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

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.

Comments

RFID tags already do this

[Mr D from 63]

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

Re:RFID tags already do this

[religionofpeas]

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.

"Air"

[Anonymous Coward]

This Battery-Free Computer Sucks Power Out Of Radio Waves

Fixed.

Looks like a weak chip, not a comptuer

[ITRambo]

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