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Researchers discover battery-free technology which harvests power from radio and Wi-Fi signals for low-powered devices (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426215

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[–] 25 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Once its implementation is feasible and it can extract the waste energy efficiently, this innovation will enable new types of devices and uses that will be critical for commercial, scientific, medical and personal.

Sounds like it's still more theoretical than realized, at this point. Still, I can't help thinking this would be really cool for something like a watch or hearing aids.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's realized, just not scaled.

    https://youtu.be/_pm2tLN6KOQ?si=ppEv2PkdK_MHFrw6

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I was a little careless with how I phrased that. They said in the article they've done it, but it's not "realized" in the sense that it's not to a level of practicality that they'd want it to be. It can currently harvest signals to -20dBm, but they think they can get that to -62dBm for greater efficiency.

    The main hurdle, according to them, is there's no schottky diode that fits their needs, and they'll have to engineer a new variant (at the nano scale...?). So, still a theoretical possibility on a more practical level, but this is hopeful news nonetheless.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I agree, it's still very hopeful news that this type of research is being conducted at all, I'm still looking forward to transceivers being built into cell phone batteries and slowly trickle charging constantly.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Still, I can’t help thinking this would be really cool for something like a watch

    Watches have been solved. You put a solar panel in the watch face. No need for anything more.

    Smart watches use too much energy to do any remote powering with at all, short of qi charging/other near-touching power distribution.

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