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Splashpower Boasts Wireless Power
Sullivan writes "Maccentral is running a story on a startup called Splashpower that hopes to be able to wirelessly recharge all of our handheld devices. They have a working prototype that already recharges an iPod Mini and a cell phone. Now we can look forward to yet another way to get brain cancer."
Gee, "pick up the cord, plug it in" or "set on pad". Not really worth $250 to me.
My first thought when reading this: Build it in to a desk and use it as your mouse pad. Then, you would never have to charge your wireless mouse. Sweet.
--Nycto
The summary is misleading. All it is a generic recharging pad. It doesn't require wires...but not in the sense that your device recharges through the air. You just lay your device on a pad and it charges. It's a convience I suppose - but not too exciting.
Inductive power has been around for a while, mostly in electric toothbrushes.
It's not "wireless" as the devices have to be pretty much touching the pad.
For things like mp3 players and cellphones, it's really useless unless you're completely lazy or hate charging wires with a passion.
No chance of brain cancer here, really.
-- There's only one replacement for displacement.....
So, they have created a device that recharges devices wirelessly, if you place the device on top of the pad.
My cell phone, my beard trimmer, and my toothbrush already recharge wirelessly... sure, I have to place them in their cradles and line up the contacts, but it's still approximately the same.
What is being offered here is a universal charger system. The rest of it is bells and whistles. What Splashpower needs to do is get the device producers to incorporate the hardware necessary for this, and to get hotels etc. to install the pads.
This is problematic, as stated in the article. Device-makers won't install the charging coil unless the infrastructure for charging is in place; establishments won't purchase the charging pads unless a sufficient amount of devices have the coil installed. There's just no ROI for a hotel chain to install these in their rooms and suites, and no reason for an end-user to purchase an enabled device if chargers aren't available.
Nice idea, but don't buy stock.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Actually, Tesla wanted to be able to pull power at long range. The splash pad is just a two part transformer (the pad is one coil, and the clip-on adapter is the second coil). So, it turns the electricity from the wall into magnetic pulses which are then turned back into electricity (it's not very efficient, but who needs efficiency when you're being encouraged to be lazy anyways?).
If you have a universal plug adapter you can really do the same thing. The difference is simply laying the device down and spending $150.00 for that slight convenience.
How many of you read this first thought you could recharge remotely, say within 100 feet of this device? Now THAT would be convenient.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
IMO, what we need is a single standard for power distribution that caters to the device, not dozens of adapters that are a slave to a single 120VAC standard.
Most small electric devices operate off of DC power, so no matter what, you have to have an adapter to convert AC power to DC. Since you have to have the adapter anyway, it doesn't really matter what DC voltage you go with, so you pick whatever's going to be cheapest for the situation. Consequently, we have all sorts of DC power requirements.
What might help the situation is for someone to come up with a standard for power outlets that use a standardized DC voltage in addition to AC. Or maybe a handful of voltages. Different contacts could provide your DC voltage(s), in conjunction with your AC voltage.
Device manufacturers could then target those standardized voltages and spend less money on adapters.
Why do people think radio waves when they hear "wireless"? Hmmm... it seems obvious to me that the trick is to induce a electric current with a magnet that is not strong enough to completely destroy the electronic components inside the device. This would work toward eliminating multiple adapters to recharge various devices and overloading wall sockets with adapters. They aren't saying that they are recharging the devices with a high power 2.4 Ghz signal. Duh.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
Of course, then you're back to having a separate charger for each device. The main idea here is to do away with a plethora of adaptors, cables, and bricks.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Splashpower is a really interesting company; a couple of students took developed a business plan for a competition. They won the competition and started the company off the back of it while they were still at university. They used an idea that they reasonably certain could be solved (they were both engineers) and started serious work once the funding was sorted out. They've received angel and venture funding.
Splashpads are quite interesting in that they are active devices. When you drop something onto the pad, there's some communication that goes on between the pad and the device. The pad delivers power to the right place on the pad to recharge that device, and only that place. You don't have to orientate the device correctly, and there's no contact made. You can have multiple devces recharging at once.
If you drop your keys onto the pad then they won't electrocute you when you pick them up. And they won't heat up. If you drop electronics that's not enabled onto the pad, then it won't get electrocuted either.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem. On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised to see at least one cell-phone manufacturer adopting their system, and the first step in widespread adoption is to get individual manufacturers to commit to it. They also have the advantage that past a certain penetration point it becomes a de facto standard.
There are several other competing companies. In my opinion the Splashpower system is one of the best and most likely to succeed providing they can move past initial adoption.
Re braincancer. Deeply, deeply unlikely. Worry about the X-rays emitted from your CRT first.