Author Topic: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger  (Read 2966 times)

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Offline TrickyNekroTopic starter

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Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« on: May 31, 2018, 02:05:05 am »
Hey, you know they are getting desperate when they try ultrasound charging, but IR? That´s a new one!



Should I say... get them tiger?  :P

Generally there is a push for wireless charging which I do find very annoying, I understand it for my toothbrush yes, as it much be water tight, but for phones?
Meh... no... simply no... why? Just make better connectors, or make some high current docks or something.
There is no much misinformation out there it´s getting dangerous for the consumer and there are reviewers out there that give false, or at least bad hopes to manufacturers.

But that´s my personal taste and opinion, love to hear yours!

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Offline CJay

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2018, 06:53:20 am »
Inductive wireless charging for phones and similar small devices, good idea, especially for people who have limited dexterity, I know quite a few people who struggle badly with conventional phone charger cables to the point that wireless charging is a must have when buying a new phone.

As for IR charging, mildly interested from an 'oh that's cute' point of view but that's about it, I don't see how they can get enough energy to get much more than a trickle charge.

It will definitely be a boon to surveillance though, the rooms and spaces where these things are positioned must look like they're floodlit to anyone with a set of IR goggles :)
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2018, 06:22:40 pm »
Inductive wireless charging for phones and similar small devices, good idea, especially for people who have limited dexterity, I know quite a few people who struggle badly with conventional phone charger cables to the point that wireless charging is a must have when buying a new phone.
I'm thinking more along the lines of a lack of connectors to break.
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Offline CJay

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2018, 06:52:29 pm »
Inductive wireless charging for phones and similar small devices, good idea, especially for people who have limited dexterity, I know quite a few people who struggle badly with conventional phone charger cables to the point that wireless charging is a must have when buying a new phone.
I'm thinking more along the lines of a lack of connectors to break.

Indeed, that's one side effect of the limited dexterity.
 

Offline TrickyNekroTopic starter

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2018, 09:06:40 pm »
Inductive wireless charging for phones and similar small devices, good idea, especially for people who have limited dexterity, I know quite a few people who struggle badly with conventional phone charger cables to the point that wireless charging is a must have when buying a new phone.
I'm thinking more along the lines of a lack of connectors to break.

You can make magnetic connectors, like what Apple had a couple years back, that´s an easy one  8)
Gold platting can make them corrosion resistant, they can be made easy to clean and magnets self-latch so no worries there.

With inductive charging your losses can be high enough, especially when you are end charge, plus to actually use the phone you move the phone,
away from the charger, that stops the charger from supplying power to your phone, consequently start draining the battery so this could lead to more
charging cycles, which in the end is going to kill your battery faster. Cause you can imagine just that, you leave the phone charging, middle of the charge
someone calls you, you pick it up, stop the charging, speak for 5 mins, drain the battery according to your reception in the area, put it back on the charger
and you just induced a new charging cycle. That wouldn´t happen with a cable most of the times, you just pick the phone, answer, talk, close the call
all when your charger is still plugged in.
I would assume here that most of the phones ( I know it from mine ), use a load share charging system, so when you plug in the charger, the charger is
providing power to the phone and the rest of the current it can deliver goes to charging, and if the load is that heavy (or the charger that bad for that matter)
all the current of the charger is going to the phone while your battery is also being drained.
And since most of the batteries in the phones, nowadays, are build into the phone and can not be user replaced, that only leads me to believe that the OEMs
are willing to make the phones more and more of a disposable good. It´s one thing making the phone break easily when you drop it, it´s another when you
intentionally try to reduce its lifetime.
See fast charging for example, LiPos are happy with 1C charging, most battery manufacturers say that it´s ok to do more than 1C charging but you are limiting
the life of the product and next thing you know is fast charging. Would the batteries be user replaceable, I wouldn´t consider to nag about it, but most are not.
Plus for all the fast charging products that exceed 1C charging there should have been a warning, If you use fast charging you are considerably limiting the
life expectancy of your battery, do you want fast charging or not? But.... there is non.... maybe in the fine print, but nobody reads that before it´s too late.

So yeah, I do kinda think wireless charging is a gimmick, and not only from the efficiency point of view.
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Offline BrianHG

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2018, 10:34:58 pm »
Laser beamed IR does sent power to solar cells exactly as advertised.  What they are not saying is that to get 1 watt out at the other side, you need a good 5-10 watts of optical power landing directly on the solar cell and the power efficiency of the laser to convert DC current into watts isn't also that accurate as well as aiming the beam directly on target, not to mention that they split the beam to multiple targets.  And you need un-obstructed line of sight for only 1 watt of charging power, on phones today which are all display screen.

My whole point about all this tech is that Lithium-Nitrogen batteries are coming soon doubling the current battery size/mah capacity.  Unless you don't sleep at all, many handheld devices will no longer need to be charged from day to day.  A decade from now when Lithium Oxygen becomes available with over 3x the current capacity, not to mention the portable electronics drawing less current as well as more space for the battery as what final little streamlining there is which can be made, there will be no need to continuously charge our devices as we use them during the day.

This will be a temporary product seeing a limited use at best unless that solar cell can be hidden inside the LCD screen of a phone for near free, available on all phones being sold, it will be a fancy luxury product.
 

Offline JohnnyMalaria

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #6 on: June 01, 2018, 01:37:13 am »
I found the stormtrooper's "bulge" rather distracting. Maybe that's where the power is really coming from...
 

Offline TrickyNekroTopic starter

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Re: Gimmicky as hell remote IR charger
« Reply #7 on: June 01, 2018, 03:43:46 pm »
Laser beamed IR does sent power to solar cells exactly as advertised.  What they are not saying is that to get 1 watt out at the other side, you need a good 5-10 watts of optical power landing directly on the solar cell and the power efficiency of the laser to convert DC current into watts isn't also that accurate as well as aiming the beam directly on target, not to mention that they split the beam to multiple targets.  And you need un-obstructed line of sight for only 1 watt of charging power, on phones today which are all display screen.

1 Watt or even 3 Watts for the bigger model at 5V are 200mA and 600mA respectively, a modern phone is never going to charge at this rate unless you power it down,
or have absolutely no app running on the background with no wifi or data connection open. So when they say it will charge a phone that´s top grade bs!
Plus all the power you will be wasting for the transmission that´s totally another thing.

I also highly doubt that it´s a laser (or am I missing something), It´s probably a LED array through a planoconcave gallium arsenide lens for beam forming and steering.
A tight beam such as one from a laser is no good news for a solar panel, even small shadows reduce a lot the performance of the panel, so best bet is LED array.

Also I didn´t say that this is a fake product but a gimmick. There is a big difference between a gimmick and a fake  >:D
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