[real-eyes] Re: Powercast
- From: "& Ruthie" <chaosynchronous@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:04:05 -0500
How about the power's out and you need to charge your cel battery...no
power, no charge...unless you have one of these. Same with the laptop, a
lamp, your refridgerator...oh wait, did it say it converts it to AC power or
DC? lol.
Ruthie &
When it rains, why don't sheep shrink?
MSN Messenger ID: ruthie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
AOL and Yahoo Messenger ID: chaosynchronous
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kim Morrow" <morrowmediakc@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2007 7:58 PM
Subject: [real-eyes] Re: Powercast
> Okay--so let me get this straight. The only difference is that you don't
> have to physically plug in your cell phone. It's not like you have a
> completely battery free phone. So where is the great innovation here????
>
> Kim
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: real-eyes-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:real-eyes-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of & Ruthie
> Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2007 5:58 PM
> To: real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [real-eyes] Powercast
>
> <URL:
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/840334
> 9/index.htm?postversion=2007033007
> CNNmoney
> Powered by
> Death of the cell phone charger
> A Pennsylvania entrepreneur has developed technology that gives you
> all the battery juice you need directly from the air. Business 2.0
> reports.
> Business 2.0 Magazine
> By Melanie Haiken, Business 2.0 Magazine
> March 30 2007: 7:08 AM EDT
> (Business 2.0 Magazine) -- How much money could you make from a
> technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called
> Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked
> agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its
> first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch
> their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.
> It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more
> complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company
> to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall,
> and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to
> make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver
> turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's
> battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.
> Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your
> desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can
> it get? "The sky's the limit," says John Shearer, Powercast's
> founder and CEO. He estimates shipping "many millions of units" by
> the end of 2008.
> For years, electricity experts said this kind of thing couldn't be
> done. "If you had asked me seven months ago if this was possible, I
> would have said, 'Are you dreaming? Have you been smoking
> something?'" says Govi Rao, vice president and general manager of
> solid-state lighting at Philips (Charts). "But to see it work is
> just amazing. It could revolutionize what we know about power."
> So impressed was Rao after witnessing Powercast's demo last summer
> that he walked away jotting down a list of the industries to which
> the technology could immediately be applied: lighting, peripherals,
> all kinds of handheld electronics. Philips partnered with Powercast
> last July, and their first joint product, a wirelessly powered LED
> light stick, will hit the market this year. Computer peripherals,
> such as a wireless keyboard and mouse, will follow in 2008.
> Broadcasting power through the air isn't a new idea. Researchers
> have experimented with capturing the radiation in radio frequency at
> high power but had difficulty capturing it at consumer-friendly low
> power. "You'd have energy bouncing off the walls and arriving in a
> wide range of voltages," says Zoya Popovic, an electrical
> engineering professor at the University of Colorado who works on
> wireless electricity projects for the U.S. military.
> That's where Shearer came in. A former physicist based in
> Pittsburgh, he and his team spent four years poring over wireless
> electricity research in a lab hidden behind his family's coffee
> house. He figured much of the energy bouncing off walls could be
> captured. All you had to do was build a receiver that could act like
> a radio tuned to many frequencies at once.
> "I realized we wanted to grab that static and harness it," Shearer
> says. "It's all energy."
> So the Powercast team set about creating and patenting that
> receiver. Its tiny but hyperefficient receiving circuits can adjust
> to variations in load and field strength while maintaining a
> constant DC voltage. Thanks to the fact that it transmits only safe
> low wattages, the Powercast system quickly won FCC approval--and $10
> million from private investors.
> Powercast says it has signed nondisclosure agreements to develop
> products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers
> of cell phones, MP3 players, automotive parts, temperature sensors,
> hearing aids, and medical implants.
> The last of those alone could be a multibillion-dollar market:
> Pacemakers, defibrillators, and the like require surgery to replace
> dead batteries. But with a built-in Powercast receiver, those
> batteries could last a lifetime.
> "Everyone's looking to cut that last cord," says Alex Slawsby, a
> consultant at Innosight who specializes in disruptive innovation.
> "Think of the billion cell phones sold last year. If you could get
> Powercast into a small percentage of the high-end models, those
> would be huge numbers."
> Could Powercast's technology also work for larger devices? Perhaps,
> but not quite yet. Laptop computers, for example, use more than 10
> times the wattage of Powercast transmissions.
> But industry trends are on Shearer's side: Thanks to less
> energy-hungry LCD screens and processors, PC power consumption is
> slowly diminishing. Within five years, Shearer says, laptops will be
> down to single-digit wattage--making his revenue potential even more
> electrifying.
>
>
> Ruthie &
>
> Programming just with goto's is like swatting flies with a sledgehammer.
>
> MSN Messenger ID: ruthie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> AOL and Yahoo Messenger ID: chaosynchronous
>
>
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