As tech companies and automakers race to get more connected cars on the road, many consumers are missing out on some of the fuel savings, security, and diagnostic tools that come standard, unless they have a few grand to spare on a new vehicle.
Continue reading… “Voyo – an OBD-II device that will make your car smarter and safer”
If you could see the invisible world around us you would see it ripples with information as the radio waves pulse around us and an electromagnetic tide washes over everything.
Continue reading… “An iPad app that lets you “see” Wi-Fi signals”
What if devices could pull enough power wirelessly from the air to run themselves and send signals?
Mobile devices have become radically smaller and more powerful in the past 10 year. The list of tech-related tasks that the mobile devices we all carry around has grown longer by the year. The next step in technology’s great disappearing act? Absorption into our clothes, body, and environment.
Continue reading… “Battery-free WiFi devices that run on radio waves”
Tesla Tower Prototype
One of the greatest visionaries of the early 20th century was Nikola Tesla. His work to help develop the AC power system we all use to this day was crucial, but his personal goal was to develop a way to wirelessly transmit electrical power. He got as far as building a huge tower for transatlantic wireless power demonstrations, but the system was never completed. Now a group of Russian engineers want to complete Tesla’s work, and have launched a funding campaign to build a working prototype of Tesla’s wireless power system.
Continue reading… “Tesla’s vision for wireless power transmission is reborn”
AirBulb
What could be better than an app-controlled, color-changing lightbulb? An app-controlled, color-changing lightbulb with a built-in speaker. That’s what you get with the AirBulb.
Continue reading… “AirBulb: An app-controlled lightbulb and wireless speaker”
In the house of the future, wire-free energy transfer could be as easy as wireless internet.
When Katie Hall saw a light-bulb glowing in the middle of a room with no wires attached she was shocked. Looking back, it was a crude experiment, she remembers: a tiny room filled with gigantic copper refrigerator coils — the kind you’d see if you cracked open the back of your freezer. She walked in and out between the coils and the bulb — and still the bulb glowed. (Video)
Continue reading… “Wireless electricity is here”
Sony’s SmartWig
Sony’s patent for a “SmartWig” is a strange concept that leaves you scratching your head. While tech companies are chasing the smartwatch and eyeglass form factors for the future of wearable computing devices, Sony’s exploring the possibility of using wigs that connect wirelessly to smartphones.
Researchers have designed this proof-of-concept wireless charger for moving electric vehicles.
A problem with electric vehicles is providing power while the vehicles are moving. One way to extend the range of electric vehicles may be to provide power wirelessly through coils placed under the surface of a road. But charging moving vehicles with high-power wireless chargers below them is complex.
Continue reading… “Recharging electric vehicles on the move”
Millions of schoolchildren around the country go to school every day without Internet or broadband connections.
Only 39 percent of public schools in the U.S. have wireless network access for the whole school. But perhaps the greatest offense—up to this point, at least—has been apathy about the problem.
Hundreds of companies are investing in electricity transferred through magnetic fields.
Nikola Tesla, the inventor and rival to Thomas Edison, in the early 1900’s built the Wardenclyffe Tower, a 187-foot-high structure on Long Island, which he said could transmit electricity wirelessly. Financier J.Morgan backed the Wardenclyffe Tower. The project failed, and Tesla ended up broke. (In an earlier experiment in Colorado, Tesla had wirelessly lit up 200 lamps over a distance of 25 miles, but pedestrians witnessed sparks jumping between their feet and the ground, and electricity flowed from faucets when turned on. Oops.)
Continue reading… “Electric power without transmission lines”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z3mqi9kcZE[/youtube]
Researchers at the Utah State University have tested an electric bus that charges wirelessly through induction and will revolutionize the transit industry. The technology was designed by Utah State University’s Wireless Power Transfer Team and the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative’s Advanced Transportation Institute.
Fraunhofer’s Millilink chip, with III-V transistors capable of switching at 300GHz.
Researchers in Germany have combined photonics and electronics to create a world-record-breaking wireless network that can send and receive data at a heady 100 gigabits per second (Gbps). This beats the same team’s previous world record of 40Gbps. At 100Gbps, or a transfer rate of 12.5 gigabytes per second — ten times faster than Google Fiber — you could copy a complete Blu-ray disc in a couple of seconds.
