uBeam Ultrasonic Wireless Charging – A Familiar Fish Smell

[steve30]

She mentions about how to be an innovator without having Aspergers. As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I'm not sure whether I should be offended by that.

[TimNJ]

She mentions about how to be an innovator without having Aspergers. As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I'm not sure whether I should be offended by that.

I don't think its something she should have poked fun at, or even mentioned...if she was trying to be professional.

[miguelvp]

She mentions about how to be an innovator without having Aspergers. As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I'm not sure whether I should be offended by that.

I don't think its something she should have poked fun at, or even mentioned...if she was trying to be professional.

She comes more as "Entitled" than "Professional" so yeah, I would expect her to say things like that.

[vk6zgo]

You are so busy laughing at how "idiotic" the idea is, that you've failed to see, Cota has been demonstrated, and actually works.

Plenty of unworkable things get demonstrated, and the demonstrations actually work. Demonstrations are easy when you focus on the primary goal, and ignore the collateral effects. I can melt your cell phone with 2.4GHz or 5GHz RF transmissions, so supplying 1W to charge it is no big deal. Is that going to be acceptable in daily use, though?

In write-ups about power by Wi-Fi I keep seeing comments like "This is Wi-Fi so its safe, unlike transmitting energy by microwaves". Are those made up by the journalists, or are the people behind COTA actually saying this?

While I agree with the general thrust of your comments,"melting" a mobile phone,as distinct from damaging the front end would require a quite profound amount of power,if you are referring to "transmissions",not "chucking the thing in a microwave oven".

Remember,"gain" antennas don't produce an increase in actual power---otherwise they would be an "over-unity" device!

I started out in radar. I'm used to profound amounts of power, and of melting things at quite a few paces by accident.  Microwave ovens are for wimps.

Sorry I misjudged you,but I keep running into people who should know better,who think they can take,say 10watts of RF energy & in some magical way "focus" it so "they can boil an egg".
They seemingly have no idea of how a Parabolic Dish Antenna works,or of simple Optics,for that matter!

Again,my apologies for thinking you were one of these people!

[jeremy]

...

Sorry I misjudged you,but I keep running into people who should know better,who think they can take,say 10watts of RF energy & in some magical way "focus" it so "they can boil an egg".
They seemingly have no idea of how a Parabolic Dish Antenna works,or of simple Optics,for that matter!

Again,my apologies for thinking you were one of these people!

OT, but I'm curious now, could you do it with some sort of phased array or mode-locking? Cooking things with low power that is I mostly deal with lasers, and if you focus it well (down to >= 1um), the spot of a blu-ray laser with only a few mA is hotter than the sun. You could vapourise a really tiny egg!

[vk6zgo]

...

Sorry I misjudged you,but I keep running into people who should know better,who think they can take,say 10watts of RF energy & in some magical way "focus" it so "they can boil an egg".
They seemingly have no idea of how a Parabolic Dish Antenna works,or of simple Optics,for that matter!

Again,my apologies for thinking you were one of these people!

OT, but I'm curious now, could you do it with some sort of phased array or mode-locking? Cooking things with low power that is I mostly deal with lasers, and if you focus it well (down to >= 1um), the spot of a blu-ray laser with only a few mA is hotter than the sun. You could vapourise a really tiny egg!

No,"hot"isn't the point.
Grab a lit match--------hot,isn't it!
But that match can't produce enough power to do any useful work,even if you can continuously light one match after another.

The element in an immersion heater doesn't get anywhere near as hot as a match,but it can boil a litre of water in a few minutes.

Cooking things requires power,& you are still limited by how much power you start off with.
Maybe you could burn a hole in an egg,but cook it---no!

[eneuro]

Cooking things requires power,& you are still limited by how much power you start off with.

Not huge power but longer time needed if there is good insulation from outside lower temperatures and heat created by absorbing low power energy can be accumulated.
Put egg into something like wiki: Vacuum flask, calculate energy needed to cook it, whatever it means, while amount of absorbed energy counts not power used which will depend on outside temperature, insulation and expected time.

[vk6zgo]

Cooking things requires power,& you are still limited by how much power you start off with.

Not huge power but longer time needed if there is good insulation from outside lower temperatures and heat created by absorbing low power energy can be accumulated.
Put egg into something like wiki: Vacuum flask, calculate energy needed to cook it, whatever it means, while amount of absorbed energy counts not power used which will depend on outside temperature, insulation and expected time.

Power companies charge for energy,so it will still cost nearly as much to cook your egg as the high power/short time option.
The losses are lower,but  they happen over a longer time,so the increase in thermal efficiency doesn't count for as much as you would expect.

And this method could not allow "focussed" RF power,(even if such existed),because of inherent losses in the flask material.

[eneuro]

The losses are lower,but  they happen over a longer time,so the increase in thermal efficiency doesn't count for as much as you would expect.

I know what I can expect if I know ambient air temperature while in thermal solar concentrated solar power (CSP) estimated by Bird clear sky model from my sun tracker software it is now about 850W/m2:

SUN is: 2014-08-14.606 14:33:00 UTC (2456884.106 JD)  lat: 50.***N  lon: -21.***E  Sun hour azimuth: -74.363  Sun (geo) azimuth: 254.363  Sun elevation: 31.290  Sun CSP power: 877.3 W  Day of the year: 226

There is huge influence on ambient air temperature in overall thermal solar energy conversion to heat water in 600L+150L boilers and without good insulation and good vacuum absorbers much more power needed to accumulate the same amount of energy and "cook" water, but it is off top and different story   

BTW: It is focused RF power, while 3m in diameter parabolic mirror is used in this project so sun energy from area in the order of 7m2 close to 7kW input free energy from the sun with much higher efficiency than in PV panels is converted into water heat  for everyday use

[steve30]

She mentions about how to be an innovator without having Aspergers. As someone with Aspergers Syndrome, I'm not sure whether I should be offended by that.

I don't think its something she should have poked fun at, or even mentioned...if she was trying to be professional.

She comes more as "Entitled" than "Professional" so yeah, I would expect her to say things like that.

It just seemed completely irrelevant to me, hence I'm not sure why she mentioned it. I'm not aware of technology innovation being more popular amongst people with Aspergers Syndrome than anyone else.

[G7PSK]

Such a device would be illegal in the UK and the rest of Europe. It is a criminal offence to do anything that disturbed's bats without a special licence.

Teenagers could also find such a device disturbing as well there is a device that emits ultra sound to make it uncomfortable for teenagers the idea is to prevent them from hanging around shop fronts and street corners.

[SirNick]

At 40kHz?  I remember playing with 20kHz tones in my teens, and most of what I heard was the "tick" as the tone started and ended.  I could hear 18kHz well enough, but it rolled off pretty sharply above that.  At twice the frequency, not sure I would hear anything at all.

[TimNJ]

Yeah 40kHz is reallly up there. I'd say hearing 25kHz would be impressive for a young kid, though I have no scientific evidence to back that claim, but no human is going to hear 40kHz. Not to attack you, just sayin.

[Precipice]

You're certainly going to hear 40KHz beating against 39KHz, though, if both sources are pumping out tens of Watts.
Heck, you might manage to make really odd results by sitting between identical frequency  40KHz transmitters and moving your head to create a bit of opposing Doppler shift in each direction.
High power ultrasound - it's really not benign stuff...  But hey, fsck the expertsnaysayers, she's got a 'great idea' and a pile of funding.

[G7PSK]

Seems its 17KHZ. For teenagers and could be in a street near you.

http://www.movingsoundtech.com/

[TimNJ]

That's true, Sure the dB curve for human hearing rolls off real quick on those upper frequencies...but with enough power (ie uBeam) and other phenomena as you name...you'll definitely feel the effects.

[P K]

Anyone else thinking of this?

[miguelvp]

Anyone else thinking of this?

Fixed it for you, remote linking sometimes is not the way to go

[P K]

Guilty; I had tried to Imgur it but copied the wrong link.

I'm a horrible internet citizen.

[SirNick]

What game izzat?

[bookaboo]

Is there not a possibility of hearing damage regardless of the frequency? Does the brain tune out frequencies above whatever frequencies or do the moving parts of the ears themselves stop resonating?

[coppice]

Is there not a possibility of hearing damage regardless of the frequency? Does the brain tune out frequencies above whatever frequencies or do the moving parts of the ears themselves stop resonating?

Loud ultrasonic sound will cause hearing damage. If you have been in a place with loud ultrasonic sounds (a few industrial environments are like this) you might have experienced the weird effect of being in a quiet place, but having a sensation like there is a deafeningly loud noise. You might not hear these sounds, but when they are strong you definitely register them in some way. Does anyone know the physiology of what is going on there.

[microbug]

I read a magazine article about this once. Turns out that some ultrasound frequencies can affect your mood as well.

Wikipedia page - presumably there must be a lot of power behind the sound for it to reach your inner ear through bone conduction.

[eneuro]

Turns out that some ultrasound frequencies can affect your mood as well.

It is interesting that it looks like to make music easy available via internet and storage capabilities of digital audio frequency sounds were cut in some music formats to this magic 20kHz, but it does not mean that music at higher frequences despite it is not recognized as sound does not affect our brains and in one of those references on mentioned above wiki page there is interesting article where EEG brain waves were measured as response to higher frequency sound too 
PDF: Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect
Another arguments (14 years ago) to forget about ultrasonic wireless charging 

BTW: I used to ban to use cell phones close to head too, while nobody knows how it affects our brain, while it is electromagnetic radiation and I don't care someone says it is safe, while significant amount of radio power is needed to connect to GSM base stations at high radio frequencies and there are too many people interested in to have as many as possible customers paying bills for cheaper but longer calls connections It is much safer and comfortable to use standalone microphone with ears headaset and keep this cell phone as far as possible away from our body or simply use internet calls at home if possible

[sleemanj]

10 Million Bucks...

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/10/30/the-audacious-plan-to-make-electricity-as-easy-as-wifi/
http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/comments/2ku33v/ubeam_raises_10m_to_make_electricity_as_easy_as/