Microsoft wants LAMP for wireless mobe charger Microsoft Research has put forward the idea of charging mobile phones with a beam of light. Explained in a paper titled AutoCharge: Automatically Charge Smartphones Using a Light Beam (PDF), the idea is to use a Kinect motion sensor to spot a phone, then focus a lamp on it to bathe phones in light and charge them wirelessly. …
So we now multiply the efficiency of light generation (sub-70% even for the best LED lighting) with the efficiency of light conversion under (on average) a suboptimal angle which we can safely assume to be under 15% for a grand total of ~ 10%.
Earth to Dave: "Can I have my charger back"
"Beat me to it. I can't believe someone actually entertained this as an idea."
Ditto. This a "because we can" idea which may or may not have underlying patents that can be used in a more useful way, but hey, at least it builds up the MS patent portfolio.
Is Rube Goldberg on the MS payroll?
I'd be a little more impressed if the phone had it's own solar cells and this device operated a lens/mirror arrangement at the window to send as much natural light in the right direction as possible. It's still a Rube Goldberg idea but maybe slightly less wasteful of generated energy. That might be handy if you forget to leave the phone on the windowsill in the sunlight or need it on your desk.
Couldn't agree more. Indeed, the same could be said for induction charging - plenty of scope for wasted energy there. We need batteries that charge without the need for a transformer of any kind (at least outside the power generation infrastructure).
Or perhaps one based on bacterial action on bio-waste? (Could be a bit smelly though.)
Here's the thing. If it's intended for complete 'fast' charging of a phone, forget it. However, if, like some of the Casio g-shock watches it's intended to trickle charge throughout the day, then it sounds like a much better proposition.
the vast majority of us will work in some level of light (unless we're blind cavers, which I suspect is a rather small minority of the caving population), so having it charge while the phone is in light for 12 hours a day could mean that your phone would reasonably last the whole day and well into the night as it's being topped up, or simply using the solar energy for ticking over. That, in my opinion is a much better use case for it. Plus in an office environment the UV from a fluorescent light could help so long as actual glass is not used (quartz allows UV to pass through, but Silicon dioxide absorbs it)
On the G-shock front, had mine for over 10 years, always has a full battery, the battery has not needed changing, and it's always accurate on time. Yes, it has hands to move as well as a digital section, so it's not doing 'nothing' or having an e-ink display to sip power
There's a reason why UV-blocking glass is used for fluorescent lamps, it is harmful to our retinas.
As for solar charging, the Sun gives, on Earth, approx 1kW/m2 of sunlight across all frequencies, when the surface is perpendicular to the Sun. This is largely independent of latitude. A 5.5" 16:9 display is 13cm by 7 cm or about 1/100 of a square metre. If the solar panel can use about 10% of the sunlight (inc non-visible), then it would collect about 1W, which is less than most smart phones phones use when idle.
I know that you are writing off getting 1W from the solar panel on the screen, but i think that it would still be useful.
I found this paper from a couple of years ago (https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix10/tech/full_papers/Carroll.pdf). Suggests that in their setup a phone used approximately 270mW when idle with the backlight off and only went over 1W when making a call via GSM.
Granted, the phones in the test were a couple of years old and therefore probably clock a lot lower than current ones, but i suspect that may have been offset to some degree by more effiecient processors and even a three-fold increase in idle consumption still leaves change...
Yep, I was about to post more or less that but you just saved me the effort of doing that bit of research.
From a purely academic and engineering point of view it would be a very interesting project that may well in the future deliver some useful application but charging a phone in the most inefficient manner imaginable is probably not going to be one of them.
Even better, those 'visible and invisible' wavelength bulbs? They were called incandescents and they've banned them now!
Apparently the argument was they were inefficient.
So now we heat the house with the radiators a little more, & the lights a little less...
Stupid idea though. Better to have the phone talk to the (invisible) light, which scans around at a signal from the phone. When in the right place the phone simply tells the light to stop scanning.
There, just saved you £200 on your charger design, cameras and associated intelligence.
Use the phrase "hey, I've got an idea!", involve at least one MS product and one non-MS product in conjunction. No need to think about practicalities, efficiency, or even a *requirement*. I didn't think it would be possible but this actually beats their "whole room immersive experience", a solution with no problem and merely "meh" until someone stomps on the cat/dog/baby/breakable item.
Still, it could be worse... they could be suggesting that mobile phone manufactures put a solar panel on the surface of the phone so that you get into the habit of not putting it safely into your pocket but rather leaving it on the table in a crowded coffee shop, on a train, etc... Oh...
It would be a better idea to have a phone case, with an NFC or something to triangulate the phone (a transmitter in 2 corners, with 2 recievers would triangulate the position in 3 axis, and orientation (face up/down/a potential target for the charger presented). Then use a freaken laser to beam onto the case- if its an appropriate target (hit it at low power for a few milliseconds, to sense if you have a direct line of sight, then ramp up ) Bluetooth reports back if the case has charged the phone.
Relatively efficient transmission, no diffusion
Less collaboration with external suppliers
I mean - LASERS.
Outside of my home, my cell phone seldom leaves my possession (in a shirt pocket) because it contains enough sensitive information and information important to me that to loose it would be a calamity.
At home, if it's not in my possession, it's likely to be in one of three places, and the place it's likely to be longest (on my bedside table) would make photonic charging distinctly unpleasant.
This is a technically interesting capability - but I doubt the practicality of it.
If enough energy can be collected from solar or ambient light sources into a stationary storage cell (this could be a Kinect, but doesn't have to be) and then focused onto a phone charging captor (which I believe is the main idea) this could work as long as the power yield and transfer figures stand up. I suspect the initial prototypes will fail miserably though.
What is needed is an efficient store and forward power collection device that won't burn the kids and household pets. A thirsty phone can then be stood into a cradle near (or on top of) the device to trigger and capture the power source beam. Still easier than looking around for a USB plug every night/day/hour. But it is hard to see what real advantages this would provide over a standard dock charger.
Ford recently came up with an interesting concept for powering its solar cars. First. they made the entire car roof into a curved solar panel. This panel included a moving captor which focuses sunlight onto the panels to improve solar charging efficiency. An onboard computer with seasonal sky coordinates and GPS then moves the mechanized roof captor around to "follow the sun" while the car is moving or at rest. Pretty nifty idea, I thought. Saw this at a car show but couldn't get any hard statistics out of the demo people.
I am not too sure about the constant trickle charge concept though. That will clearly need more work. We also need to consider the potential risk of standing in front of energized beams for any length of time. Don't fancy it myself.
So the Kinect spots a phone on a table and begins to send light rays in its direction. You pick up the phone and the Kinect follows it. You turn around and the Kinect detects sub-par reception. It then increases transmission so the waves can make it through the obstruction - which happens to be your head.
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