE 1000 POSTS!!! YEAAAAAA!!!

neutrino23

I hate to come across so negative because it sounds like a fun idea, but I'm still very skeptical. I understand about crystal radios. I built them when I was a kid. However, if you read the fine print about them you see that they require "20 to 30 meters" of antenna wire. Broadcast radio waves are so weak that you need that large of an antenna to intercept enough signal to power the headphones. If you make the RF field weak enough to be benign then you need huge antennas to get appreciable power.



On the other hand, if you can design devices to operate on very little power why not just put a small battery in them? My watch runs for about two years on a small battery. I think it is better to use that battery than to build up some large infrastructure that bathes the whole planet in mild RF.



Let me summarize my objections.



1. It is not practical to broadcast enough power so that you could power something like a PowerBook. It might work in an ideal case but problems would arise quickly to kill the idea. One objection being that it is uncontrolled and the other being that you would get incidental heating of all sorts of small objects. It would be a little like lighting up the sky at night just so you could read your newspaper on the front porch. A more practical solution is to provide the power where you need it.



2. If devices can be designed to run on very little power so that only a weak power field is required then those devices are better off being powered by long life batteries.



3. People will never accept being bathed in RF strong enough to provide useful power to a small antenna. Mostly for health reasons.

giant

There was a diner by my house in michigan that was under some power lines. All of the silverware was magnetic.

kickaha

I'll see your weird story and raise you.



My grandfather was only able to wear Seiko watches after his stint in Alaska in the Air Force.



He magnetized any watch using a steel spring, and Seiko used aluminum.



Within a week, any watch he wore would be toast... he was an orchardist, and was never near any strong magnetic fields, but his watches got magnetized anyway. Darnedest thing.

boemane

A better solution to all of this is to develop and use fuel cells. Lots or research is going into developing effective and economical fuel cells that run on methanol or other carbohydrates. The benefit is that up to 90% of the energy in methanol is converted into electrical power. A powerbook sized fuel cell could power a powerbook for more that 20 hours or so. And the best thing is: when the battery is dead, put your laptop to sleep, remove the battery and fill it up with 1dl of methanol (or whatever its running on), and you have another 20 hours.



Research are going steady in this area, and Boeng are aming for a 2010 release of their fuel cell airplanes. A fuel cell airplane would use less fuel, pullute less, be more quiet, and more efficient. (40% of the energy in gas are used by modern combustion engines).



I vote for Apple researching in this area! Get the worlds first Fuel Cell laptop out already!



.:BoeManE:.

disco

Quote:

There was a diner by my house in michigan that was under some power lines. All of the silverware was magnetic.

Actually, I doubt it was the power lines. The culprit is the dishwasher. It's a fairly common occurance in restaurants. They use large, steel diswashers with steel water booms that spin and align the polarity of the silverware.



Also, if anyone is interested in Tesla's early attempts at wireless power transmission, even in lay terms, I highly reccommend reading this book. It's the best book on Tesla that I've read.

dfiler

My company used to make nuclear powered heart pacing devices. They typically outlasted the patient and were returned for disposal. Beaming power to an implanted device... i think the FDA would have a field day with that one. Just getting a power supply certified is nearly impossible, making a significant percentage of medical gear either powered by batteries or outboard, certified power supplies.



I love the topic of wireless power. Just about any spectrum of radiation can be intercepted and transformed into electrical power. My personal favorite? The visual spectrum, aka solar power.



Wireless power beamed straight at us, capable of powering the entire planet... oh wait. Not only that, but it powers the entire solar system. Sure, it has glitches, but who needed them pagers in the late 90s anyway?



Or wait, what about kinetic energy capturing laptops. Power low? Just shake that thing as hard as possible. Or... when those platters and fans spin down, recapture that energy into the battery. (works for electric cars)



Or... kinetic batteries with super high rev fly-wheels. Maybe hard drive manufacturers should make dual-purpose products. Unfortunately, disk access would slow as the battery drained.



For some reason, I think we'll see organic batteries before wireless power. Mmmm, how about solar/infra-red auto-recharging organic batteries? The heat from your wrists on the laptop could power the machine... Organic machines, that's the future.

kickaha

Quote:

Originally posted by dfiler

Mmmm, how about solar/infra-red auto-recharging organic batteries?

Make 'em capture more of the light on the UV end of the spectrum, and they'd be...





POWER PLANTS!

amorph

Quote:

Originally posted by BoeManE



I vote for Apple researching in this area! Get the worlds first Fuel Cell laptop out already!

Apparently, they're already talking to companies.



So is Intel, and apparently one of their conditions is that any company that makes fuel cell batteries for Intel can't make them for Apple. Who's afraid of the big bad Mac?

aquatic

Best thread in a long time. Meanwhile Belkin is releasing a Bluetooth mouse www.macminute.com Finally a BT mouse for my PowerBook 12"! Wireless Power..Gigawire...Wireless Firewire? nah.



Bluetooth doesn't seem to be developing fast. What I really really really want is a Bluetooth GPS Box that will work with Route 66 USA 2004 or DeLorme StreetAtlas 6 via Classic but I don't think that will exist for many years unfortunately. It's lonely at the bleeding edge of technology.



Kickaha welcome to...The Twilight Zone!

sumoftheparts

not quite about wireless power, but definitely will be the beginning of another wireless revolution.



Saw at theresigster.co.uk today

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/32300.html



Samsung is to develop wireless connectivity products based on Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology ... they are aiming at offering 480Mbps data rates ... IEEE 802.15.3a is an extension to the IEEE 802.15.3 draft standard for a high-speed wireless personal area network (WPAN) physical layer ... working to develop the Protocol Abstraction Layer (PAL) to allow 1394 traffic to operate across an 802.15.3a link.



Wireless at firewire speeds means bandwidth will be ubiquitous and perhaps another revolution will start.



Handheld HD video camera, with pixlet, recording all footage wirelessly to a computer anyone??