Reactions to the "wireless world"

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

This article in the Independent is a nice primer on the R&D into creating a world of wireless power delivery.

The technology behind the following scenario already exists: You drive home in your electric car, which has been charged through the road outside work, and park it in your garage, which is also equipped with an underfloor power source. You sit down and fire up the flat-screen wireless television hanging on the wall while you check your emails on your cable-free laptop. Both devices are powered via the wireless unit in the ceiling, which also started juicing up the phone in your pocket as soon as you walked in the door.

On one hand, the attraction to a "cordless" world is a strong one. People who use a lot of gadgets and appliances are sick of the rat's nests of cords they have to deal with, and the perceived risk to safety of all those wires strewn about.

On the other hand, we live in an era where people are nervous about living too close to high-voltage transmission and radio towers, because of the electro-magnetic fields they produce. (I had a friend who lived 2 blocks from a radio tower, and if you opened his oven door--on or off--you could clearly hear the signal from the station...)

So, when you tell people they can look forward to having EM coils in their walls and ceilings, constantly sending out EM fields powerful enough to charge their devices and run their appliances from a distance...

I'm interested to hear everyone's opinion on this, pro and con. The floor is open.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

This article in the Independent is a nice primer on the R&D into creating a world of wireless power delivery.


On one hand, the attraction to a "cordless" world is a strong one. People who use a lot of gadgets and appliances are sick of the rat's nests of cords they have to deal with, and the perceived risk to safety of all those wires strewn about.

On the other hand, we live in an era where people are nervous about living too close to high-voltage transmission and radio towers, because of the electro-magnetic fields they produce. (I had a friend who lived 2 blocks from a radio tower, and if you opened his oven door--on or off--you could clearly hear the signal from the station...)

So, when you tell people they can look forward to having EM coils in their walls and ceilings, constantly sending out EM fields powerful enough to charge their devices and run their appliances from a distance...

I'm interested to hear everyone's opinion on this, pro and con. The floor is open.

I am not stepping in that hole! (in the floor)

Personally, I'm not in favor of wireless charging. I think we get enough energy floating though the air as it is. Of course, if you want to hook an inductive coil to your electric car and park under a 35 KV power line.....

[Sweetpea]

I'd love that wireless charger for my wiimotes though...

(http://www.speed-link.com/?p=2&cat=3...d=21242&paus=1)

Other than that, no thank you!

[Crowl]

Wireless charging seems like it could be a good idea in some situations e.g. reducing the amount of chargers for all your various portable electronics would be useful.

However. even in those sort of situations there are better and simpler options such as the one taken by much of the mobile phone industry recently where they agreed to standardise on the micro-usb connector for mobile phone chargers.

[Wetdogeared]

I saw an article on the Powermat somewhere this week, probably here.

The Powermat can charge 3 devices at once on the mat (plus a USB charging port), so there's plenty of room for all you stuff.

The devices need to be enabled with a wireless receiver, attached via doc or with a universal receiver that has numerous attachment heads. There is even one for the PSP/Sony Reader. All of these are extras and at a cost of course.

It would be nice to get rid of all the cords and transformers and power bars, but at what price am I willing to pay?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

As I suspected the first reactions to be (not yours, wetdogeared).

What's interesting is this: In other cases where there were such passionate (though not always backed up with evidence) concerns about such an issue, the conveniences presented to the public are often enough to push them over the edge, beyond their concerns, to buy into an idea anyway. Will that be enough to push most people over in this case?

As for the price, as wetdogeared alluded to: That's one of those incentives companies can use to push a technology: If it cost less to buy a charge pad than a plug-in charger, or if one pad replaced multiple chargers, would you buy one?

If it cost no more than wiring a newly-built house to have charging loops installed in the walls or floors, would you?

[Crowl]

I think the powermat system will become more interesting if they can manage to convince some major companies to integrate the charging circuit into their new devices as currently you either have a noticeable increase in size due to the battery door or receiver or you are not really any better off than if you had a power block and one of those universal travel chargers you can get and those usually come with more of the adapters.

[Wetdogeared]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If it cost no more than wiring a newly-built house to have charging loops installed in the walls or floors, would you?

Yes I would.
Just this morning I wanted to take my netbook out of the bedroom, so's not to wake anyone. I had forgotten to recharge it and the charging cable was wrapped with a bunch of other cables through a hole in the desk and therefore not easily moved.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

Yes I would.
Just this morning I wanted to take my netbook out of the bedroom, so's not to wake anyone. I had forgotten to recharge it and the charging cable was wrapped with a bunch of other cables through a hole in the desk and therefore not easily moved.

Yup... sounds like my desk, and many others I've seen. I can imagine lots of people like that being more than happy to go cordless, and the heck with invisible fields. After all, many people don't think twice about the warnings about cellphone emissions (without better proof, anyway).