Author Topic: The uBeam FAQ  (Read 639357 times)

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Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #525 on: December 04, 2016, 01:57:28 am »
"Phased array of 26,000 transducers"
I shit you not..... :-DD
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Offline StillTrying

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #526 on: December 04, 2016, 02:09:59 am »
What a performance, I can't decide whether it's funny or painful.
Only 4 views!
.  That took much longer than I thought it would.
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Offline CaptCrash

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #528 on: December 04, 2016, 02:41:25 am »
In answer to the question relating to, how are you going to get your power receiver into all of these devices that need to receive wireless power.

The answer from Meredith was basically make a module, then an example for phones was given

1. initially make a case for phones to receive power
2. Have the receiver inbuilt into phone

However, In step 2 won't having a case on the phone stop it receiving power?
So both step 1 and step 2 require custom cases of some sort, either with uBeam receiver in the case, or in step 2 somehow the case being transparent to the ultrasonic signal.

Seems like a wonderful technology, so cost effective and practical to implement.   :-DD

In talking about other devices she infers that they would provide a number of receivers for powering things like IoT, TV, stick on lightbulbs etc.  (she talks about powering various item types during the presentation, then gives the example of providing modules when asked how this could be done).
So wireless power to 110V/240V as a plug in module (not a custom module for the device, but a generic IEC or barrel jack/USB)?  Seems way practical to take wireless power -> 110v/240v AC -> device like a TV sitting in the middle of the room with no wires attached.  Really?
« Last Edit: December 04, 2016, 02:44:55 am by CaptCrash »
 

Offline LabSpokane

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #529 on: December 04, 2016, 05:00:51 am »
Her last (I don't mean latest  :) ) appearance didn't seem to get much publicity.

http://sites.ieee.org/ttm/speakers/#perry

https://www.facebook.com/IEEETTM/posts/1199645150108784:0

I think it's  G a m e  O v e r.

And this is yet another reason why IEEE continues to shed credibility as an organization.   :--  It was bad enough when IEEE hosted SolarRoadways. 
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #530 on: December 04, 2016, 06:15:23 am »
https://origin.ieeetv.ieee.org/conference-highlights/women-making-the-future-panelist-meredith-perry-2016-technology-time-machine?

I can't do it, I just can't. The TED talk was about the same length and by half way I was seriously contemplating shoving a hot soldering iron in my ear.
 

Offline The_Next_Theranos

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #531 on: December 04, 2016, 06:41:37 am »
Who is she going to blame I wonder?
I recognise the rhetorical nature of your question, but nevertheless shall hazard a guess: It will be easy to blame the tech press. The logic will go something like:
  • We have not yet released any product.
  • Therefore, any criticism by the tech press is unfounded speculation, because they have not seen the final product.
  • The unfounded speculation is wrong, but it scares investors and prevents further investment.
  • Therefore, the tech press torpedoed the business, killed our investment, and prevented our product release, without giving us a chance to prove ourselves.
  • Therefore, the tech press is to blame. QED.

This may be augmented with cop-outs such as "we should have handled the press better" or "we'll still find a way to prove ourselves." And a few years down the road, there might even be a lame attempt to point to some other successful wireless charging product and say "their success validates our failure -- they're just copying us and we would have been successful if only the tech press hadn't torpedoed our business."
 

Offline The_Next_Theranos

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #532 on: December 04, 2016, 09:45:59 am »
https://origin.ieeetv.ieee.org/conference-highlights/women-making-the-future-panelist-meredith-perry-2016-technology-time-machine?

I can't do it, I just can't. The TED talk was about the same length and by half way I was seriously contemplating shoving a hot soldering iron in my ear.
Just getting around to watching it now. It's revealing that the very first thing out of her mouth is to make an excuse that her product won't ship. Not "thank you" to the host, not "pleased to be here", but "uh, about that shipping date..."

Speaking of hot soldering irons, why the **** does the smoke always flow directly into your face?
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #533 on: December 04, 2016, 10:12:52 am »

I can't do it, I just can't. The TED talk was about the same length and by half way I was seriously contemplating shoving a hot soldering iron in my ear.
Speaking of hot soldering irons, why the **** does the smoke always flow directly into your face?

Stop sticking it in your ear?
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #534 on: December 04, 2016, 10:04:58 pm »
214 views now, 200 of those are from here I suspect.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #535 on: December 04, 2016, 10:07:07 pm »
Just getting around to watching it now. It's revealing that the very first thing out of her mouth is to make an excuse that her product won't ship. Not "thank you" to the host, not "pleased to be here", but "uh, about that shipping date..."

But she said "we will have some very cool things to show you in 2016", we can't wait.
You know what would be really cool, a power meter on the transmitter, and a power meter on the receiver, and a 10 second video showing the numbers vs distance.
In the last demo she used a voltmeter and called it a power meter. Time for an update...
« Last Edit: December 04, 2016, 10:09:48 pm by EEVblog »
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #536 on: December 04, 2016, 10:10:22 pm »
214 views now, 200 of those are from here I suspect.
Actually I think it was 2 or 3 before I found it.
Well done the IEEE, way to do social media.
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #537 on: December 04, 2016, 10:17:46 pm »
214 views now, 200 of those are from here I suspect.
Actually I think it was 2 or 3 before I found it.
Well done the IEEE, way to do social media.

Big numbers for them.
This slick multi-part production got 17 views:
https://origin.ieeetv.ieee.org/ieeetv-specials/standards-wars-exploring-open-standards-part-5
Part 1 got 11 views:
https://origin.ieeetv.ieee.org/ieeetv-specials/standards-and-the-internet-exploring-open-standards-part-1?rf=series|4
 

Offline LabSpokane

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #538 on: December 04, 2016, 11:08:06 pm »
I couldn't make it "umm...uhh...umm...well....umm..." two minutes ....

Why are you so nervous chatting in front of a few EE's, Meredith? 
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #539 on: December 04, 2016, 11:41:44 pm »
Meredith: "Stick-on lightbulbs"

 :-DD

...at 0.0000000001% of the efficiency of today's light bulbs.

Plus: How about a 2500kW television set? Any takers?

 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #540 on: December 04, 2016, 11:52:08 pm »
I couldn't make it "umm...uhh...umm...well....umm..." two minutes ....

Why are you so nervous chatting in front of a few EE's, Meredith?
A very few - lots of empty seats there. Maybe she insisted the audience were vetted to only include people who didn't laugh when told who would be speaking.
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #541 on: December 04, 2016, 11:53:21 pm »
Why are you so nervous chatting in front of a few EE's, Meredith?

Embaressed about calling us all "inside the box" "jaded" thinkers with aspergers" ?
https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=2m19s

And "linear thinkers" with our "binary approach"
https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=13m10s

And we are still; waiting for her to give us the middle finger:
https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c?t=14m2s
« Last Edit: December 05, 2016, 12:03:32 am by EEVblog »
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #542 on: December 05, 2016, 07:48:43 pm »
Speaking of hot soldering irons, why the **** does the smoke always flow directly into your face?

Because your warm body creates an updraft of air currents and the smoke is drawn in to the lower pressure region between the iron and your body/face.

Heathen! Unbeliever! For your reasonable explanation and wanton disbelief in the laws of the great Murphy the curse of Murphy now lies upon you!  :)
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline Corporate666

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #543 on: December 06, 2016, 01:13:11 am »
I couldn't make it "umm...uhh...umm...well....umm..." two minutes ....

Why are you so nervous chatting in front of a few EE's, Meredith?

I noticed that... every other sound out of her mouth is ummm and uhhh and errr... painful to listen to.



Dave had a post above about the initial VC guy.  It was also painful to read and really highlights that some people just get lucky and really don't have much intelligence at all.  Or maybe the guy is a lot smarter and just a lot more unethical than I am presuming.  He says uBeam works but glosses over the singular huge issue - efficiency - by saying it would be impossible to refute every point.  Then says he will be the first investor in Perry's next business.  I would like to think he just doesn't want to believe his money is gone... but maybe they're actively looking for additional capital or to sell whatever is left so they can recoup as much of their $$ as possible, and they are slathering as much lipstick on this pig as possible.
It's not always the most popular person who gets the job done.
 

Offline LabSpokane

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #544 on: December 06, 2016, 02:09:59 am »
I couldn't make it "umm...uhh...umm...well....umm..." two minutes ....

Why are you so nervous chatting in front of a few EE's, Meredith?

I noticed that... every other sound out of her mouth is ummm and uhhh and errr... painful to listen to.



Dave had a post above about the initial VC guy.  It was also painful to read and really highlights that some people just get lucky and really don't have much intelligence at all.  Or maybe the guy is a lot smarter and just a lot more unethical than I am presuming.  He says uBeam works but glosses over the singular huge issue - efficiency - by saying it would be impossible to refute every point.  Then says he will be the first investor in Perry's next business.  I would like to think he just doesn't want to believe his money is gone... but maybe they're actively looking for additional capital or to sell whatever is left so they can recoup as much of their $$ as possible, and they are slathering as much lipstick on this pig as possible.

I interpret such statements from VCs as, "I am absolutely confident that I do not want to be sued by all those I fleeced in this donnybrook."
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #545 on: December 06, 2016, 02:14:40 am »
Or maybe the guy is a lot smarter and just a lot more unethical than I am presuming.  He says uBeam works but glosses over the singular huge issue - efficiency - by saying it would be impossible to refute every point. 

And that's the thing. There would not be a single competent engineer on this planet who says it can't actually work, and Perry keeps harping on about how us clueless engineers said it "wouldn't work". If she actually listened to the engineers and was able to comprehend it, what they are saying is that it can't work because it's not practical, it's not anywhere near efficient enough. And by not anywhere near efficient enough I mean by several orders of orders of magnitude.

This is why when engineers come up with concepts like this, they do back of the envelope order of magnitude calculations to see if it's potentially practical. uBeam never ever got close to passing that test, it should never have been funded, and the people who did so are idiots.

Quote
Then says he will be the first investor in Perry's next business.  I would like to think he just doesn't want to believe his money is gone...

He's got to say that, it's the only thing that can help him save face.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #546 on: December 06, 2016, 02:16:27 am »
I interpret such statements from VCs as, "I am absolutely confident that I do not want to be sued by all those I fleeced in this donnybrook."

Yep, because it wasn't his money, it was his investors money.
 

Offline djos

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #547 on: December 06, 2016, 03:10:50 am »
Holy crap, I just finished reading George's first few posts, amazing work!

The thing that jumped out at me was the similarity of uBeam to Theranos .... and we all know how that ended up!

Offline Corporate666

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #548 on: December 06, 2016, 03:20:27 am »
I interpret such statements from VCs as, "I am absolutely confident that I do not want to be sued by all those I fleeced in this donnybrook."

Yep, because it wasn't his money, it was his investors money.

It says he put a bunch of money in himself.

Even if what he says in that article/post is true and the tech VP guy never expressed his true level of concern over the feasibility of the product/technology, there must have been a point where he looks at all the people who have jumped ship and says "Ok, this thing is tanking".  And I think that keeping things going at this point and trying to put a positive spin to the public can only mean that they are trying to shop the rotting carcass of this company to whomever they can get some interest from in the hopes that they can recoup some of their investment.  Hence, all of these public-facing statements about "we know it works... we know we still have work to do... we know things were harder than we thought, but every product that was ever worth inventing took longer than expected, and I've never seen a more driven team than these folks" are really just fluff designed to blow smoke up the ass of the poor suckers unlucky enough to open their wallets and sink money into this pig of a company.

I would be genuinely curious what Perry does every day.  She seems to spent much of her time on Twitter and "evangelizing".  It doesn't look like the company actually has any engineers there anymore.  I wonder how many people really show up to their office on a daily basis and what those people do.  I think that if any people actually show up, they probably just mostly sit around and collect a paycheck and perhaps talk about what sort of press releases they can come up with or something.  They have to either be in on the ruse or just resigned to being warm bodies occupying chairs until their job search turns up something else.
It's not always the most popular person who gets the job done.
 

Offline LabSpokane

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #549 on: December 06, 2016, 04:02:45 am »
I interpret such statements from VCs as, "I am absolutely confident that I do not want to be sued by all those I fleeced in this donnybrook."

Yep, because it wasn't his money, it was his investors money.

It says he put a bunch of money in himself.

The question is *when* the money went in and in which subsequent investment round did the VC expect to get out?  The financial returns the early backers receive has effectively zero to do with the performance of the technology and everything to do with the early exit payouts received as part of the subsequent funding rounds.  Startups are the new Ponzi scheme, where early investors are the winners and 2nd through N round investors are the suckers. 

If he still has skin in the game, I'd bet that it's token, paper "skin" and that his true payout came long ago. 
« Last Edit: December 06, 2016, 06:06:48 am by LabSpokane »
 


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