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According to Computerworld
Wireless charging at distance company Ossia has partnered with electronics manufacturer Molex to boost development of its first products, which it said should be available this year.
Unlike today’s most popular wireless chargers, which require devices to rest on a charging pad, Ossia is among several companies developing trickle charging capability at distances of many feet. Some of these technologies, also known as “uncoupled wireless charging” can even charge through walls, or simply top off a device as you enter a room.
Ossia’s Cota technology uses radio frequency (RF) to send power and data over distances greater than 15 feet. Cota Transmitters can link to charge dozens of mobile devices within a several meter radius, and the transmitters come in multiple form factors, including a drop ceiling tile.
By linking two Cota ceiling tiles, the system can power mobile devices in a typical coffee shop, office or other crowded spaces, the company claims.
The company has also developed AA batteries that can receive a wireless charge.
In 2013, after six years in development, Ossia unveiled the first of its Cota wireless charging prototypes, a small dongle for smartphone charging; at the time, the company said its technology would be available to consumers and enterprises by 2015. That didn’t happen.
Now, Ossia claims that through its new partnership with Molex it should have a product to market by the second half of this year, according to Jennifer Grenz, vice president of marketing at Ossia. Molex, an 80-year-old manufacturer based in Illinois, helped develop the first car radio, the first cell phone and the first HDTV.
Through tiny antennas, Cota-enabled wireless devices can be activated, managed, and monitored via the Cota Cloud networking platform. Cota power receivers are small enough to be embedded into IoT devices, wearables, and many other electronics.
Ossia
Ossia has miniaturized its chipset and placed it into AA batteries, allowing any device using them to be wirelessly charged over distances greater than 15 feet.
Lily Yeung, vice president of Molex Ventures, said her company first engaged with Ossia two years ago with a round of funding.
Last week, the companies announced a collaboration on next-generation Cota wireless charging antenna designs. The project will include several new patch antenna designs that will service a variety of commercial applications.
Ossia’s first products will likely be rolled out for a number of different markets; early adopters will likely be in the Internet of Things (IoT) area where modules and sensors could not only be charged but transmit their data via the Cota technology.
One of the hurdles for untethered wireless charging technology, Yeung said, has been achieving Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval.
An Ossia competitor, Energous, finally received FCC approval in December when the FCC certified the company’s “power-at-a-distance” transmitter.
“That’s a good indication regulatory bodies are embracing the technology,” Yeung said.
EnergousMichael Leabman, founder and CTO of Energous, demonstrates how one of the company’s wireless charging routers can send power over distances.
The company claims its Energous WattUp Mid Field transmitter can trickle charge smartphones, watches, speakers and other devices up to 15 feet away.
Like Ossia, Energous has partnered with a large electronics manufacturer, Dialog Semiconductor, to help it distribute its technology.
Yeung sees retail and manufacturing as the most promising markets for Ossia’s uncoupled charging technology.
For example, factories use IoT devices to transmit all kinds of data between machinery for production analysis and maintenance. Smart buildings contain hundreds or thousands of sensors for HVAC and other systems, which would be kept charged and connected. Grocery stores use electronic price tags above shelves that could be charged by a wireless router and adjust the price of produce or other perishable items as they age or as sales occur.
“Millions of dollars are lost every year through items being thrown away when they’re kept on a shelf too long,” Yeung said.
Manufacturing is expected to spend $189 billion on IoT in 2018, according to IDC. By 2021, global IoT spending is expected to total nearly $1.4 trillion as organizations continue to invest in the hardware, software, services, and connectivity that enable the IoT.
Typically, uncoupled wireless charging technology sends low levels of energy (typically less than 1 watt) across a room. Ossia, Energous and uBeam all demonstrated uncoupled charging technology at CES earlier this year.
PowerByProxiHow wireless charging works
Last September, Apple announced its AirPower wireless charger would be available sometime in 2018. It has remained mum since then. A month after announcing the AirPower charger, Apple purchased New Zealand-based PowerByProxi, whose wireless charging technology can send power to multiple devices, from headphones to remote controls, at the same time. PowerByProxy makes a number of charging device form factors, including a box into which multiple items can be dropped to charge.
As appealing as that may sound for mobile devices, Apple likely hopes to use the technology for a vast array of electronics such as the Apple TV remote control or its own computer mouse – and perhaps even for industrial applications.
Apple has settled on the popular Qi wireless charging specification for its mobile devices – from the iPhone 8 and X smartphones to its Apple Watch and its wirelessly chargeable AirPod ear buds. So, what it may do with PowerByProxi’s intellectual property remains to be seen.
PowerbyProxi is a component company, so the wireless chargers it creates for demonstrations are proofs of concept. The company has partnerships with firms such as Samsung, Texas Instruments (TI) and Linear who choose to build hardware based on the working prototypes.
PowerByProxi’s latest prototype of wireless charging is the Proxi-Com, which can transmit both power and data, just as Ossia claims its technology can do. Initially, PowerByProxi’s wireless device supports three common protocols used in industrial applications: a CAN bus for automobiles, Ethernet and Digital GPIO (general purpose input/output circuit).
Ossia, through a partnership with Stutgart, Germany-based Motherson Innovations, is working on bringing the Cota wireless power system into the interior of private and public vehicles by 2021 to not only deliver continuous wireless power to occupants’ personal devices, but various vehicle sensors.
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This article and images were originally posted on [Computerworld] April 18, 2018 at 06:42AM. Credit to Author and Computerworld | ESIST.T>G>S Recommended Articles Of The Day
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According to Android Authority
You know it as well as we do — the modern tech enthusiast can work from anywhere. We have all the tools we need at all times. At some point you will need to charge your laptop, though, as well as your phone, tablet, smartwatch, and your Bluetooth headphones. You get the point.
Soon enough, that tiny coffee shop table turns into a tangled mess you simply can’t decipher and you wish you could reduce the amount of cables you use. What to do? That mousepad doesn’t need to be yet another thing you carry in your bag to serve a single (and not too significant) purpose. What if it could also charge your phone?
That is exactly what Takieso Graft Design did with the MousePad+. This is not just a surface to drag your mouse over. You will notice a wire extends out of the top and can be plugged into your computer’s USB port. This gives power to the Qi wireless charger build right into the leather pad.
This is not just a surface to drag your mouse over.
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This article and images were originally posted on [Android Authority] April 9, 2018 at 02:22AM. Credit to Author and Android Authority | ESIST.T>G>S Recommended Articles Of The Day
Stanford scientists have created a device that wirelessly transmits electricity to a movable disc. The technology could some day be used to charge moving electric vehicles and personal devices. Credit: Sid Assawaworrarit/Stanford University
If electric cars could recharge while driving down a highway, it would virtually eliminate concerns about their range and lower their cost, perhaps making electricity the standard fuel for vehicles.
Now Stanford University scientists have overcome a major hurdle to such a future by wirelessly transmitting electricity to a nearby moving object. Their results are published in the June 15 edition of Nature.
“In addition to advancing the wireless charging of vehicles and personal devices like cellphones, our new technology may untether robotics in manufacturing, which also are on the move,” said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the study. “We still need to significantly increase the amount of electricity being transferred to charge electric cars, but we may not need to push the distance too much more.”
The group built on existing technology developed in 2007 at MIT for transmitting electricity wirelessly over a distance of a few feet to a stationary object. In the new work, the team transmitted electricity wirelessly to a moving LED lightbulb. That demonstration only involved a 1-milliwatt charge, whereas electric cars often require tens of kilowatts to operate. The team is now working on greatly increasing the amount of electricity that can be transferred, and tweaking the system to extend the transfer distance and improve efficiency.
Driving range
Wireless charging would address a major drawback of plug-in electric cars – their limited driving range. Tesla Motors expects its upcoming Model 3 to go more than 200 miles on a single charge and the Chevy Bolt, which is already on the market, has an advertised range of 238 miles. But electric vehicle batteries generally take several hours to fully recharge. A charge-as-you-drive system would overcome these limitations.
“In theory, one could drive for an unlimited amount of time without having to stop to recharge,” Fan explained. “The hope is that you’ll be able to charge your electric car while you’re driving down the highway. A coil in the bottom of the vehicle could receive electricity from a series of coils connected to an electric current embedded in the road.”
Some transportation experts envision an automated highway system where driverless electric vehicles are wirelessly charged by solar power or other renewable energy sources. The goal would be to reduce accidents and dramatically improve the flow of traffic while lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
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Wireless technology could also assist GPS navigation of driverless cars. GPS is accurate up to about 35 feet. For safety, autonomous cars need to be in the center of the lane where the transmitter coils would be embedded, providing very precise positioning for GPS satellites.
Magnetic resonance
Mid-range wireless power transfer, as developed at Stanford and other research universities, is based on magnetic resonance coupling. Just as major power plants generate alternating currents by rotating coils of wire between magnets, electricity moving through wires creates an oscillating magnetic field. This field also causes electrons in a nearby coil of wires to oscillate, thereby transferring power wirelessly. The transfer efficiency is further enhanced if both coils are tuned to the same magnetic resonance frequency and are positioned at the correct angle.
However, the continuous flow of electricity can only be maintained if some aspects of the circuits, such as the frequency, are manually tuned as the object moves. So, either the energy transmitting coil and receiver coil must remain nearly stationary, or the device must be tuned automatically and continuously – a significantly complex process.
To address the challenge, the Stanford team eliminated the radio-frequency source in the transmitter and replaced it with a commercially available voltage amplifier and feedback resistor. This system automatically figures out the right frequency for different distances without the need for human interference.
“Adding the amplifier allows power to be very efficiently transferred across most of the three-foot range and despite the changing orientation of the receiving coil,” said graduate student Sid Assawaworrarit, the study’s lead author. “This eliminates the need for automatic and continuous tuning of any aspect of the circuits.”
Assawaworrarit tested the approach by placing an LED bulb on the receiving coil. In a conventional setup without active tuning, LED brightness would diminish with distance. In the new setup, the brightness remained constant as the receiver moved away from the source by a distance of about three feet. Fan’s team recently filed a patent application for the latest advance.
The group used an off-the-shelf, general-purpose amplifier with a relatively low efficiency of about 10 percent. They say custom-made amplifiers can improve that efficiency to more than 90 percent.
“We can rethink how to deliver electricity not only to our cars, but to smaller devices on or in our bodies,” Fan said. “For anything that could benefit from dynamic, wireless charging, this is potentially very important.”
More information:
Sid Assawaworrarit et al. Robust wireless power transfer using a nonlinear parity?time-symmetric circuit, Nature (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature22404
All three iPhones expected to launch later this year will have wireless charging, according to a new forecast by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
Apple is expected to release three new iPhones next fall — one premium model with a better screen using “OLED” technology, and two more iterative improvements to the current iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
All three will have glass casing and wireless charging, according to Kuo’s note seen by Business Insider.
Apple may be concerned that the new iPhones may overheat more than older phones, according to the research. Glass casing and wireless charging are “unfavorable to thermal system operation,” says Kuo.
From the note:
Adoption of glass casing & wireless charging unfavorable to thermal system operation for three new 2017F iPhone models; bigger impact on OLED model. The thermal system becomes less efficient with glass casing, as compared to metal casing used previously. Furthermore, wireless charging increases handset temperature. While we don’t expect general users to notice any difference, lamination of an additional graphite sheet is needed for better thermal control and, thus, steady operation; this is because FPCB is replaced with film, which is more sensitive to temperature change of the 3D touch sensor in OLED iPhone.
Kuo notes that the new, premium phone will have more overheating issues than the other two. Apple might have to add an insulating graphite sheet to prevent it from malfunctioning. That sheet, and other tech changes, could raise the price that Apple pays for the 3D Touch module for the new OLED iPhone as much as 50%.
The research note distributed to clients focuses on some of the parts that Apple buys from suppliers to make its screens and features like 3D touch work.
“We believe OLED iPhone will provide a better 3D touch user experience on the back of the new design,” Kuo writes. Because of this, Kuo advises clients to expect shares of Apple suppliers General Interface Solution and TPK Holding Company to outperform.
The cost of cutting edge parts may be one reason why it’s rumored that the premium OLED iPhone could cost over $1000, according to a recent report.
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