Motherbox Indiegogo

[abdullahseba]

Hi
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it before, but I was looking at this wireless charger called "MotherBox"! on Indiegogo that claims to charge phones 2W at 20 inches.
Is this possible or is it  ......
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-motherbox-true-wireless-charging-power-phone--2#/
 

[Ice-Tea]

BS.

Others will chime in with math, but: BS.

What has me doubting is the "Arrow certified" thingie. Arrow is supposed to know better, so either they have just pissed away their credibility or..

[mikeselectricstuff]

Inverse square law dudes....

Doubt 20" is doable with an antenna that size. 10" maybe, but wasting a lot of power

[Ice-Tea]

Inverse square law dudes....

Doubt 20" is doable with an antenna that size. 10" maybe, but wasting a lot of power

And the receiver is stuck to... whatever. Plastic. Aluminium. Apparently doesn't seem to matter 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Inverse square law dudes....

Doubt 20" is doable with an antenna that size. 10" maybe, but wasting a lot of power

And the receiver is stuck to... whatever. Plastic. Aluminium. Apparently doesn't seem to matter 

Yes.... the Qui  chargers use a ferrite backing to isolate it from the metal backing, at the expense of only workng in very close proximity.
 The metal in a phone is going to damp the crap out of the receiver coil

[ZeTeX]

Unless there will be huge discovery about a way to transmit fairly large amount of power efficiently over long distances, any wireless charger on the market is garbage.

[Halcyon]

I don't know the math behind inverse square law etc... other than Watts = Amps x Volts... are we assuming that the 2 watts is at 5 volts? That's 400mA... is that really so unbelievable? It doesn't seem like an awful lot considering even the current wireless chargers will pass through some materials, not to mention quite a bit of thin air. I can see that the difference between the amount of energy vs. the amount actually radiated will be great... the point of these things is not to conserve energy, but to avoid plugging things in (be it laziness or otherwise).

I actually don't mind the idea of wireless charging. Even though I have a relatively high-end Android handset, those tiny little micro USB connectors won't last forever with repeated connections/disconnections (through daily charging and data connections). I already find some USB cables don't make proper contact even though my phone and battery still have another good few years left in them.

[abdullahseba]

Hmm.... Sounds good Dave should do another debunk.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I don't know the math behind inverse square law etc...

Double the distance = 25% of the magnetic field.
Current solutions work over a few mm.

[ChrisGreece52]

Hey guys, I just seen this product.
The Motherbox claims  can charge wirelessly your phone using a special case from serveral feet away... is it just me or you smell the bullshit too ?
Verified by Arrow Electronics!
Youtube Video :
Indiegogo Campain : https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-motherbox-true-wireless-charging-power-phone--2

[EEVblog]

Oh FFS, just use a Qi charging pad 

[EEVblog]

CEO is an MBA and they have an "Advisory board", tells you all you need to know.
And I haven't even watched the video yet, should I waste my brain cells?



Translation:
"We have been working on this for 3 years solid but are still dicking around with getting the thing working well. But don't worry, once we have your money we'll magically get it right."

[ChrisGreece52]

This is something else it claims crazy stuff like 2 watts at 20 inches and for us with normal measurement units that is 50.8 cm

[ChrisGreece52]

Also thanks for you time Dave! And i love your answers to these topics.

[EEVblog]

I couldn't hep myself:


Too harsh?

I know they have worked on this for years, not taking that away from them, but how many times have we seen this now?

[EEVblog]

LOL
They should have just got Jesus himself

[EEVblog]

That's why they need the app, so it can "shape" the magnetic field.

[cat87]

So, they're using Wank Yank technology. That figures.

So, looks like the CEO is a self-taught engineer.... That might be admirable for any man, to be self-taught and become the CEO of something.. too bad he skipped a few chapters on electromagnetic propagation and RF stuff.

[nctnico]

I don't know the math behind inverse square law etc...

Double the distance = 25% of the magnetic field.
Current solutions work over a few mm.

It depends on how you setup the system. Getting 50W over a few centimeters with around 70 to 80% efficiency is doable with commercially available coils (been there, done that and I didn't push the limits).

[trophosphere]

BS.

Others will chime in with math, but: BS.

What has me doubting is the "Arrow certified" thingie. Arrow is supposed to know better, so either they have just pissed away their credibility or..

The Arrow certified thing is more to make sure that you have an established plan of component procurement for manufacturing. They are looking more towards convincing you to purchase your components from them rather than looking at feasibility. There is some arbitrary common sense that is exercised but it is limited to just a superficial first pass evaluation.

[abdullahseba]

Wow looks like I got here first 
Will you debunk in a video dave?

[chickenHeadKnob]

From the comments section of the greasy haired jesus spokesman video dave pointed to above:


Curtis Carlson   Curtis Carlson21 hours ago
It would be interesting if the Motherbox Mini could be charged by the larger Motherbox.

       Yank Technologies, Inc.       Yank Technologies, Inc.20 hours ago
       Great point! This is something we actually plan on working on.

               script dil               script dil7 hours ago
               with a trend like that you will finally build a planet size Motherbox to charge other mega Motherboxes. Terrifying and cool thought as same time

 
 

[rfeecs]

I don't see that it is obviously bullshit.  They are claiming 2W at 20 inches, 8W at 10 inches.  Looks like inverse square.



Clearly not at all efficient.  They aren't claiming that it is efficient.

It should be possible to steer the near field with a phased array of coils.  Doesn't seem totally crazy.

But still, given their team and their funding target, I think they have zero chance of success.

[f4eru]

Yes.... the Qui  chargers use a ferrite backing to isolate it from the metal backing, at the expense of only workng in very close proximity.
 The metal in a phone is going to damp the crap out of the receiver coil

Yep. Especially if they use a sharp resonance at the receiver coil.
Perhaps it's a high Q only at the transmitter ?

[Danseur]

What it looks like they built was a 3-axis induction coil hitting the X, Y, and Z axis. Then they plan to only activate the coil that is most aligned with the receiver coils.  This assumes you have a receiver that is aligned with either X, Y, or Z but what happens if your receiver is at some skewed in-between angle where it's half way between X and Y axis?  The efficiency would probably drop even lower.  If you didn't care about efficiency and the resulting bulk or care about using a 40 Ah battery to deliver 4 Ah at 10 inches, I guess this can theoretically "work" if they can successfully implement everything they want to do.

The other key problem is that despite their ad complaining about the bulky conventional induction charging pads, they come out with an even bigger device that's probably 10X the volume.  Now they could argue that they could fill that space with batteries, but do people want to carry a massive heavy ball just to charge their phone one time?  Or do they just want to get a tiny low cost contact-based battery pack and deliver the same energy with a simple 20 inch cable that also works in any orientation?

Witricity is probably the closest to getting a resonant induction solution onto the market and even they're having a hard time gaining traction.  Witricity can probably deliver much better efficiency with more precise coupling.

[Ice-Tea]

Just saw something comparable passing by from... Disney!

I know they're really good in the fairy tale department, but still... Disney!

[sambran]

Just saw this on Indigogo (good thing I searched before starting my own thread)

Anyone know if this can be used for wireless cooking with an inductive frying pan?

[CCitizenTO]

LOL... That field thing is kinda funny.

That said looking at the video where they make a 3D charge it makes me wonder why they don't just use high gain directional antennas assuming it works similar to WIFI if you have sufficient gain on a directional antenna you can easily double the distance of transmission and reception but even that wouldn't get you out to like half a meter (or half a yard) distance with an initial distance of like 2mm... and even then it would have lots of gaps in the 3D plane.

[grg183]

Sorry for reviving an old thread. I've been following this campaign regularly, not because I am interested in the product - I think it is an incredibly useless, impractical and inefficient solution in search of a problem - but because this is a prime example of the bad approach that so-called entrepreneurs and startups are taking to product design nowadays.

Firstly, to my knowledge, there is no proper video showing the device working, the only videos they released are like 10s long. If they are this far and this late in the development why not release a simple video showing the device in everyday use?

Secondly, well over a year ago they announced that they were only a couple of weeks away from shipping. Then they said something which sounded like "oh we just need to send the prototype for FCC testing, we'll postpone shipment by a couple of weeks just in case, no worries". Any electrical engineer who has worked on a real product development should know well enough that even the simplest design can be a big headache to pass through FCC/EMC testing! To assume that a product that is not only an intentional radiator but that needs to radiate the claimed 10W (actually 10W is the supposed received power so transmit power is, I guess, more) of power would pass certifications in a couple of weeks is totally insane!! This says a lot about the 4 'expert' masters degree holding engineers listed in the campaign, although to be fair, they might have warned the CEO, whom, with his 'self-taught' engineering skills decided it must not be that hard. This is the so-called 'think outside the box' attitude of many 'entrepreneurs': "experts must be wrong because they are locked into what they were thought, but I as a self-thaught guy am free to explore innovative ideas". Even to just book a timeslot at a test lab often takes several weeks, and rarely a product passes on first attempt (unless it is a really basic or familiar design), it should be obvious to anyone with basic engineering knowledge that a product like this is bound to have a hard time passing the testing.

The saga continues as they say that "hey we passed part 15, so no worries we just need to finish part 18 and some paper-work". Part 15 is just the stuff that any product needs to pass, it has mostly nothing to do with the wireless power transmission which is the main FCC challenge in this product. With a good power supply, good PCB design some, filtering and maybe shielding part 15 is not a big deal. Part 18 is the deal-breaker in this product!!

I don't think this is a scam as such but a prime example of zero experience in designing a product for manufacturing. It is sad that campaigns like this put bad light onto crowd-funding platforms.

[Ice-Tea]

It's cute that you think they have an actual product to test 

[grg183]

It's cute that you think they have an actual product to test 

Well, the possibility they don't have a working product is highly probable as well, which is why I questioned the lack of video evidence. It depends on the definition of "working product" as well if it charges at 10mm distance taking 5 hours and wasting 95% of the power input, it is technically an actual working product I never believed the ranges they claimed but technically it is possible to build such a product, it will just be very inefficient and most likely to stay within FCC limits it would have an unusable range.

I believe they do have a "working prototype", whether it draws 1kW to charge a phone 10mm away at 1W or is more usable though is another story. But I'm more struck by their seemingly naive approach to something so obvious as FCC testing, assuming as you rightly say, that they do have something to test.

[abdullahseba]

Gets an email almost 3 years later.  Had forgotten all about the charger.

[EEVblog]

I couldn't hep myself:


Too harsh?

I know they have worked on this for years, not taking that away from them, but how many times have we seen this now?

Was my timeline annotation bang on? 

[grg183]

Yep, absolutely spot on Dave

Actually, just today they claimed to have practically passed the testing, and that they will be soon proceeding with delivery (or maybe they have another excuse in the pipeline lol). It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

[abdullahseba]

I couldn't hep myself:


Too harsh?

I know they have worked on this for years, not taking that away from them, but how many times have we seen this now?

Was my timeline annotation bang on? 

Spot on .

[EEVblog]

Yep, absolutely spot on Dave

Actually, just today they claimed to have practically passed the testing, and that they will be soon proceeding with delivery (or maybe they have another excuse in the pipeline lol). It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Is there still a single real operational video with a power meter?