An end to power cables!

[modgodtanvir]

Yep, thats right. Wireless electricity:

Original Article

BBC News: An end to spaghetti power cables

Say goodbye to the tangle of cables and the wall socket and hello to powering up your electronic gizmos wirelessly.

This picture of a world without wires is one long dreamed of and came a step closer following significant progress made by Intel.

It said it has increased the efficiency of a technique for wirelessly powering consumer gadgets and computers.

"The notion of disappearing energy sources is a powerful one," Justin Rattner, Intel technology boss, told the BBC.

"Wouldn't it be fantastic if we didn't think about where the power was coming from and the power was everywhere?" he said. "No cords, no batteries anymore."

Mr Rattner envisaged a scenario where a laptop's battery could be recharged when the machine gets within several feet of a transmit resonator which could be embedded in tables, work surfaces, picture frames and even behind walls.

Intel's technology relies on an idea called magnetic induction. It is a principle similar to the way a trained singer can shatter a glass using their voice; the glass absorbs acoustic energy at its natural frequency.

At the wall socket, power is put into magnetic fields at a transmitting resonator - basically an antenna. The receiving resonator is tuned to efficiently absorb energy from the magnetic field, whereas nearby objects do not.

How long before we hear about people piggybacking other peoples' electricity We'll be seeing caravans on every street corner...

[DougEdey]

Yeah, good luck with that, it works fine in theory and in carefully controlled environments but everything will set it off and make it send the wrong frequency to a device or your mobile will suddenly receive 150V through the antenna.

[Krikkit]

And lets not forget the awful efficiency compared to a cable - imagine how much energy could be wasted by making everything wireless like this...

[Ending Credits]

This is quite old news.

We have been able to do this for at least 10 years it's only recently it's become efficient enough to be considered.

[woof82]

Have fun spreading your energy out in a sphere. Intensity decreases according to an inverse cube law.

The tech works in the lab, long way from working in the home.

[Altron]

My laptop audio gets electrical interference when it's plugged into the wall with the power adaptor (versus running off the battery). I can't imagine the amount of signal interference you'd get with something like this.

The only way you'd get efficiency is if both coils were very close to each other, and had very focused fields, at which point it would lose any possible advantage over just plugging it in. We make a big deal about efficiency in everything, and 16ga copper has negligable resistance at 6 foot lengths,
So we're talking about replacing a 99.9% efficient wire with a 40-45% efficient magnet to save us the arduous backbreaking chore of plugging in our computers.

Hah, I like the analogy of a singer shattering glass. Other than the fact that both involves waves and resonant frequencies, there's no similarity. a 60hz EM wave behaves WAY differently than a 10khz sound wave.

[freedom810]

Its a good idea and im sure one day it will happen but I bet there are health risks involved.
The wireless signal causes cancer etc.

[Stuey]

Originally Posted by Altron

Hah, I like the analogy of a singer shattering glass. Other than the fact that both involves waves and resonant frequencies, there's no similarity. a 60hz EM wave behaves WAY differently than a 10khz sound wave.

I was going to point out the same thing! Induction = resonance? Gosh, someone at the BBC forgot to take high school physics.

I don't see wireless electricity taking over anytime soon. Only a few years ago people believed that cell phones could be powered by satellites. CRUSHED!

[outlawaol]

Tesla invented a similar device, but with more of a distance in mind. Think he tested his system at like 10 miles or something.

Cool tech, but one must wonder about the ambient problems of radiation?

[Clocked]

I'm fairly certain this is similar technology that has been charging my toothbrush for years, sure it has a stand but there are no actual plugs or anything to plug in... (the toothbrush to the stand)

[DarkLord7854]

Originally Posted by Clocked

I'm fairly certain this is similar technology that has been charging my toothbrush for years, sure it has a stand but there are no actual plugs or anything to plug in... (the toothbrush to the stand)

Prolly has a metal contact on the base and the toothbrush.. I heavily doubt they'd work wireless charging into something like a toothbrush



Imagine the possibilities of zapping your friend while he's in the shower though...

[Gareth Halfacree]

Originally Posted by DarkLord7854

Prolly has a metal contact on the base and the toothbrush.. I heavily doubt they'd work wireless charging into something like a toothbrush

Nope - no metal involved whatsoever, for obvious reasons. It's an induction coupling - works through plastic, and means that the electric toothbrush is completely sealed. See here.

[Clocked]

As gareth says it's plastic and entirely sealed.(i was confused how it worked one day so I wiki'd it)

It seems like every new innovation these days has to be hyped up and OMG IT'LL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!!1!!! granted I appreciate the work but I'm just bored that everything gets hyped up to death these days...

[ch424]

LOL @ all the nay-sayers. If you bothered to read the article, it said they already have 90% efficiency, which is pretty good going. They can run a 60W bulb now, so presumably they could easily power a cordless phone. Also, woof, you can get directional antennae, can't you? That's precisely what a high-gain antenna is, so what's stopping them using directional charging coils?
I think intel made this press release because they have some cool, working tech that they intend to bring to market at some point.

[Krikkit]

Originally Posted by Stuey

I was going to point out the same thing! Induction = resonance? Gosh, someone at the BBC forgot to take high school physics.

It's not that bad an analogy really - for a layman to understand things like induction you need to find a common, simpler, yet similar principle to give people an idea what's going on.

Besides, Resonance and Induction are very similar things really - specific frequencies causing an effect without physical contact.

[Nexxo]

Originally Posted by outlawaol

Tesla invented a similar device, but with more of a distance in mind. Think he tested his system at like 10 miles or something.

Originally Posted by Major

Wasn't this done like ages and ages ago by that scientist? If only they didn't stop him etc...

That was Tesla. Keeley also dabbled in it, but neither produced anything that worked.

[cpemma]

Originally Posted by Clocked

I'm fairly certain this is similar technology that has been charging my toothbrush for years, sure it has a stand but there are no actual plugs or anything to plug in... (the toothbrush to the stand)

I have a similar toothbrush, it's a simple transformer with the primary coil and core in the stand and the secondary coil wound round the hole in the brush bottom. Liquid pumps are also around with no need for a shaft (with leak-prone seal) joining rotor and motor, the magnetic field to spin the rotor works through a plastic wall.

But these devices only transmit a few millimetres. Longer distances at high efficiency = impressive.

[Stuey]

I didn't know that certain toothbrushes were charged in this manner. Cool!

Originally Posted by ch424

LOL @ all the nay-sayers. If you bothered to read the article, it said they already have 90% efficiency, which is pretty good going. They can run a 60W bulb now, so presumably they could easily power a cordless phone. Also, woof, you can get directional antennae, can't you? That's precisely what a high-gain antenna is, so what's stopping them using directional charging coils?
I think intel made this press release because they have some cool, working tech that they intend to bring to market at some point.

I see major flaws that would prohibit this technology from taking off. For one, it might add bulk to a product. Toothbrushes are used maybe twice a day for about a minute each. Cell phones will have to undergo much more aggressive charging.

How is such a system protected against abuse? What is to prevent people from bringing all of their gadgets to their driveway to mooch off of a neighbor's charging system? Or the mall. Let's all eat at the food court and let our devices charge.

One more comment: WIRELESS USB. Guess what, it's not taking off. That just shows that just because something can become wireless doesn't mean people will embrace the change.

Originally Posted by Krikkit

It's not that bad an analogy really - for a layman to understand things like induction you need to find a common, simpler, yet similar principle to give people an idea what's going on.

Besides, Resonance and Induction are very similar things really - specific frequencies causing an effect without physical contact.

I cannot see the correllation even when I think about it in simpler terms. Induction: one person talking and teaching to another, and the other person listening and learning. Resonance: one person talking to another, and the other person getting angrier and angrier until their rage explodes.

[woof82]

Originally Posted by woof82

Have fun spreading your energy out in a sphere. Intensity decreases according to an inverse cube law.

The tech works in the lab, long way from working in the home.

Originally Posted by ch424

LOL @ all the nay-sayers. If you bothered to read the article, it said they already have 90% efficiency, which is pretty good going. Also, woof, you can get directional antennae, can't you? That's precisely what a high-gain antenna is, so what's stopping them using directional charging coils?
I think intel made this press release because they have some cool, working tech that they intend to bring to market at some point.

Yeah, on second thoughts, it doesn't spread out in a sphere, but it's not easy to making a directional antannae:


But....

Originally Posted by BBC NEWS

Mr Rattner admitted the technology is at least five years away, if not more, of becoming a reality.

[ch424]

Originally Posted by Stuey

I see major flaws that would prohibit this technology from taking off. For one, it might add bulk to a product. Toothbrushes are used maybe twice a day for about a minute each. Cell phones will have to undergo much more aggressive charging.

This system already delivers 60W, which is far more than a phone needs to charge. Yes, it would add bulk, but how much? If you can integrate the coils needed for charging into a thin sticker on the inside of the case (like an RFID tag), the electronics beyond that won't take up too much space. If you can fit all you need into a single IC, there would be no problem fitting this into a cell phone.

Originally Posted by Stuey

How is such a system protected against abuse? What is to prevent people from bringing all of their gadgets to their driveway to mooch off of a neighbor's charging system? Or the mall. Let's all eat at the food court and let our devices charge.

They have electrical outlets on trains and in cafes here. It's a service that they're happy to provide. You could easily turn the power down so that it's too weak for a neighbour to mooch. Some people wouldn't care that their neighbours were stealing power anyway - a phone charger takes a trivial amount of power when compared to the requirements of a cooker or a lightbulb.

Originally Posted by Stuey

One more comment: WIRELESS USB. Guess what, it's not taking off. That just shows that just because something can become wireless doesn't mean people will embrace the change.

Just because you can produce an example of a completely different product not working doesn't mean this won't. Cordless phones are incredibly popular. It'd be really useful not to have to replace the handset on its charging stand. If this technology develops to be cheaper than batteries (which is feasible given that phone batteries still cost $5+ even after years of cost-cutting and refinement), then it makes sense to use it in cordless phones regardless of if people 'need' it or not. Nobody 'needs' a tv remote, but they're damn useful. I'd buy a cordless mouse if i knew i'd never have to change its batteries.