[SCCC] More QRM!

[Diomar]

And you know Tesla would be rolling in his grave over this.

My electric toothbrush receives it's energy over the air as do a couple
of my lab experiments, but they operate at 60hz.
--joe
KR6NA

On Fri, 2007-03-30 at 11:03 -0600, Art wrote:
> Anyone know what frequencies this will use? Hmmm......
> 
> Oh, yes, how does one become a "former physicist"? Forget everything?:-)
> 
> 73 Art
> 
> --------------------------------
> Death of the cell phone charger
> A Pennsylvania entrepreneur has developed technology that gives you all 
> the battery juice you need directly from the air. Business 2.0 reports.
> Business 2.0 Magazine
> By Melanie Haiken , Business 2.0 Magazine
> March 30 2007: 7:08 AM EDT
> 
> (Business 2.0 Magazine) -- How much money could you make from a 
> technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, 
> along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with 
> it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major 
> partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device 
> powered by electricity broadcast through the air.
> 
> It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more 
> complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to 
> incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a 
> dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can 
> be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves 
> into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up 
> to 3 feet.
> 
> Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your 
> desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can it 
> get? "The sky's the limit," says John Shearer, Powercast's founder and 
> CEO. He estimates shipping "many millions of units" by the end of 2008.
> 
> For years, electricity experts said this kind of thing couldn't be done. 
> "If you had asked me seven months ago if this was possible, I would have 
> said, 'Are you dreaming? Have you been smoking something?'" says Govi 
> Rao, vice president and general manager of solid-state lighting at 
> Philips ( Charts). "But to see it work is just amazing. It could 
> revolutionize what we know about power."
> 
> So impressed was Rao after witnessing Powercast's demo last summer that 
> he walked away jotting down a list of the industries to which the 
> technology could immediately be applied: lighting, peripherals, all 
> kinds of handheld electronics. Philips partnered with Powercast last 
> July, and their first joint product, a wirelessly powered LED light 
> stick, will hit the market this year. Computer peripherals, such as a 
> wireless keyboard and mouse, will follow in 2008.
> 
> Broadcasting power through the air isn't a new idea. Researchers have 
> experimented with capturing the radiation in radio frequency at high 
> power but had difficulty capturing it at consumer-friendly low power. 
> "You'd have energy bouncing off the walls and arriving in a wide range 
> of voltages," says Zoya Popovic, an electrical engineering professor at 
> the University of Colorado who works on wireless electricity projects 
> for the U.S. military.
> 
> That's where Shearer came in. A former physicist based in Pittsburgh, he 
> and his team spent four years poring over wireless electricity research 
> in a lab hidden behind his family's coffee house. He figured much of the 
> energy bouncing off walls could be captured. All you had to do was build 
> a receiver that could act like a radio tuned to many frequencies at once.
> 
> "I realized we wanted to grab that static and harness it," Shearer says. 
> "It's all energy."
> 
> So the Powercast team set about creating and patenting that receiver. 
> Its tiny but hyperefficient receiving circuits can adjust to variations 
> in load and field strength while maintaining a constant DC voltage. 
> Thanks to the fact that it transmits only safe low wattages, the 
> Powercast system quickly won FCC approval--and $10 million from private 
> investors.
> 
> Powercast says it has signed nondisclosure agreements to develop 
> products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of 
> cell phones, MP3 players, automotive parts, temperature sensors, hearing 
> aids, and medical implants.
> 
> The last of those alone could be a multibillion-dollar market: 
> Pacemakers, defibrillators, and the like require surgery to replace dead 
> batteries. But with a built-in Powercast receiver, those batteries could 
> last a lifetime.
> 
> "Everyone's looking to cut that last cord," says Alex Slawsby, a 
> consultant at Innosight who specializes in disruptive innovation. "Think 
> of the billion cell phones sold last year. If you could get Powercast 
> into a small percentage of the high-end models, those would be huge 
> numbers."
> 
> Could Powercast's technology also work for larger devices? Perhaps, but 
> not quite yet. Laptop computers, for example, use more than 10 times the 
> wattage of Powercast transmissions.
> 
> But industry trends are on Shearer's side: Thanks to less energy-hungry 
> LCD screens and processors, PC power consumption is slowly diminishing. 
> Within five years, Shearer says, laptops will be down to single-digit 
> wattage--making his revenue potential even more electrifying.
> 
> _______________________________
> 
> More from Business 2.0 Magazine:
> 
> Air taxis: Changing the way we fly
> 
> Live rich, retire richer
> 
> 25 startups to watch  Top of page
> To send a letter to the editor about this story, click here.
> 
>  From the April 1, 2007 issue
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