Slashdot Mirror
Sony Prototype Sends Electricity Through the Air
itwbennett writes "Sony announced Friday that it has developed a prototype power system based on magnetic resonance that can send 'a conventional 100 volt electricity supply over a distance of 50 centimeters to power a 22-inch LCD television.' Unfortunately, Sony's prototype wasted 1/5 of the power fed into it and additional losses 'occurred in circuitry connected to the secondary coil so the original 80 watts of power was cut by roughly a quarter to 60 watts once it had made its way through the system.'"
But if they can't improve on 50cm, I'm just getting a 2ft extension cord for fixed items.
(sorry for mixing units)
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
If they were trained better, they could throw the power supply over a larger distance than merely 50 centimeters.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If you still need a cable to connect your video sources, what's the point?
But how is it different from WiTricity?
http://blogs.lns.kicks-ass.net/moonjihad/
Why is anyone wasting any time on useless technology like this? Is it based on consumer demand? If so then consumers need some basic physics and electronics lessons. This is not Star Trek, people, we can't "beam" your power to you via subspace, the inverse-square law fully applies, this is not ever going to be efficient or practical! Electrically powered things require power cords, get over it!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Once again, slashdot catching up with old news and making one company in the lagging position look like the frontrunner of a new technology. Fast Company, among other places, have already published on the several research teams who've had operational prototypes for at least a year, and with comparable benefits, challenges, and ineffeciencies to the unit described in this summary.
See "Wireless Electricity Is Here, Seriously", Fast Company, Jan. 2009.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/brilliant.html
If this is a Sony technology, you better believe the electricity is going to be in some kind of proprietary format that requires you to purchase special electrons at a 30% premium over industry standard.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Nice try AC, for a fraction of a second I thought you were serious(ly that retarded). 3/10.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is impressive efficiency.
50cm is still too short though, so let's see if the efficiency remains workable as distance increases (square law).
A TV is a stationary device. Why would you need wireless power for anything other than cosmetics? Wouldn't it just be better to put an outlet behind your wall mounting bracket?
I can see this in a parking spaces for electric cars, so you don't have cables running all over the parking lot of a mall. Or for small devices that don't need much power but would be a pain to power with batteries, like LED track lighting or security webcams or smoke detectors.
Big, rarely moved devices don't sound practical. after all, if your going to use this for a TV, why not a microwave or a fridge?
Yes but no but anyway you can't stop me, you whale-kissing hippy.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
DNRTFA, but what happens if someone steps into the "beam"? BBQ anyone?
-- The Online Photo Editor - http://www.phixr.com
Only another 42,163.9995 km to go to use this to send solar power from geosynchronous orbit.
Quick! Somebody buy the Sony engineers a pair of these!
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I'm appalled. This "prototype" isn't already perfected technology and they had the gall to send out a press release! They should just chunk the idea out the window! And please people, please stop creating this technologizma stuff because it's destroying Mother Earth.
75% efficiency is perfectly acceptable for low power devices. Making and shipping alkaline batteries repeatedly, or relying on rechargeable NiMH batteries that often leak more energy than gets used in the device, is certainly far more wasteful. So using this sort of tech to power those kinds of devices (clocks, smoke alarms, stick-on lights, etc) sounds quite reasonable. I'd certainly buy a $20 device that meant I never had to change a smoke alarm or clock battery again. In fact, 75% efficiency means it'd probably be a about breakeven powering a NiMH Roomba or Scooba versus charging their packs (in addition to leaking, NiMH isn't a very efficient charger). So you could have your home robotics never leak charge or have to waste energy charging, and never have battery packs need to be replaced, as well as the obvious "no limit on how long they can run for before needing to go back to dock".
They're going to have to significantly improve on the range, though. 1 1/2 feet isn't much at all.
Another interesting possibility would be to have a pocket-sized device powered by a li-ion battery pack. Carry it on your person and all of your portable gismos -- cameras, flashlights, cell phones, etc -- stay charged. When you get back home or to your hotel room, you plug it in to charge it. They wouldn't need as much range improvement, but they would need to make it a lot smaller than 40cm across (unless it'd be something you carry in a backpack).
Certainly you don't want 75% efficiency running TVs or charging electric cars (unless you can do it on the road, for long trip range extending -- but then you'd need some *serious* range!). But for battery-powered devices, that's fine.
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
that is what i thought too. 80% efficient! Its not like wires are 100% efficient.
I'm more interested in this type of technology for charging all the various devices with batteries without having to have the right assortment of cables and adapters.
This is Sony.
Your Ad here
Tesla was working on wireless electricity transmission but he was also working on a load of other stuff, all while baking his brain with "health-giving" X-rays. And while Tesla both claimed to have succeeded in wireless transmission and others are purported to have witnessed it, he never once made a claim as to the efficiency which, based on the efficiency of a lot of his other inventions (70% [RMS] for AC, >80% for a coil) was never higher than what Sony's come up with here.
if I placed it between the 2 units ? I'm not sure that I like the sound of that. Got kids, how long would they survive before being cooked ?
A mysterious explosion happens in Tunguska again.
Run for the hills Siberians!
one side of the tech business is actively thinking "hmmm fossil fuels will be running out, WTF are we gonna do" whilst the other side goes "WOOOOOOOOOO! Wireless power! PARTY ON!"
Don't be a doofus, this is a prototype. It's not like they're releasing it for mass consumption. Besides, who says we can't have wireless green electricity. The only thing NOT green about this is where the electricity comes from. Who gives a shit if it wastes 1/5th of the power if all that power comes from solar panels. There are plenty of nasty false dichotomies in the public sphere (nature/nurture, democrat/republican) we don't need another one. Don't be a doofus.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Duracell has invested millions of dollars in wireless power transmitters. These transmitters are about two and a half inches long (6.33 centimeters). One of the transmitters can put out 10 watt-hours, while another type can be daisy-chained to easily produce over 100 volts.
They're constantly improving the technology; Units are usually at least 75%-85% efficient. And they are not affected by the inverse-square law. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Indeed, the whole earth runs on wireless power transmission from the sun.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You'd be hard pressed to measure the line loss of a standard copper wire over two feet. It's probably like 99% efficient, if not higher.
I'd certainly buy a $20 device that meant I never had to change a smoke alarm or clock battery again.
What happens when the power goes out? Does the $20 dollar device have a battery?
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
The wasted energy is most likely dissipated as high frequency RF energy. In most primary/secondary coil designs (for the less enlightened... think Tesla coil), the bulk (80-90%) of "lost" energy is dissipated as high frequency RF. The rest is dissipated as heat and light.
0100010001101001011001 0100100000011010010110 1110001000000110000100 1000000110011001101001 0111001001100101
Only if your lights are within 2 feet of an outlet.
But, if you did this with all the overhead lights you have in you house (guessing around 12), you could save up to 24 inches of copper wiring, with only a 25% increase in your power needs for those lights.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So using this sort of tech to power those kinds of devices (clocks, smoke alarms, stick-on lights, etc) sounds quite reasonable.
Smoke alarms have to use wires: it's how they avoid battery usage altogether (except as backup), and connect to each other so they all alarm at the same time. Every new house is required to be wired for smoke detectors.
Honestly, I can only think of one application where not needing a power cord for a 50cm distance is all that helpful: a "charging pad" to recharge your mobile devices by just setting it on the pad, without having to mess with wires and connectors. However, I don't think this is likely to happen for a long, long time: mobile phone makers make a lot of money by charging out the ass for replacement chargers, which use proprietary connectors so you can't use some other charger.
Indeed, just because this early prototype has 75% efficiency we must assume that the maximum that can ever be achieved. Best to just stop investigating it instead of working on improving the range and efficiency. After all scientific progress has advanced quite far enough hasn't it?
God forbid that we improve this technology and use it to replace other sources of loss to reduce energy consumption! After all we are rapidly moving towards an electric infrastructure for vehicles, and they are always this close to the road. Imagine just how bad it would be for global warming if we replaced batteries (and their associated losses) with this technology. Evil scientists.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Wireless power has a responsible niche: cell phones, mp3 players, laptop etc. My TV doesnt need wireless power. It never moves and it has tons of other cables.
The palm pre already support wireless power. I picture a pad like the touchstone, but bigger, and which can charge all my little toys just by tossing them on there. No fuss.
Umm I'm sorry, but when in Star Trek did they "beam" as a means of power transmission. Give me an episode reference or it didn't happen.
There will be consumer demand. Marketing departments come up with clever ways of making people think they NEED the new technology. Honestly how many people can actually tell the difference between RGB, YPbPr component and HDMI? or 6 HDMI ports in one TV, because more is better.
Done by a guy at TED this summer http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html
What took us so long?
Do you have any idea how much power is used to actually produce that few inches of wire? Doubtfull as it may be but systems like this may end up saving energy in the future. Even if they are not 100% energy efficient. Imagine how much money/energy would be saved if you never had to wire a house in the first place. Or if we could actualy get a wireless transmission system. Those telephone polls don't grow on trees.... Get a clue
...on rootkit transmission.
Who pwns you? Sony!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Oh please, not this tripe again.
For one thing, your invention list is severely flawed. Many things which you say were invented by one group were actually invented by someone else and then developed or refined by another. The Japanese didn't invent hybrids; locomotive and heavy construction equipment makers have been using diesel-electric powertrains for decades.
You're also forgetting the Arabs and algebra and various other things (granted, this was back around 1000 AD, not recently when they've been too busy fighting with each other and everyone else to do anything productive).
A quick google search for "african inventions" yields the following website:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/
Did you know the carbon filament in light bulbs was invented by an African-American?
Or that peanut butter was invented by famous African-American George Washington Carver?
Garrett Morgan invented the gas mask and the first traffic signal.
Otis Boykin invented the pacemaker, among other electronic devices.
And Lonnie G. Johnson invented the all-important Super Soaker.
The reasons for the African continent's problems are explained in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel", and has a lot to do with geography making agriculture much easier in Europe than in Africa, causing Europe to develop faster technologically.
What have you invented? Probably nothing.
Every new house is required to be wired for smoke detectors.
Perhaps every new house, but mine certainly isn't. I have to change the 9-volts regularly.
Honestly, I can only think of one application where not needing a power cord for a 50cm distance is all that helpful:
Take a walk through your house some time, and look at every last little gadget in the house, and count how many batteries (replaceable or rechargeable, embedded or removable) you find. I bet you'll be surprised.
a "charging pad" to recharge your mobile devices by just setting it on the pad, without having to mess with wires and connectors. However, I don't think this is likely to happen for a long, long time
Huh? That's already here. And inductive charging has been used in electric toothbrushes for ages. The difference for this is that you actually have range.
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
A typical lightweight power cord is 16 AWG. 60 Watts (assuming good power factor correction) is 0.5 A. 16 AWG wire is ~ 4 mOhm/ft. So 4 ft of wire (2 ft cord, supply and return) is 16 mOhm. That means you're losing 8 mV of your supply voltage, or 4 mW of power. That's about 99.993% efficient.
You have to get significantly longer extension cord and put a lot more current through it before the power loss is relevant. Even if you used a 12 ft cord, and drew a rather significant 4A, that's still only 1.5W out of 480, or 99.7% efficient. And most extension cords are 14 AWG or thicker.
Forget the Sony jokes for a minute. I can think of a great use for this technology : recharging smartphones!
Essentially, if they can miniaturize the receiver coils sufficiently enough, you could pack them so that they are integrated inside the batteries used in a smartphone. (yes, yes, it is somewhat inconvenient to swap the battery in certain Apple phones...)
Imagine the possibilities. You could have one of these transmitters in your car, plugged into the cigarette lighter and stuck between the driver's seat and the cupholders. Another could be on top of your nightstand in your bedroom, or wherever you tend to toss your keys, wallet, and phone at the end of the day. A third one would be in your office on your desk.
If the range is enough (100 centimeters or so) your phone would get recharged while it's still in your pocket! You'd never have to remember to plug it in, and you would be able to use the various power sucking features (games, turn by turn GPS, etc) all you wanted and would almost never run out of battery. It would neatly solve the battery problems with the current generation of smart-phones without having to make the phones bulkier or heavier.
Problems :
1. The receiver coil might take up too much space inside the phone.
2. The range might not be 100 centimeters due to various scaling laws
3. The electromagnetic charging fields might cause biological tissue damage, making it dangerous to use while in your pocket. It might interfere with pacemakers.
4. The fields might wipe credit cards or interfere with electronics in your car or office.
But if these problems aren't that bad, or can be avoided somehow, it would be great!
great idea! magnets and electronics always get along well
Nikola Tesla invented wireless electricity transfer at the turn of the 20th (yes, 20th) century. He was trying to prototype it by constructing what was called the Wardenclyffe Tower. Of course, everyone during that time thought he was a nut and the funding ran out.
Tesla is a candidate for the title of "smartest person who ever lived," and without him we probably would not have alternating current, which probably means we would get zapped much more often from our PCs (or "PMFs", i.e. Personal MainFrames). Now, considering the way society neglects its heroes of innovation, just watch Sony finish this and claim to have brought "wireless power" to the world, without ever having mentioned Tesla. "Oh yeah, him? Well we figured this out on our own. We just read a lot of these old books on magnetic resonance and pieced it all together. So smart is we!"
Considering this is from Sony, I can immediately think of a use: Wireless controllers. My roommate has a 360, and we have to recharge the batteries in the controllers CONSTANTLY. If just being close to the system was enough to charge the controlllers, it would be very useful.
What about if the closest available outlet is on the other side of a wall from where you need the device?
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
So I am not sure what the difference is between Sony's technology and Witricity (http://www.witricity.com/). To refresh, these were guys at MIT who discovered that magnetic resonance, instead of induction (used in toothbrush etc), can be used for quite efficient short distance power conversion. They quote getting > 90% at 1m through their system. This has also been demo-ed at TED and many other places. The question is, wasnt their technology (witricity) patented? If so, how did sony get to demo something so similar? if not, it would be interesting to know the difference.
>>>75% efficiency is perfectly acceptable for low power devices.
Then how come the EU and U.S. are banning incandescent bulbs? The latest prototypes using laser-carved filaments operate at just 20 watts, and make the same light as a 15 watt compact fluorescent light. So that's what? 75% efficiency? And yet this is considered unacceptable by the politicians.
I say, if the bulbs are banned for inefficiency, then so too should these over-the-air power transmissions (for the same reason).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Take a walk through your house some time, and look at every last little gadget in the house, and count how many batteries (replaceable or rechargeable, embedded or removable) you find. I bet you'll be surprised.
Yes, that's the application I named: recharging mobile devices without messing with cords with proprietary. This Sony thing doesn't even appear to be aimed at that, and as you showed, the technology to do that is already here, even though no one wants to build it in.
Huh? That's already here. And inductive charging has been used in electric toothbrushes for ages. The difference for this is that you actually have range.
Ok, so it's here, but only as a crappy add-on (except for toothbrushes, where exposed connectors aren't a good idea). It's never going to be built in for the reason I stated earlier.
Having this add-on for your iPhone means you can no longer plug it into a dock to play music or whatever. You'd have to go through the trouble of removing this charging skin thing. Depending on how often you use a dock, it might be more trouble than it's worth to get this wireless charging skin.
This is impressive efficiency.
50cm is still too short though, so let's see if the efficiency remains workable as distance increases (square law).
IDK, according to a square law you could just move it farther away from the source to get more power
:-P
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Yeah, I wonder what the losses are if you charge the earth. Distance wouldn't matter then. Maybe we could build some wooden transmission towers near the generators at Niagara falls or something...
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Cut a hole in the wall, and wire a new outlet to the other outlet. If it's a device you're going to be using in that location for a while, it's worth an hour of time and $3 in parts from Lowe's. This is exactly what I did for a motorized cat litter box I put in a closet.
Since when do laser-carved filament incandescents make the same light as 15W CFLs? A 15W CFL has the same lumen output as a traditional 60W incandescent.
This page says that the laser treatment boosted a 60W bulb to the output of a 100W bulb. Hardly the 3x increase you claim. And they say it's not ready for commercialization (for one, I have to wonder how long that nanostructured surface that gives the greater efficiency will last through hours of operation)
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
"But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls." Robert Service (The Ballad of Pious Pete is an excellent poem)
I have a PS2 and never have to recharge the controllers.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You're assuming that CFLs are 100% efficient. They're not. The best fluorescent bulbs are in the neighborhood of 20% efficient.
There's a difference between relative efficiency (The new incandescent bulbs are 75% as efficient as current CFLs) vs. absolute efficiency (X% of the power that goes into the bulb is emitted as visible light.)
People have been demonstrating variations on this for over a century, since Tesla shorted out the city of Colorado Springs.
It's still largely a solution looking for a problem. There's some areas where this kind of thing is both safe and useful, but they're pretty specialized. Charging or powering personal electronics isn't one of those areas.
In the short run, I agree with you. In the long run, I can conceive of a universe where people think it is insane to have exposed electrical sitting out in plain sight every 12 feet in every room of a home. Think of the children!!!! Joking aside, There was a time when people thought nothing of having bear electrical wires running through their house to power lights. Today, we would think they were insane. Give it one generation of magnetic resonance being used to power household appliances, and people would think you were crazy to have a bunch of holes in the wall that would let a small child electrocute themselves.
Of course for that to become the standard, we would either need some new, clean, cheap form of power generation so that the waste didn't matter, or we would need a senator to have a child that cooked themselves by putting the end of their metal bracelet in an outlet.
Fortunately this isn't using the same method, so there's no risk of charging the planet.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Too bad that 7 billion times 20W = 140GW, which is more than what Germany consumes right now.
All cell phones don't use proprietary connectors. I've made it a point with my last two phones to get a model with a standardized USB connector for power and sync capabilities, so I can charge from any powered USB port I can find. I can't even count the number of times I've recharged my phone off my laptop while driving or on a train, or even at friend's houses by just making sure a common USB cable.
I wonder how many Roomba users actually carry a backpack. Anywhere. You do realize you are describing people who can't be bothered to sweep their own floor or stoop over to plug in a power cord. I believe you are referring to a target market of users who would be better served by a fuel cell capable of consuming snickers and gummi bears. ps. until that wirelessly powered smoke detector comes with the ability to test via universal remote control AND request the dispatch of some maintenance personnel when it's internal backup battery is dead, the idea is fail.
So... solar cells are ~30% efficent, and from that we get 20% of that efficiency.
This means that a photovoltaic array that takes a LOT of energy to create in the first place, takes years to hit the break even point, and eventually needs to be replaced, would likely end up in a net energy loss situation running one of these systems. Better to use the energy generated from solar panels as efficiently as possible, so there is actually some net energy gain from the system.
Hair shirt environmentalism.
Such a lamp will remain legal in the US. A 20 watt incandescent light bulb will be legal in the US whatever the output, given current legislation; a light bulb emitting 900 lumens will be legal at 43W or less.
No; it's 33% less efficient than the fluorescent, but the efficiency rating of a light bulb isn't a dimensionless number.
Hmmm, let's see: "electricity through the air." Where have I heard that before? Oh, that's right. Lightning.
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
I don't know about Europe, but America isn't banning incandescent bulbs. They are banning inefficient bulbs. If an efficient 20watt incandescent is made you will be able to use it.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
That is why this kind of technology _saves_ power. Yes, the TV is better off with the power cord. But the Roomba, your TV remote, and anything else that uses a battery, would save enormously by using this.
Let's do the math on a Roomba.
The latest Roombas uses $90 NiMh battery packs that store 3 ampHours at 14.4 Volts. I just had to replace some of mine. I estimate I got about 250 charge cycles out of them.
3 Amphours * 14.4 Volts = 43.2 watt hours * 1KwH/1000 Watts/Hour = 0.0432 Kwh is stored each cycle
0.0432 KwH * 250 cycles in useful life = 10.8 KwH in useful life
$90 / 10.8 KwH = $8.33 / KwH
The battery is imposing an additional storage cost of $8.33 per Kilowatt hour of electricity.
Contrasting wired power versus battery stored power (where electricity costs 20 cents per Kilowatt, which is what I pay), we get:
0.20 ($/KwH wired))/8.53($/KwH batery + electricity) = 0.023
In other words, the battery system is only 2.3% as cost efficient as the wired system. Or flip it around if you like, the battery system costs 42.65 times as much per KwH as the wired system.
Now comes along this wireless power system. It could lose 95% of the transmitted power, and it would still be twice as cost effective as the wired + battery system. For a Roomba, they do need to solve the 2 foot range, but they can give up a HUGE amount of efficiency and still destroy using a battery.
I neglected power cycle losses in the battery, because the wireless power is so stunningly better it doesn't really matter. If you included those losses, you would probably only need a 2% effective system to be cost effective with the battery.
The moral is that this is a great technology, but a TV is a lousy example. Anything that uses batteries is a great example.
So you pay them so they plug your mobile phone into their ass to charge it? Of course, you shouldn't be surprised if it sounds like shit afterwards.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
All this "broadcasting power" stuff is not going to fly.
All the schemes that have been tried by Tesla and latecomers don't have a chance. Either they're spewing out energy, which goes down in intensity as the square of the distance, or they're like Sony, and making big air-core transformers, where the fields go down as the CUBE of the distance. You'll notice it takes a 40cm coil to send power 50cm. And so on.
Then there's the problem with all the scattered energy that does not end up in the receiving device. We're talking many watts of power. Microwave ovens are only allowed to leak a thousandth of a watt-- no national safety agency is going to allow ten thousand times that much power wandering around our houses. Yes, the power couples somewhat weakly to flesh, but it's still a lot of power to be bathing in 24/7.
Do you have any idea how much power is used to actually produce that few inches of wire? Doubtfull as it may be but systems like this may end up saving energy in the future. Even if they are not 100% energy efficient. Imagine how much money/energy would be saved if you never had to wire a house in the first place. Or if we could actualy get a wireless transmission system. Those telephone polls don't grow on trees.... Get a clue
You forget that the magnetic resonance device has copper coil in the sender and another in the receiver and probably uses more copper than a 2 foot cord. let alone the energy used to make the semiconductors required to make it work
Besides, who says we can't have wireless green electricity.
Duh, household electricity is a 60Hz, green is ~560THz.
Put this in the center of the roads, and power your electric vehicle without a huge battery bank required. Even more efficient because you won't have to be using electricity to haul around 500kg (or however much) of batteries.
Someday.
Tesla would be proud.
WTF? Must be a japanese invention. What does it do, give a robotic tongue bath? I think I'd want to hide it in the closet too!
Even if one ignored all the rest of the bigoted idiocy in your post, you still forgot what they teach you in almost every first year research methods class: correlation does not imply causation. Furthermore, even though I'm sure you couldn't produce a peer reviewed study that backs up your asinine assertions, such a study would be asinine in and of itself because an IQ test is something that has been widely challenge in regards to legitimacy in gauging intelligence, and is highly culturally biased. Are you going to start talking about dianetics or eugenics next? Lets skip that and just ask for Obama's birth certificate already. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you need to cling on to ethnicity or racial background for a sense of self, and allowing it to define you, you're basically stating that the most significant, most important thing about you is something you had absolutely no control over; yet it is more significant and more important than all of your life achievements. In conclusion, you're a tool.
Ive seen some posts about this being a rehash of Tesla's wireless power transfer scheme. This is false. While this technology was pioneered by Nikola Tesla, it is much older than his scheme for wireless power transfer. This is a tesla coil. A tesla coil, essentially, is two LC circuits resonant at the same frequency with magnetic coupling between the inductors. The impedance of an LC resonant circuit is given by sqrt(L/C). The resonant frequency is given by 1/(2*pi*sqrt(L*C)). The primary tank has more capacitance, while the secondary has more inductance. Because they are resonant at the same frequency, magnetic coupling transfers energy from the primary to the secondary. Because the secondary has much greater impedance than the primary, the same energy sloshing about in the secondary sloshes with much greater voltage and much lesser current. This 'technology' appears to work in much the same way. The only difference is that the ratio of primary impedance to secondary impedance is chosen so that the secondary voltage is suitable for the appliance being powered. Because the diameter of the coils is small relative to the wavelength of EM radiation at the resonant frequency, little energy is radiated. The inefficiency occurs because the resonant tanks circuits must have relatively high Q factor. Thus, the circulating currents are large compared to the real power transferred. Note that the resonant capacitors must be rated for very large rms current. Also this is [I]not[/I] 'magnetic' resonance. This is an air-core transformer with power factor correction!
The first thing I did when I bought a house, was replace the existing smoke alarms with AC-mains wired ones. And yes they have a battery for when power goes out.
Costs $10-15 for one, plus the cost of having someone qualified to string wire across the attic to the units. This is more than the $20 each the subthread-poster wanted, but for the peace of mind it is very much worth it. (The original ones weren't well-placed and not fully up to code either.) Plus not having to worry about what kinds of RF is being thrown about or what else will it interfere with, now or in the future.
Nope, it's an all-American invention. And it's quite frankly the best automatic litter box made. The other ones are cheaply made and jam easily.
http://www.litter-robot.com/
Just a satisfied customer.
What happens when the power goes out? Does the $20 dollar device have a battery?
Don't worry. The power never goes out in a fire.
I think that IQ, like money, tends to be a dividing factor between the haves and have nots.
Those who go to college tend to be prepared to get high enough paying jobs to make sure that their kids go to college, whereas the poor tend to stay poor since they can't afford to pass on the tradition of getting a degree.
Seeing as africans were once considered mere slaves, and thus excluded from the vast majority of societal benefits enjoyed by the white man, I'm not surprised that they're still crippled from ages of discrimination and slavery.
Kinda like how a fire doesn't spontaneously revive even if you let it dry from the bucket of water you poured on it.
We in the IT industry would rather all the environmentalists take a flying leap and fuck off.
We make loads of profits giving our entitlement-mentality trained customers what they want, and since we don't have to pay for hurting mother earth we will do so. Your grandkids will be paying, not us.
Oh, and all of our competitors think the same way, so we really need to make sure that if the earth is going to be ravaged anyway that we at least get a slice of the pie.
Tragedy of the commons and all that.
Doods, they've already got this....it's called lighting bolts and stuff....
Well I don't know what race you are, but you weren't very lucky: but you have 2 nations inventing calculus...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Christ, I'm either feeding a troll or dealing with a conspiracy nut by responding to this but... How about instead of wild speculation actually providing some definitive proof of your claims.
What incredible bullshit!
It doesn't send electricity through the air. It sends energy through the air, which is converted from/to electricity at either end.
What happens with the energy sending coil ? We're just looking at loss in the transfer here, but I assume you'd keep that sucker going day and night to immediately power any device you might happen to carry by it. What's going to be the energy cost of that ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
That is correct. My point was not that this will save energy right now but the tech even if it is not 100% could potentially save energy. It depends on a lot of factors so many that you cant just issue a blanket statement either way.
1 1/2 feet? Perfect, i see some applications for that. Imagine having a electric car, parking it somewhere, and having the parking spot automatically charge your car. No wires, nothing that can be stolen, because the device is under half a foot of steel enclosure.
WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
is hardly enough distance to reach more than 2 shoulder-to-shoulder people in a crowd. the govt's gonna want better range, and probably higher wattage, before they consider this for crowd control.
"To stop the terrorists."
Yes, it does. It's generally referred to as 'backup'.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
A play and charge kit for the controllers will solve that and it has a lot more range, 50 cm = sitting on each others lap in front of the xbox. once charged you can go wireless again. The wireless range is ridiculous.
He also invented the polyphase AC motor (which powers pretty much the whole world) and the florescent light. Tesla is #1 on my list of people I would like to have met. It's really a shame that he had no business sense. Edison set us back years pushing his DC power system and claiming that Tesla's AC system was dangerous. Edison was an idiot and an asshole. Tesla was a true genius.
It will kill you instantly. Fortunately, it comes with a special rubber sheath and stand, which you can use to wrap around the beam, therefore making sure that you can see it and don't touch it.
Why do you think this has anything to do with Tesla? There is much more to electricity than even Tesla knew--and more than one way to transmit wireless power. Do you have any reason to think that out of all the different ways to do this, they are using the one Tesla experimented with?
Other companies have done this before. One which comes to mind is an MIT startup called Witricity - I caught their demo at least a year ago in the news and even on the unsuccessful US TV show Brink. Witricity [http://www.witricity.com] site has a bunch of information on the technology.
I bet your get really tired of people constantly making "woosh" noises at you, don't you?
WOOOSH!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Honestly does anyone here think that walking around passing through "POWER" emitting stations I'll call them is a good idea?
People have enough reservations with mobile phones and power lines over head.
I know, I have a great idea. I'll combine the mobile and the power line into wireless power. There is no way people will object.
Seriously people this is nuts. It's bad enough that the first desired usage is small devices and entertainment devices. Things that we literally put on our heads and near our crouches.
Lets take two steps into the future shall we.
---
Wireless power is now part of the land scape. It leaks only %5 now a vast improvement. I live a dream life where my toys are no longer burdened with the bulk of a battery. My phone is literally glued to my ear now. I have a flexable touch display wrapper around my left fore arm. I live in a geeks nirvana.
Ah but the flip side. The companies that make these devices are cutting corners to save money. One theing they no longer have to worry about is low power consumption. Because they can literally use as much as they like and not worry about how big the battery is.
So now our portable device have become power hungry machines. We have power broadcast stations everywhere. We are now walking around in a constant field of almost 1200 watts of broadcast em power.
----
Does any one else now see how this is a STUPID idea? This is not a case of I'm afraid of new tech. I'm afraid of DUMB tech. And this ranks up there with the over priced black and white Kindle that cost more than an netbook kinda DUMB.
The thing about IQ is that slightly less than 50% of the worlds population has an IQ of less than 100 ... (how many of them post on /. ?)
As simple LEDs use next to nothing in the way of power, why isn't it possible to make something that picks up WiFi energy and powers an LED with it? It's been a while since I played with radio (decades, actually), but it can't be that hard. If we're walking around in 1200 Watt of broadcast power of which 90% I personally didn't ask fr I think it may be fun to use it for other purposes.
A WiFi powered torch strikes as an interesting idea. As you can now get 1F capacitors you don't even need to be in the field all the time..
Insert
This is not only old, some people have been known to hyst power from overhead electric lines via coil in a barn. I'm not talking any sissy 100 volts, I'm talking enough to power a house. We went over this in physics class. Yawn Sony.
9-volt batteries in smoke alarms should last for years. If you are changing yours more often than that it's probably a good idea to think about replacing the alarms because something isn't right. No point taking a chance on that sort of thing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
What are you talking about? We love environmentalists. We can't sell people faster computers anymore, because for the last few years anything we've sold them has been fast enough, but we can sell them the same speed at half the power consumption and they love us!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I used to idly wonder if there was any significance to difference in intelligence metrics amongst different cultures.
Then I found out that academics aren't even allowed to raise the question.
Even pursuing research tangentially related research that has the *potential* of reaching a politically incorrect conclusion is a career death sentence.
Enough so that no basic research has been done in years.
I saw a demonstration of this from MIT students. I'm pretty sure sony bought it, not developed.
Video
http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html
Site
http://www.witricity.com/
-And then this technology will become really useful. Maybe some day we will be able to recharge electric toothbrushes without plugging them in.
We know that African IQ is small than Japanese/European IQ by about 20 points. Can this large difference in IQ explain the gross failure of all societies dominated by Africans?
News Flash: Africans score lower on tests designed by...well..... Americans and Europeans than well....Americans and Europeans do.
If anything, African intelligence is stunted by poor nutrition from less than ideal agricultural conditions and spending more time worrying about survival than learning how to do logic problems. You can be assured that western societies would have problems if there was not enough usable soil to grow crops and raise animals. Ignoring these important factors to declare Africans intellectually inferior is just plain racism.
Does this come with WPA encryption so my neighbors can't use my wireless electricity? Or does it come with a "surge" button so I can fry whomever is illegally stealing my power?
Those telephone polls don't grow on trees
I can't decide if that was stupid, an oversight, or just a very subtle troll...
there are plugs at both ends which can offer some resistance, probably more than the wire itself.
Have you ever even taken a course on human intelligence? "legitimacy in gauging intelligence"? Seriously? It`s true that creativity loses its correlation with intelligence after about 120, but your assertion that the results are "culturally biased" to such a degree that it accounts for the huge differences between Africans and other races is ridiculous. We`re talking about averages well below the 120 mark.
Furthermore, Obama is only half African American. Even more so, African Americans` IQ in the US is on average 10 points higher than those in Africa, most likely due to a long history of intermixing with whites.
And I`m really tired of hearing the `correlation does not equal causation` meme. Studies on IQ go to great lengths to control for external variables. Statistical methods are used to eliminate factors that skew results. Moreover, repeated findings of correlation between race and various attributes (which you would learn about if you took a class on human intelligence) can imply a relationship. Otherwise every freaking study every conducted would be unable to draw hypotheses based on correlative data.
Google "Newton" and "Leibniz" (at the same time)
-And then this technology will become really useful. Maybe some day we will be able to recharge electric toothbrushes without plugging them in.
Check out the Panasonic Sonic Max ES 8023SC eclectic shaver, Braun Oral B and Sonicare electric toothbrush and many more products with induction charging pads.
Just put the shaver or toothbrush on the pad and it'll recharge without being in touch with any electric contact.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Actually efficiency is dimensionless, it's the proportion of input energy converted into useful output energy. That's not necessarily useful since humans don't perceive energy across the spectrum equally. Efficacy, OTOH, is not dimensionless and is the more useful term as it's the *apparent* amount of light output per energy input (i.e. *lumens* per watt)
Sorry, I was just going by the tiny bit of text on that site, which definitely didn't talk about all this. Thanks for the info.
Correlation does imply causation. It doesn't prove it. It doesn't tell you in which direction said causality acts (Does A cause B, or does B cause A), nor whether it's caused by some external unmeasured factor(s) (C causes A and B).
Pity you didn't make it to the second year of your community college course in kumbayology.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Furthermore, we're talking averages. I don't feel inferior to members of those races that (on average) score higher than whites[1], nor do I assume I'm automatically superior to members of those that (on average) score lower than us.
[1] or whatever the PC term for Northern Europeans is.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Except there are numerous examples in recent times of discrimination in favour of negroes. If there's a pasty ginger kid's college fund then they need a new publicity director.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."