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Freevolt: RF energy harvesting to power the Internet of Things
- dang 11y agoOther articles on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10308511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10306293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10306293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10304387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10304387
- Filligree 11y agoTo save you time: All of which are empty. This made no sense back then. It still makes no sense now. You can't harvest useful amounts of RF energy.
- te0006 11y agoWell for a suitably frugal definition of "useful", you can. See their whitepaper: http://getfreevolt.com/downloads/RF%20Energy%20Harvesting%20Whitepaper.pdf http://getfreevolt.com/downloads/RF%20Energy%20Harvesting%20... Any EE experts around, willing to validate their assessments?
- aaronsnoswell 11y agoWe asked Lord Drayson if there were any limits on the number of Freevolt harvesters in a given area, or if there was a critical number of harvesters that would then impact cellular or Wi-Fi signal reception. He said "no" in both cases. Both these answers are simply wrong - they are absorbing power from the RF spectrum. Of course there will be some impact.
- Filligree 11y agoWell~ In fact "no" is probably the right answer, unless you use enough of them to build a Faraday cage. That's because they pick up practically no power at all, though.
- bewo001 11y agoThis technique was already used in the 1930s by people living close to the powerful AM transmitters in Berlin and Hamburg to run electric lights. It was outlawed, though.