WiTricty

HFM · 25 Jul 2009, 14:23

Cancer is a small price to pay for having no cables anywhere in your house! [ <-- sarcasm, take no offense please...]

Alan Fraser · 25 Jul 2009, 14:49

Sounds pretty scary to me. Sending power to a Wii or phone is one thing, but can you imagine what fields would be zapping through you powering the microwave or tumbler-dryer?

EscapeArtist · 25 Jul 2009, 14:53

@hfm said:

Cancer is a small price to pay for having no cables anywhere in your house! [ <-- sarcasm, take no offense please...]

So many new technologies that we haven't seen the long-term effects of yet. I know you're joking, but there is an element of truth to that.

In a way I feel that, even though it's pretty darn cool, this product is an invented necessity. What's the trouble with plugging things in? It seems like it would be wasteful to broadcast unused power in all directions, especially with all the concerns regarding the rise in need for energy and the rising cost of producing it.

Maybe I'm just becoming anti-change as I get older...

tomasz · 25 Jul 2009, 16:07

There are other companies that provide similar solution:
[flash=560,340:2ddguob6]http://www.youtube.com/v/_iFqAYvJI2g[/flash:2ddguob6]

@dave r said:

Nikola Tesla would like to see this.

Tesla would like to see much more than that. What he has discovered was not an electricity that we all know.

Tesla's Hairpin Circuit - power yet to be understood and harnessed...
[flash=425,344:2ddguob6]http://www.youtube.com/v/XE5g6x6OOb0[/flash:2ddguob6]

remus · 25 Jul 2009, 17:18

@alan fraser said:

Sounds pretty scary to me. Sending power to a Wii or phone is one thing, but can you imagine what fields would be zapping through you powering the microwave or tumbler-dryer?

I find it hard to imagine a situation like that occuring on a regular basis, as it would be extremely inefficient to power things with a high wattage over large distances.

remus · 25 Jul 2009, 17:19

@escapeartist said:

In a way I feel that, even though it's pretty darn cool, this product is an invented necessity. What's the trouble with plugging things in? It seems like it would be wasteful to broadcast unused power in all directions, especially with all the concerns regarding the rise in need for energy and the rising cost of producing it.

Maybe I'm just becoming anti-change as I get older...

You could always turn it off...

MALAISE · 25 Jul 2009, 18:00

What about heavy magnetic fields as far as inductiv circuits are concerned ?
When I was in the Airforces as Radar specialist, we could see Neon tubes lightning each time the Beam (fortunally far from us !) was crossing our shelter.....

I was also told that in the early 50's, in PARIS , a guy sold small lamps which didn't need any power supply. The trick was : theses lamps were shown under the Eiffel Tower, where a Radio-Emitter was in function. I let you imagine the end....

MALAISE

Alan Fraser · 25 Jul 2009, 19:36

Yes, my point was that you can't do away with the present power socket setup for heavy duty static items, but certain things would be quite handy to go completely wireless. It would be useful to have laptops recharge as shown in Mike's original post...or have the cordless phone recharge wherever you left it lying around the house...or have all the audio-visual stuff like TV, DVD, satellite box etc, both power-up and talk to each other without the present birds nest of cabling.

solo · 25 Jul 2009, 19:59

And like with all new technologies comes new social dilemmas and new ways to cheat the system.
I see power theft as a new problem, people squatting close to your home charging their devices off your grid.

fefillo · 25 Jul 2009, 22:30

I was just thinking the same as Solo. Unlike wifi, I can't imagine how you would go about attaching some kind of authentication or security scheme to EM waves.

How do you keep your neighbor from buying a big coil/antenna and stealing your EM waves from you?

You could probably get away with stealing just a little bit from each one of your neighbors (just enough that they won't notice) and subsidizing your own power usage. That's what I would do! Can't be too greedy... just ~50% reduction in my power bill and I'd be happy.

Also, there's no way this can be more efficient than direct wired power, so you'd be adding additional inefficiencies and end up spending more power overall!

Fefo

Mike Lucey · 25 Jul 2009, 23:30

Fefo, I'll make a note never to live beside you

I think this technology has a ways to go before it becomes anything like common place but I can see it cutting construction costs substantially in time if it can be proven safe.

With regard to 'who pays for the energy?' question. Maybe in order for this technology to work some outside the box thinking would have to come into play. For to work it might be required that the end user machines would have to be computerised / linked to the network to show consumption? Now that would stump Fefo but would be a further invasion our our privacy, that is unless ultra efficient energy producing devices come into play that we could use in our back yards or integrated into our home fabric.

Mike