SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
There's an article up on Hackaday on a proposed wireless power transmission system by tech company uBeam.
uBeam transmits power via sound, specifically high intensity ultrasound. uBeam has never demonstrated a prototype, has never released any technical specs, and even some high-profile investors that include [Mark Cuban] have not seen the uBeam working.
...
In what is perhaps the greatest breakdown ever posted on the EEVForums, [georgesmith] goes over what uBeam is, how the technology doesn't make sense, and how far you can take a business before engineers start to say, 'put up or shut up.' [georgesmith]'s research goes over just some of what makes uBeam impractical, but digging even further reveals how insane uBeam actually is.
The article is based on a forum posting by georgesmith titled "The uBeam FAQ" on the EEVBlog which is skeptical of the practicality of the approach, and critical of the reaction of the tech press.
Thousands of startups have technical problems. Why uBeam? Why make this FAQ?
Investors have given uBeam over $23 million. But that's not a big problem. It's their money, they can spend it how they want, and they can afford to lose it.
It's likely that uBeam's product will fail, if it ever launches. But that's not a problem either. Plenty of other companies take unlikely chances, and on the whole, we're better off for it. We can't succeed without failures along the way.
The problem is that uBeam's CEO, Meredith Perry, has turned the wireless power industry into a vehicle for her own self-promotion. uBeam, which has never demoed a prototype, lead Forbes to proclaim "Is this woman the next Elon Musk?"
The homepage of uBeam is also available for the curious.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday October 22 2015, @05:14PM
They are using ultrasound at such a high volume it would make your head explode if you could hear it : ) It would be like charging your phone by by standing within 1 meter of a running jet turbine. Yeah, it would work.. but i don't think there would be many users of such a charging system.
Because they are using ultrasound you can't hear how ridiculously loud it is.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:05PM
The can't hear it argument isn't convincing to many, including the Ubeam Faq (second link in TFS).
For many years is sat in front of three large-ish computer monitors arranged in a curved layout in front of me, with another three serving the coder immediately beyond my monitors.
The fly-back transformers in those monitors were not supposed to be hear-able, but each day as I walked out of the building my hearing was suppressed except for a high pitched whine, which would go away after 5 or six hours. But in the mean time I had to ask people to repeat themselves and was accused of going deaf. (Deafness and Obesity, and perhaps hairy palms, often arrive with an "accusation" unlike almost any other maladies).
I didn't have any problem on weekends.
Comparing notes with coworkers revealed most of us had the same problem. We lobbied for cloth-covered cubby dividers, and that did help some, but there was no way at that time to hide the noise of your own monitors other than a NASA Mission Control type enclosure for the monitors, which management wouldn't spring for, to the accompaniment of jokes about us not being rocket scientists).
I still have problems hearing high frequency stuff to a much greater extent than people my same age.
Just because you can't sense it, doesn't mean its not harmful.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday October 22 2015, @08:59PM
The range at which people hear is going to vary somewhat. I'm with you, I could always tell if a TV was turned on just from that high pitched squeal that they all emitted. But, I'm not personally convinced that it was hearing in the conventional sense. It felt very much like it was bypassing parts of the ear. Unfortunately, I never thought about wearing earplugs to see if that made any difference, so I'll never know.