The uBeam FAQ

[Fungus]

Disposable cups were impractical 500 years ago but they are now.

Rubbish. The Romans disposed of millions of cups. It was the norm back then.

Even today they still make single-use ceramic cups in places like India. Millions of them every day.

https://www.jovoto.com/projects/betacup/ideas/4859

[Fungus]

Even if a phone charged at 0.1W, for millions of people to pump in 10W of power to charge that is a very bad idea.
Energy Star and other such efficiency ratings and requirements for plugpacks and chargers exist for a reason.

Yep. A solar cell would be 100000% better than putting ultrasound transmitters everywhere.

[LabSpokane]

We are not saying, "never will work."  We are saying, "always impractical and ridiculously inefficient."  The losses will be the same 2000 years from now.

Zapta is trolling, he is best ignored.

Agreed. Remind me in 200 years, though. I might have forgotten by then.

[JiggyNinja]

You can pour in all the money you like, when you are out by several orders of magnitude on decent efficiency no amount of technical PhD hand waving is going to fix it.

Never say never. The level of computing we carry in our pockets these days would be consider physically impossible 200 years ago. Same goes for you talking in Sidney and we hear you in real time all over the world.

When we 'debunk' stuff, we need to remember to qualify it.

Those "impossible" things tend to use new physics, like radio waves or semiconductor electronics.

Is it possible that some new physics would allow wireless charging several devices at several watts each through directed beams of unubtainion particles? Yes it is.

Is it possible that the efficiency of sound propagation through air, which has been thoroughly studied for an extremely long time, is suddenly going to change? No.

We can achieve greater transmission bandwidth through fiber optic cables and copper because those things are constructed with complete control over their properties. Improvements in manufacturing techniques can push their capabilities to the theoretical limits by tightening tolerances and purifying materials.

You cannot do the same with the atmosphere of a large room. You are stuck with what you have. Imagine being forced to only use window-quality glass to make fiber optic cables. No amount of science and engineering is going to get over the fact that window glass sucks, and fiber optic cables would never be able to be more than a couple dozen feet long.

A blinker with 200k electronic switches was unacceptable 70 years ago but these days every arduino kid makes one.

That is because, unlike the 50's, we don't use relays or vacuum tubes anymore. Miniaturizing computing devices relied on new physics being applied to the problem. You can get microcontrollers in a ridiculous SOT-23-6 package now for under 2 USD, and it's dead simple to program in any arbitrary blinking pattern you want by reprogramming it. If you needed to make something blick 3 times every 2 seconds, does it make more sense to lash together some 555 timers (with associated passives) with glue logic, or toss in a small PIC and spend 30 minutes writing a blinky program?

[StillTrying]

Looks like these clowns have closed down. 

[djos]

Looks like these clowns have closed down. 

Source?

[StillTrying]

Source?

Just intuition. 

https://twitter.com/garrettreim/status/810964924461555712 

[PaulReynolds]

Looks like these clowns have closed down. 

Nope.

[Dubbie]

Interesting watching that video. Seems like some of her original hubris and arrogance has had the corners rubbed off somewhat.
She seemed a lot less confident in what she was talking about than in her original PR videos.

I guess you would be like that if in your heart of hearts, you knew that your earthshattering idea could never work anything like how you originally sold it.

[Howardlong]

I hadn't realised the BBC had done a segment about her here from October 2015.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34604842
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34604843

No hubris lacking here. At 3:03, there's what looks like an MDO3000 and an Analog Discovery box, with Meredith pointing to a scope screen that may or may not be switched on.

The only ultrasound stuff in the video was the same kit she's been using for 5 1/2 years. Nothing is actually demonstrated, so the modus operandi remains the same in that respect.

[StillTrying]

The only ultrasound stuff in the video was the same kit she's been using for 5 1/2 years. Nothing is actually demonstrated, so the modus operandi remains the same in that respect.

They've seem to have only publicly demonstrated 2 days worth of work in 5 years, and most of that 2 days would have been waiting for the bits to arrive. 

[iaeen]

We are not saying, "never will work."  We are saying, "always impractical and ridiculously inefficient."  The losses will be the same 2000 years from now.

Yes, same losses but nobody will care if energy becomes plentiful and dirt cheap.

Disposable cups were impractical 500 years ago but they are now. Expect changes. Awesome things are going to happen.

You're still not even close to proving your point.

The cost of energy isn't the only reason to worry about efficiency. You are pretending that the wasted energy just disappears, but it doesn't. It is released into the atmosphere as heat. Someone charging a phone at 5 watts is going to be dumping something like 500W into the room as waste heat. Put 10 people all doing this in the same coffee shop, and the place is going to turn into a blast furnace! A small minded person would argue that that is what the AC is for, but that doesn't get rid of the heat either. It just vents it out into the atmosphere. Looking at a global scale, we would have terawatts of waste heat being dumped into the atmosphere, all for one freaking product! Do you really think that isn't going to have a negative effect on the environment?

Also, you're ignoring the health effects. Early on, it was pointed out that this thing would be louder than a jet engine if it was going to transmit the energy. Sure, the human ear can't actually hear that, but there are still health considerations that have been pointed out several times in this thread. They say they are going to use directional beam forming technology to work around that, but sound is just pressure waves that propagate by molecules colliding with each other. There will always be leakage, and that is unacceptable at these power levels.

Ill say it again. This will NEVER be practical. 

[JiggyNinja]

There will always be leakage, and that is unacceptable at these power levels.

Ill say it again. This will NEVER be practical. 

Even before you consider leakage, I think reflections are going to be a bigger issue. How tight would they even be able to make the beam when it's going more than a couple meters? My gob would be smacked if they were able to get it to even a phone sized tightness, much less if they could limit it to the size of the receiving transducer. So probably a lot of the transmitted power, even if it goes the distance, will just pass right on by and scatter off the first hard surface it hits, exposing everyone to loud ultrasonic noise.

You can't just blast that much power out into the ether and give it a "Gandalf" range limit (YOU SHALL NOT PASS). It keeps going until it dissipates into heat or hits something.

[StillTrying]

I think reflections are going to be a bigger issue.

I think even the receiving transducer will reflect 50% of the signal, and air currents/draughts will wobble 'the beam' all over the place.

Ill say it again. This will NEVER be practical.
+1e9

[Howardlong]

Are they trying get even more money?

"uBeam: Invested in Series A round valuing it at $57 million; now looking to raise at a $500 million valuation, Pitchbook says — although it has recently been involved in a big controversy."

From http://uk.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-should-be-a-vc-investor-2017-1 (Published 16 Jan 2017)

[StillTrying]

"now looking to raise at a $500 million valuation"      

[JiggyNinja]

Are they trying get even more money?

"uBeam: Invested in Series A round valuing it at $57 million; now looking to raise at a $500 million valuation, Pitchbook says — although it has recently been involved in a big controversy."

From http://uk.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-should-be-a-vc-investor-2017-1 (Published 16 Jan 2017)

How can you quote that and not include the immediately following paragraph?

Of course, startup valuations are sometimes considered vanity numbers that don't always reflect the health of the overall business. Also, Mayer has a horrible acquisition history at Yahoo that calls her eye for good startups into question.

A real winner there.

[thesgoat]

uBeam finally shows off its wireless charging tech
https://www.axios.com/ubeam-finally-shows-off-its-wireless-charging-technology-2236385621.html

[coppice]

uBeam finally shows off its wireless charging tech
https://www.axios.com/ubeam-finally-shows-off-its-wireless-charging-technology-2236385621.html

That crowd sure is easily impressed. A more objective report might be http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.hk/

[PaulReynolds]

uBeam finally shows off its wireless charging tech
https://www.axios.com/ubeam-finally-shows-off-its-wireless-charging-technology-2236385621.html

That crowd sure is easily impressed. A more objective report might be http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.hk/

Best to link directly to the post, that just links to the latest so will change over time:

http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2017/02/ubeam-still-all-sizzle.html

[JiggyNinja]

Stupid reporter phrasing from the Axios article:

It's also controversial, with some having publicly suggested that uBeam's technology defies the laws of physics.

Their technology isn't defying the laws of physics. They're trying to make it defy the laws of physics. There's a big difference in implication between those two phrasings.

[EEVblog]

Stupid reporter phrasing from the Axios article:

It's also controversial, with some having publicly suggested that uBeam's technology defies the laws of physics.

Their technology isn't defying the laws of physics. They're trying to make it defy the laws of physics. There's a big difference in implication between those two phrasings.

It completely obeys the laws of physics, and yes it does work. It's just the practical limits of the environmental physics that is the show stopper and the reason why it will never, ever, work as advertised.

[coppice]

Stupid reporter phrasing from the Axios article:

It's also controversial, with some having publicly suggested that uBeam's technology defies the laws of physics.

Their technology isn't defying the laws of physics. They're trying to make it defy the laws of physics. There's a big difference in implication between those two phrasings.

It completely obeys the laws of physics, and yes it does work. It's just the practical limits of the environmental physics that is the show stopper and the reason why it will never, ever, work as advertised.

uBeam works in the same way that crushing someone's skull stops a headache. The goal may be achieved, but the side effects might be considered undesirable.

[JiggyNinja]

It completely obeys the laws of physics, and yes it does work. It's just the practical limits of the environmental physics that is the show stopper and the reason why it will never, ever, work as advertised.

You're falling into the trap laid by their supporters, isolating the one aspect of their claims that is in their favor and pounding on it.

uBeam doesn't just need to make power transfer through ultrasound. They also need to do it in a way that is safe, efficient, convenient, and useful. If it needed to pump 200 dB of sound into the room, OSHA would never permit it. If it's 0.001% efficient, it's too expensive to be worth operating. If people need to have a bulky adapter and place their phone in a specific position in a specific orientation, it's harder to use. If it only manages 10 mA of charging current, it's useless.

Individual pieces of their goal might be achievable in isolation in specific conditions, but that doesn't mean anything. They're hyping the total combination, and that combination is physically impossible. That's what's defying the laws of physics. Don't let yourself be dragged off of that message by the deluded stooges.

My beef was with the reporter's phrasing. "Their technology defies the laws of physics" implies that they currently have something that defies the laws of physics. That is not true. They're trying to design technology that defies the laws of physics. There's a totally different feel to those two phrasings.

I have the same issue with the way you phrase your Batteroo rebuttals. "Oh course it'll work, it's a boost converter!" Except that's not what they're selling. If Batteroo's pitch was "your toys and flashlights will run more consistently", nobody would give a shit. Their pitch is "8 TIMES LONGER!!!!!". They aren't selling a "battery voltage regulator", they're selling a "battery life extender". The fact that it attempts to do that by boosting voltage is an irrelevant distraction. Almost every test done by you, Frank, and others on here have shown that it reduces battery life.

If a device claims to increase battery life, and it doesn't do that, then it simply doesn't work. It's pointless to argue for or against any other obscure figure of merit when it fails so completely at its main claim.

uBeam works in the same way that crushing someone's skull stops a headache. The goal may be achieved, but the side effects might be considered undesirable.

This is exactly correct.

[timothyaag]

uBeam works in the same way that crushing someone's skull stops a headache. The goal may be achieved, but the side effects might be considered undesirable.

I think that can be considered solidly undesirable.