NEWS: CES 2010: No More Cable Bondage

GEEK: CES 2010: No More Cable Bondage

This week at CES Unveiled, a company called Power Mat technologies created a lot of buzz around a product designed to charge mobile devices "wirelessly." The company remains mum on the tech behind this innovation, calling it proprietary information. We can assume that it, like many new devices hitting the market, functions through magnetic induction.

Power Mat's product is, befittingly, a mat with three charging pads, enabling to charge three devices (cell phones, PDAs, iPods, and so on) at the same time. Currently you need to attach a sleeve to the device to enable charging. The product appeared to function as advertised, with interested media handing over their phones (I even saw a sweet new Nexus One) to be placed on the charging mat, with a cheerful tone greeting the delighted onlookers.



Ok, so this isn't the most amazing, futuristic product out there. I mean I've been charging my toothbrush that way for a couple of years now. Why should you care about it, then?

Up until recently, cell phone (and other mobile device) companies have refused to standardize on how to charge their products. USB was a great thing for consumers to hit the market, and greatly simplified things, but we still have a number of different connectors. Mini USB, Micro USB, USB A, USB B...the list goes on.

Not to mention the few companies who stick to proprietary connectors/dongles (*cough*Kodak*cough*) even though it really is a pain for their customers. One can only assume that the reason for this has to do with money, with squeezing out a few extra dollars, to eek out a tiny extension of those slim profit margins (or huge, if you're Apple).



Soon, though, consumers are going to have another option, and this option is going to be a game changer. How you charge your mobile devices may not be a very glamourous topic, and most consumers don't really give it a second thought...until they're caught without their charger and are stuck paying more than $30 for a new one at their local Best Buy. Or $20 for a simple cable that has the right connector on it. Imagine if your car, your home, and even public places simply had little pads that functioned to charge every small device you owned. Anywhere. No matter who manufactured it, and no matter how tightly they control hardware design.

I think this is going to be one of those technologies that people shrug their shoulders and say "meh" about...until one day, they suddenly think to themselves, "How in the world did I ever live without this?"

I had the Office version and ended up returning it. First I had to buy the cube thing that had an adapter to plug into my phone for an additional $30. Second it wrecked the screen on my IPod. Lastly it cost over $150 a few months ago with all the shit you needed to buy (kinda like a wii) and in all reality it wasn't at all convenient. I'll take the free charger that came with the products I purchased over this thing any day. But if you want to spend a shitload to look cool then blow your socks off. Maybe in a few years this technology will be a little more widespread therefore making it cost effective and worthwhile.

I was hoping this article was going to be about this:

I have such a geek boner right now.

+1 to that. Between the optical going to the surround, 2 hdmi's, component to the Wii and I forget what the fuck else, my home theater is looking like snakes on a plane. This product will be a Godsend for us.

I saw a little bit about that last night on the news. Some guy was saying that the house of the future would be completely wireless. You could hang your TV like you would a painting, and move it to anywhere you like. Same with all other appliances (although how they plan to do the heavy duty wiring of things like a washer/dryer, I have no idea).

Just think how much time and money would be saved when building (or renovating) a home when, instead of running thousands of feet of wiring to every room of the house, all you have is some sort of central generator (and I am really guessing at that since my wiring expertise ends at knowing which way to turn the screwdriver when putting in a wall socket) that would power the entire household.

My question is, would there be a constant flow of electricity to the entire house, or would there be spikes when a high-usage device (dryer, dishwasher, A/C, whatever) is switched on?

my question is more along the lines of at what point does the EM radiation become toxic?

How else are we supposed to get our Mutant Overlords if we don't grow them ourselves?

They'll come from China. Probably not far from where we're currently dumping all our "recycled technology".

Power Mat is a neat product and all, but it falls short of the ideal "toss your gadgets on the table or counter willy-nilly and they'll charge" product, and the big problem is that there's no standard. For this to really take off, we need real standards for wireless power. With that said, it looks like real interest in wireless power is ramping up, which is a good sign.

The guy on the news was probably a crackpot. It's certainly possible to transmit electricity over a distance, such as to power a house from a central generator, it's just not very efficient. And the RF interference is tremendous.

Hm.. entirely wireless efficient solutions seem as if the the radiation emitted would have to cause some effect on irrelevant objects (including humans) which has hazardous potential.
I would suspect a sooner step to be some sort of centrally-powered and -managed supply that manifests in a lighted bar that circumscribes the rooms within a house.. Similar to the house in I, Robot. Objects could then be 'plugged' magnetically onto the strip. This would reduce the cable length of anything, and could include this Power Mat as well for full integration.

In any case, I expect the future to be very awesome.

It won't count as the future until we have flying cars.

That and it is still line of site, much like a microwave transmission.

(for you non-nerds, anything you want to power with wireless power has to be aligned with the monolith exactly, if it is placed just slightly out of alignment, you don't get 100% power to the device, try that with your blender when you're on your tenth round of margaritas)

Wired power isn't even 100% efficient, which kind makes the play 80% as efficent as something that is only 85% efficient to begin with. Copper wire, outlets, and switches are manufactured with what is called an "acceptable loss" that they have to stay near or slightly above. DC power leakage is even worse than AC power leakage, you're car is a leaky nightmare.

Even if you were to shut off everything in your house (while leaving the main breaker and breakers on), you would still accrue a monthly electric bill due to device leakage. TV's, computers and other electronics "leak" power. Even standard outlets leak power. Put anything that doesn't have volatile memory on a switch (or a surge protector with a switch), best way to save electricity.

The "technology" is "mum" because it really isn't cutting edge technology. We were working with wireless power in my electronics course. It is highly inefficient and extremely touchy.

I owned one of the Power Mats. Complete waste of my money. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone. Stick with your cords for now until some other company one-ups Power Mat. I have an easier time living without it then i did with it.

I imagine that sooner or later that the big electric companies are going to fuck themselves over by charging too much per kilowatt and a home-owner is going to notice that it is cheaper and more environmentally friendly to produce power themselves. Solar panels are becoming smaller and more efficient, wind turbines are becoming more efficient and are getting to the point that you can mount them in places not thought of before and inconspicuously.

I see a future with self-generation plants taking up a small area in the backyard and the rooftop of the house. The big old and decrepit power grids will become a thing of the past due to so many people not wanting to deal with constant outages (that's you California). The cost to create power on your own will become cheaper and people will flock to it. Poor service and high rates will spell disaster for the grid.

Unfortunately we still rely on copper to wire houses. Copper is not magnetic. What you described is basically a buss bar. It is how older elevators operate. For the most part, you have contacts that attach to a copper buss bar that runs the entire length of the shaft. I am not sure if the newer elevators still employ that method because buildings get irritated when you try to pry open their elevator doors and get into their elevator pits.

More than likely what you will see is more efficient devices using less power. There isn't too much that can't be charged or run off the 12 volts DC that your computer uses (along with the 3.3 and 5 volts DC). Most electronics, like your television, DVD players and game consoles and other things of that nature already run off 12 volt DC power supplies.

AC is shipped to your house because it is easier and more efficient to transfer. It requires less equipment to transfer it.

I think what you will eventually see is houses move to self contained power stations in the back yard or on the house and devices that once used to consume 120 VAC will begin to consume only what they need since the transfer distance isn't as long.

Even self contained power stations generate DC power and convert it to AC power because AC power is what everything in the house uses. Why convert it if you don't need too?

C'mon, the technology is only 100 years old.

I suspect the guy on the TV did a lot of ranting about Tesla. They always do.

I think near-field transmission like in the Power Mat could be useful when they figure it out. But far-field...there's just no way of getting around how inefficient it is. Has to do with one of those damned inverse-square laws.

But bondage is so much fun

no love for Testa ... sad sad sad.

The heck with the wireless connection business, I'd just like to see some houses with 12VDC power run throughout. Just like cable and data are ubiquitous now in new homes, you could have low voltage DC from one efficient switching power supply, and have it go to standard jacks throughout the house. You could eliminate dozens of wall warts.

Some large server farms already do this by running high-power DC to all their cabinets from a central location. It eliminates the efficiency loss of the power supplies and also reduces cooling costs by removing the heat generated by those power supplies.

There are two hangups with wireless power transmission, one is the efficiency loss that everyone noted, the other is that you end up inducing power into a lot of things that you don't intend to. Every house with this stuff in it would have to be engineered to avoid accidental induced currents. I don't see how they'd get around that on a large scale.

-ReAct
"I've got the wireless right next to the hi-fi!"

Supposedly it charges at double the speed than that of wired devices.. think it's just hype?

Now seriously, who doesn't love a little bondage now and then?

Some of it's probably hype; every battery charger manufacturer lies about how fast its product can charge batteries.

It could actually charge faster than other chargers, but I don't think that's a result of it being wireless. They're just increasing the current, which you could do with a wired charger. It's just a question of whether or not your battery can take it.


Edit: As an aside, what I'd really like to see near-field transmission used for is embedded power in roadways to run electric cars. Someone has to be researching it. If not, the idea is mine, so no one steal it.

Damn. The crafty South Koreans are working on it.

There is a couple problems with this. Like Sick said.

For one, i never trust anything that claims to "double" anything. Ethernet connections that double the speed of connection, chargers that double the speed of the charge and other things like that are usually bogus.

A long explanation under the spoiler:

Flying.

Cars.

Agreed. My brother saw a film in junior high that said we'd have flying cars by the year 2000. They lied. Bastards.