Wi-Charge Uses Invisible Infrared Beams to Charge Devices

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Wi-Charge is a wireless system for charging phones, smart locks, wireless security cameras, IoT devices and more. Wi-Charge uses invisible, infrared light beamed from a transmitter located on a high location such as a ceiling. The room filling infrared light emitted from the transmitter allows devices with the receiver plugged into them to charge automatically. This is similar to how a solar powered device would work. The company has developed a wireless kit for Amazon Echo and Google Home Mini smart speakers.

"Wi-Charge is collaborating with innovators in the smart home security and automation ecosystem industries to enable the next generation of smart home devices," said Yuval Boger, CMO, Wi-Charge. "Untethered, wireless power will usher in a new era of devices and use cases for consumers that have previously been limited or restricted by power cables and batteries."
 
Makes sense, if they can broadcast a frequancy close enough that it can still excite solar panels but not be visable I see no reason not to do this. However solar panels produce very little power so this in no means will make enough energy to do too much and it will be very wasteful. It would be cool if they located the device and concintrated the light to only there instead of what will have to be a high power bulb "lighting" up the whole room
 
cageymaru said:
Wi-Charge is a wireless system for charging phones, smart locks, wireless security cameras, IoT devices and more. Wi-Charge uses invisible, infrared light beamed from a transmitter located on a high location such as a ceiling. The room filling infrared light emitted from the transmitter allows devices with the receiver plugged into them to charge automatically. This is similar to how a solar powered device would work. The company has developed a wireless kit for Amazon Echo and Google Home Mini smart speakers.

"Wi-Charge is collaborating with innovators in the smart home security and automation ecosystem industries to enable the next generation of smart home devices," said Yuval Boger, CMO, Wi-Charge. "Untethered, wireless power will usher in a new era of devices and use cases for consumers that have previously been limited or restricted by power cables and batteries."
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What?
 
And the sane people just use a wire and a plug, just like someones god planned for devises to be charged.
And if you cant handle that way of charging, well the problem is within you ( i think )
 
Yeah because that's what I've been missing inside my house all this time, copious infrared radiation. Thanks, Science!

Seriously tho, was this really a huge problem? Need a charge? Plug it in...
 
So beam energy in every direction at once so anything can get charged? Would love to see the overall efficiency of this.


Even if it could focus the energy charging a phone with say 10 watts focused over an area of a few square inches? And you thought Qi wireless charging made your phone hot....
 
ZiggyDeath said:
SimCity2000 taught me that when microwave misses, only a few neighborhoods catch fire.
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This! lol


Raise your hands if the first thing that crossed your mind when seeing this news post was images of Infrared Ovens or Heaters??

I'm not a tinfoil hat person who starts getting concerned about every little thing.... but if warning labels and physics have taught me anything it's that I need to be concerned about anything that's emitting over 1Watt of radio waves needs to be kept many feet away from you! So those 10 Watt Wireless-USB chargers people were working on, and this sort of thing.... well they kinda scare me! If my Galaxy S8 comes with a Fast Charge adapter that's capable of 9V at 1.67A, that's 15W of output! Now I'm not implying that these sort of things will be outputting that (I'm sure they'd like them to...), but the point here is that since they won't be (I hope), they're going to be rather shit at charging I imagine.

As sfsuphysics said, it'll be interesting to see the efficiency of these. Personally I'd like to know the efficiency at 10+ft away! lol

All I know is, my brain is scrambled enough as it is, and I'm only 35... :eggface:
 
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Burticus said:
Yeah because that's what I've been missing inside my house all this time, copious infrared radiation. Thanks, Science!

Seriously tho, was this really a huge problem? Need a charge? Plug it in...
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Even easier are charging pads. Dont even have to plug it in!

Never been one to be worried about wifi or telecommunications but this is a little bit worrisome.
 
I hate the names of this technology, but it makes me think:
802.11ax (and 11ac Wave 2 I thnk as well) have beamforming: they locate a device and electronically shape the transmission towards it, like a phased array radar.
And WiGig will introduce 60GHz, which will be able to be beam-formed more precisely.
Crank up the power, and what do you get: WiFi data and charging using a narrow 60GHz beams aimed directly at each device.

Now, I'm not sure how 60GHz gets absorbed by junk, and specifically by our junk,
but maybe you'd better keep your cellphone out of your pants pocket once they deploy this.
 
cageymaru said:
...

The room filling infrared light emitted from the transmitter allows devices with the receiver plugged into them to charge automatically. This is similar to how a solar powered device would work. The company has developed a wireless kit for Amazon Echo and Google Home Mini smart speakers.
...
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The whole point of the technology is that they're using aimed beams of light, not a room filling light bulb.

It's still going to be ludicrously inefficient, though. Probably not very useful for charging phones (not much difference between finding and plugging in a "solar cell" or a charger), and extremely silly to use it for a stationary device where, with a little planning, one can hide the cables any ways.
 
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For the intented devices you are better off if they make them with fast charging, so you go around with a battery bank and charge them in a few minutes.
 
Formula.350 said:
Raise your hands if the first thing that crossed your mind when seeing this news post was images of Infrared Ovens or Heaters??
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Uh, my first thought was that this is the same technology that will be used to send power from our eventual dyson ring to our eventual Lagrange satellites and down to local base stations. I imagine they'd get hot, though.
 
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common sense tells me, that tech will not work the way we expect it to... at what eff. will it work ? 0.15% ??
 
I can see this being applied to alot of smart home gear. The new Zwave 700 devices will run off of some new Qualcomm chip I think it was, supposed to get 10 years off of a coin battery.

Make your wireless smart switches truly wireless. At some point as the tech matures and comes down in price, it'll make that electrician job a whole lot cheaper I would think. (and I just paid one $8700 to do my 3 car garage addition)
 
When I looked at this i was disappointed because the first thing that came to my mind is that its a solar cell.....and you have to plug in a piece of hardware for it to work....alot of phones now have wireless chargers built into the back of the phone.
 
haste. said:
Even easier are charging pads. Dont even have to plug it in!

Never been one to be worried about wifi or telecommunications but this is a little bit worrisome.
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Charging your batteries this often is not good for the life of your battery. I never understand the wireless chargers as for one they're slower and for two if you're using them often you are cycling the battery too much and it won't last. I charge my phone once every night and never charge unless it's below 50% charge. I mean if you want to cycle your battery 2-3 times a day to get 15% - 20% charge then that's on you but your battery sure as hell won't like it.
 
Rahh said:
Charging your batteries this often is not good for the life of your battery. I never understand the wireless chargers as for one they're slower and for two if you're using them often you are cycling the battery too much and it won't last. I charge my phone once every night and never charge unless it's below 50% charge. I mean if you want to cycle your battery 2-3 times a day to get 15% - 20% charge then that's on you but your battery sure as hell won't like it.
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I do the same thing. I try to leave it alone all day until its below 15% and then charge it over night. My phone is 2 years old and still lasts all day with moderate use.
 
IR photons are not energetic enough to cause cancer. Enough of it would certainly give you a thermal burn, but no way this is anywhere near strong enough to keep your fries warm, much less burn your skin.

I'd assume, silly me, its low enough you could stare at it and not damage your eyes either which is probably a much lower power limit.
 
Rahh said:
Charging your batteries this often is not good for the life of your battery. I never understand the wireless chargers as for one they're slower and for two if you're using them often you are cycling the battery too much and it won't last. I charge my phone once every night and never charge unless it's below 50% charge. I mean if you want to cycle your battery 2-3 times a day to get 15% - 20% charge then that's on you but your battery sure as hell won't like it.
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My impression is that the circuitry is smarter now and fixes the "battery memory' issues. Lithium Ion batteries are only unstable when you constantly drain them to 0%.
 
Actually the first thought I had was, "I wonder if the extra IR light will screw up using all those devices' digital cameras?"
I assume at least the emitter itself would be unphotographable.
 
Oldmodder said:
And the sane people just use a wire and a plug, just like someones god planned for devises to be charged.
And if you cant handle that way of charging, well the problem is within you ( i think )
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Yep. There is no need or wireless charging of things like phones and devices. It is just silly. How lazy do you have to be to consider plugging in your phone to charge to be a huge burden?

Now, Cars, and drones on the other hand. This could get interesting.

There seems like there would be a lot of drawbacks though. Safety being one (what happens to a bird or human that gets in the middle). Efficiency would be another concern I would have.
 
Rahh said:
Charging your batteries this often is not good for the life of your battery. I never understand the wireless chargers as for one they're slower and for two if you're using them often you are cycling the battery too much and it won't last. I charge my phone once every night and never charge unless it's below 50% charge. I mean if you want to cycle your battery 2-3 times a day to get 15% - 20% charge then that's on you but your battery sure as hell won't like it.
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It shuts down at 100%. So I can throw it on overnight and it doesnt continue to charge. It takes about 1.5 hours for 90% charge and slows for the last 10%. Havent had a problem with it - had the s7 and charger for well over 2 years and have 84% mid afternoon with limited to moderate use today. (Emails, news, and 2 x 20 minute calls).
 
haste. said:
It shuts down at 100%. So I can throw it on overnight and it doesnt continue to charge. It takes about 1.5 hours for 90% charge and slows for the last 10%. Havent had a problem with it - had the s7 and charger for well over 2 years and have 84% mid afternoon with limited to moderate use today. (Emails, news, and 2 x 20 minute calls).
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Well at lot of times battery issue is because of background crap running and taking juice for starter (To drain batteries). After that, application privilege is another and display brightness.
Also, slow charging is better for battery life than fast charge. And at last, as mentioned going too low is bad and too high isn't the best neither.

I like to keep it between 20~90% and sometimes go to 100%, 3+ years and never need to use fast charging (only car plug).
 
MMitch said:
Well at lot of times battery issue is because of background crap running and taking juice for starter (To drain batteries). After that, application privilege is another and display brightness.
Also, slow charging is better for battery life than fast charge. And at last, as mentioned going too low is bad and too high isn't the best neither.

I like to keep it between 20~90% and sometimes go to 100%, 3+ years and never need to use fast charging (only car plug).
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None of this, or anything mentioned here about charging is true anymore. Any good cellphone with a decent battery should be smart enough to take whatever is thrown their way, charging often, charging fully, whatever.
 
LiPo's are best stored with 2/3 capacity and they feel best around that value too. I charge my iPhone as often as I can, my last iPhone lasted 7 years, iPhone4, and it's first battery lasted almost 5 years that way. Doing it the same way with any of the LiPo's I own, be it iPhone or R/C batteries. Yeah, fast charge is not the best, the best way to charge is with the same ampere that you wuill discharge them, as a rule by thumb.
 
I've almost never needed to give a shit about battery on my current phone except for exceptional circumstances.

If I'm sleeping, it's charging. If I'm driving, it's charging. On an average day, it's nearly impossible to run dry before I get another chance to plug it in.
 
MMitch said:
Well at lot of times battery issue is because of background crap running and taking juice for starter (To drain batteries). After that, application privilege is another and display brightness.
Also, slow charging is better for battery life than fast charge. And at last, as mentioned going too low is bad and too high isn't the best neither.

I like to keep it between 20~90% and sometimes go to 100%, 3+ years and never need to use fast charging (only car plug).
Click to expand...
Well I just played 3 hours of jackbox (or more) in a bright room after heavy use all day and still have 30% battery at 115am. On a 2.5 year old phone. I dont think you need to worry much about battery memory anymore. Used to be a problem, but obviously not on this device.
 
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