Submitted 2 months ago by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I would seriously doubt it, not because it’s impossible, but because it’s massively impractical.
It turns out that wireless charging is shockingly inefficient. The antennas you would need are way bigger than you could carry practically, and the amount of power you receive is very tiny compared to the amount of voltage you’re pushing through.
A YouTuber I like actually built a setup like this in a recent video.
Also, cancer.
The energy in a wave is inversely proportional to distance squared. In other words if you double the distance you get one quarter of the power.
For information transfer like wifi this does not matter as long as it’s enough to be detected.
For power transfer this becomes a huge problem quickly because it’s the energy itself that is being transferred.
It’s also important to note thst the increased power required significantly better cooling- on both devices.
Nikola Tesla did a lot of research on inductive transmission and found it was basically useless for high power and long range. (Interestingly, he wanted to create a shield that would fry anything metallic coming near it. Like artillery shells and airplanes. Besides the power demands being utterly ridiculous, it could have conceivably worked.)
Better use of power than LLMs.
In other words to power stuff that is a just couple meters away you would need a source so powerful that it would either kill you or all the electronic devices in its vicinity. A nice styropyro video to illustrate youtu.be/6TgrtA2wKaM?t=144
Not for a full house, but there are per-room solutions on the market today.
The problem is the rule of squares… for the field to be strong enough to charge devices at the edge of its range in a house, it would have to be strong enough to scramble all electronics and possibly cook your food at the emitter.
But one per moderately sized room? Yeah; very energy inefficient, but you can get it installed today.
If you want to drive your vacuum cleaner by wireless energy, you’ll probably need energy levels in the air that would also kill flies and mosquitoes. And pets and people, too.
You had me at the first half
The biggest problem of this is probably the overlap between the “I want wireless power in the house” and the “The radiation from my WiFi router is killing me” crowd.
Yes, but it’s incredibly slow, wasteful and, unsafe. Companies have tried making hardware that does this at a room level, but have largely failed because it’s so wasteful and slow.
Eevblog has a bunch of videos debunking these things youtu.be/2rSQnRV5ztI
So lots of hand waving comments here which are only mostly right. The key thing they are missing is that there are multiple wireless power technologies for different power levels, some of which are already commercial and available to buy!
Powercast (www.powercastco.com) has multiple techs now that they either developed or licensed and they have integrated that into multiple FCC approved products. The Samsung TV remote uses both a small solar cell and their wireless energy harvester to make a remote that you never have to replace the batteries. Powercast also sells a joycon controller grip that has a battery with wireless trickle charging (done with playing for the day, leave the grip within 1-2 feet of the base station and it charges overnight). They also have a lot of other currently used applications that are not public (I’ve seen functions with low power charging over 1 meter distance), but if you ever go to CES you can check out their booth.
Another option is Ossia (www.ossia.com) which uses a tech to monitor for obstructions (people, pets, tables, etc) and then steers the power beam around to be able to provide the most power and the least power loss. As another user posted this requires a lot of trust because the power levels they use could cause injury, but they apparently did pass FCC testing. They also are commercial.
Airbrite (www.airbritelighting.com) is a product commercialized from Etherdyne tech (www.etherdyne.net) that is your standard inductive coil with some improvements. This is shorter range power than the other two but can provide much higher power with zero risk to biological parties. The video on Etherdyne’s website shows one mat powering a monitor, charging a phone, a lamp, and possibly charging a laptop at the same time. That being said, the products need to be within a coil’s field and almost completely in plane to get full power transfer.
Ok, blue skying here… On this YouTube channel I scope out once in a while, the YouTuber built a “wireless” desk. In that, the accessories and items you’d find on an average desk were wirelessly powered. The lamp, the mouse, keyboard, coffee warmer…
The key components were a large induction loop, goes around the circumference of table; and some decently small dongles. Now, granted, the setting up process involved a opening up the mouse and inserting a single, and ‘deeper’ DIY things like that.
But, a scaled up implementation of this, for a house… just sounds…exciting
This is the only real solution. I would imagine a whole series of induction loops, that activate by sensing there is a device to power. Toaster from the kitchen can be moved to the table to do breakfast, put your phone down anywhere and it charges, vacuum the house wirelessly and without a battery. Take the espresso machine to your home office when working an all nighter.
not safely.
Biggest problem with this is the inverse square law.
Notice: The numbers from the example are pulled out of my ass, but the concept is there.
Basically, if you double the distance (x2) from source and receiver, available power will be 25% (x0.25). If you triple the original distance (x3) then available power will be 10% (x0.10) (Not the real math, but it’s along the line)
If you can pump out enough EM to cover all areas you’ll need, but not so much that it’ll fry devices closer to the source, I don’t see why you couldn’t get this to work in theory. I just wouldn’t want to pay the power bill required to overcome the EM field drop-off.
Biggest problem with this is the inverse square law.
unless we did it with fricken lasers!
It can, actually be done. It’s just inefficient and requires too much trust.
You either do a general broadcast of power. This is incredibly inefficient, at any real range. To get power to the edges, the power near the transmitter will likely be enough to cook your cat.
The other method is directed. You basically put out a power beam that improves efficiency. Unfortunately, you also now have a directable energy weapon in your living room. I wouldn’t trust something capable of cooking my brain, while I’m sat on the sofa, if it gets hacked.
Neither are likely viable for general use, though both could be useful under certain conditions.
IIRC this was kind of the dream of either Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison (I forgot which one). But no, it’s not really possible, as others have said.
This was what Tesla Coils did. They allowed for the wireless transmission of power. It was Tesla’s utopian dream to provide free power to all.
You world effectively be living in a microwave
Sure just go ahead and stick a toothpick in the latch to your microwave and hit go.
Instructions Unclear: Became owner of TechRax Channel
Yes. Google far-field wireless power.
It’s not really ready for prime time, and there are a lot of things still needing to line up for it to become ready, but it’s coming eventually.
Disney Research actually developed a whole-room wireless power system some years ago. they called it Quasistatic Cavity Resonance.
Not stupid at all. I think I read that Disney has something like that for charging communications equipment at the parks. (I could be remembering wrong, I am internet brain-addled.) You know the crazies would hate it, though. Smart money says that there’s an entirely port-free iPhone in the next five years.
It’s reasonable to be skeptical of any truly high powered EM source directly in your living space. High powered EM interactions with random objects can cause unpredictable rectification and remodulation as complex as any fluid dynamics problem. You cannot model what would happen in such an environment. I wouldn’t call people who balk at it crazy.
This is possible, but via a slightly different mechanism. Using piezoelectric sensors that effectively vibrate to harvest energy.
medicaldesignbriefs.com/…/51048-improved-ultrasou…
My brother worked for a large Korean tech company that was evaluating similar technology for consumer grade application (think whole room wireless charging… Another aspect they were looking into was using low frequency sound waves to emulate the sensation of a physical button so that washer/dryers could have virtual knobs that feel analog.
Likely not something scalable at this point, but in theory it is possible.
Basically, yes, depending on how much electricity/energy you’re talking about
I don’t think it sounds stupid at all! I looked up some info on this and it appears the technology already exists in that RF and Infrared chargers can charge a device across the distance of a room already. I would worry about the safety aspects of the average consumer having access to some kind of wireless charging “router” though. With wifi if someone sets something up incorrectly the worst that could happen is that they just don’t have good wifi, or they inadvertently give all the houses around them access to it, or someone hacks into it and steals their data. What would happen if someone manages to set up a charging router incorrectly? You could have overheating issues that could lead to battery degradation or even injuries. If some nefarious person gained access to it they could tell when Aunt Sally is using her rechargeable dildo, or they could make someone’s TV remote blow up in their hand, or set someone’s phone on fire in their pocket possibly?
I’ll be honest I’m no expert on such things so this is all speculation on my part. I’m just very paranoid about this kind of thing. I suppose such a router could be restricted to only emmit a safe level of charging power but wouldn’t that mean some items charge quickly while larger items take hours or even days to get a full charge?
Do you mean in a house with showers and sinks?
Can people feel in a strong electromagnetic field? Is it safe?
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I believe you would end up inducing currents in any metal surface in the house. Causing them to heat up, or if they are un-shielded electronics, zapping them.
Quadhammer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Pah. Make your whole house out of plastic and rubber. Checkmate big cable
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Just move to the forest bro, wood is nature’s plastic
Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Rubber is also used in cables
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“Your house is a microwave”
The new alt top 10 single from John “Tinfoil Era” Mayer.
(No idea JM’s relation to conspiracy thought)