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This Battery-Free Computer Sucks Power Out Of Thin Air (fastcodesign.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fascinating-gadget dept.

An anonymous reader shares an article on Fast Co Design (edited and condensed for clarity): Researchers at University of Washington's Sensor Lab have created the WISP, or Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform: a combination sensor and computing chip that doesn't need a battery or a wired power source to operate. Instead, it sucks in radio waves emitted from a standard, off-the-shelf RFID reader -- the same technology that retail shops use to deter shoplifters -- and converts them into electricity. The WISP isn't designed to compete with the chips in your smartphone or your laptop. It has about the same clock speed as the processor in a Fitbit and similar functionality, including embedded accelerometers and temperature sensors. [...] It has about the same bandwidth as Bluetooth Low Energy mode, the wireless power-sipping technology which drives most Bluetooth speakers and wireless headphones.

8 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. RFID tags already do this by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Informative

    RFID tags use the energy from the reader to provide a RF response. This seemingly useless project is not exactly some breakthrough.

    1. Re:RFID tags already do this by religionofpeas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This could power the equivalent of a fitbit without charging or a battery and that is at least new. It should have been done years ago.

      Probably not, unless you want to carry a RFID transmitter in your other hand.

      There is so much RF energy out there in the WIFI spectrum

      No there isn't. At a reasonable distance from an access point, you may get something like -70dBm, which is 100 picoWatt. Running something like an Arduino at low speed takes 1milliWatt, or 10 million times as much.

  2. "Air" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This Battery-Free Computer Sucks Power Out Of Radio Waves

    Fixed.

    1. Re:"Air" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This Battery-Free Computer Sucks Power Out Of Radio Waves

      Fixed.

      Yes. It is important to note that this technology will work in a total vacuum, which is the amount of information contained in the article.

  3. Looks like a weak chip, not a comptuer by ITRambo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone's looking for funding. Stay away, as this technology is no where near being useful.

  4. Re:Funding, you say... by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 2

    Hah, you think that's impressive, wait till you see my breakthrough for extracting energy out of thick air.

  5. Re:Bathing in 900 MHz transmitter exhaust by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    The maximum transmitter power is just a few Watts, of which only a small portion is absorbed by your body and turned into heat. Compared to the 75 Watts your body generates itself, it's not going to be noticeable.

  6. Re:What's the energy efficiency of the device? by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    I can see where this could be useful if you stick a bunch of these devices on a bridge, and then drive over them with a scanner, reading something like stress forces from each one. Or maybe a cooled transport, where you can check the temperature of each passing item. A big limitation, however, is still that the device isn't working when there's no transmitter nearby, so you could only measure immediate sensor values.