Wireless Power Group Sees Standard Within 6 Months

alphadogg writes "The group developing a standard for wireless charging expects to complete its first specification within six months, opening the door for makers of cell phones, digital cameras and other devices to bring compatible products to market. Wireless charging lets consumers place gadgets on a mat that plugs into a wall outlet, and have the devices recharge automatically without needing to plug in each one. Apart from the gee-whiz factor, it's supposed to make life more convenient by letting people walk into their home or office, toss their gadgets onto a mat to recharge and forget about them."

Comments

Re:opportunities

[MichaelSmith]

You could put the baby beside a phone or camera which requests power, but even then its only five watts which is not going to do any damage.

Strange limitation

[cerberusss]

The article mentions "The standard is for delivering up to 5 watts of power, which covers most smaller devices. "

This sounds like a pretty low limit to me. My iPhone charger delivers 5 watts and it takes hours before it's charged. Now imagine you buy one of those matts and your family or colleagues throw their phones on the matt as well. At the end of the day, they might not even be charged!

Re:Strange limitation

[KazW]

The article mentions "The standard is for delivering up to 5 watts of power, which covers most smaller devices. "

This sounds like a pretty low limit to me. My iPhone charger delivers 5 watts and it takes hours before it's charged. Now imagine you buy one of those matts and your family or colleagues throw their phones on the matt as well. At the end of the day, they might not even be charged!

I'm not sure how you missed this sentence, but this makes it pretty clear to me.

Initial products are likely to come bundled with a small charging mat of their own, but if the technology takes off other companies are likely to sell mats that can charge multiple devices at once.

Re:Not going to happen...

[thetoadwarrior]

There's USB and in the EU manufacturers have agreed to a universal charger: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jun/30/universal-mobile-phone-charger

Re:Pointless

[TheGratefulNet]

as someone who builds (diy) and also fixes commercial gear, let me splain one thing to you.

the jacks are pure shit and they fail in very short times if they see any use at all. most plugs have minimal strain relief and there is NONE at the socket side of things.

if you go socketless, you have one less thing on the (mp3, phone, etc) to break on its main board.

of course, you still have the line-out (etc) to worry about breaking, but repeated chargings on cheap connectors (they ALl are cheap chinese connectors) isn't ever a good thing. removing them is a good thing.

Re:This is done already

[Quantos]

You guys do realize that there was a fellow named Tesla that did some really ground breaking work on this originally, right?

Re:How efficient is this?

[drawfour]

From page 2 of the article:

There is some loss in the system, however, and the technology being standardized is only about 70 percent efficient, Treffers said, meaning it is not a particularly green way to charge devices.

Re:And when I'm somewhere else?

[rdnetto]

How about standardizing on a USB charging interface?

I thought we already had