Author Topic: The uBeam FAQ  (Read 641794 times)

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Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #325 on: March 28, 2016, 03:08:10 am »
Ah, see I don't know too terribly much about powering electronics (I'm mainly an antenna engineer). I just assumed that if energy in > energy out, then charging (even trickle charging) was theoretically possible, but it now occurs to me that it's probably more complicated than that so I'll take your word for it. Oh look, I admitted I was probably wrong, something Meredith Perry is incapable of doing.

Well it is theoretically and also practically possible, but only if you design your phone with charging circuitry with that requirement in mind from the start.
The problem is most (all?) phone are not designed that way, they expect a certain minimum power requirement. Not uncommon to see warning against this, like "5V 500mA" charger minimum (as that is the regular USB standard)
Anything less than that and charging operation is usually not guaranteed or even possible. Good products (like some USB charging cameras for example) will detect this and not charge at all.
 

Offline amspire

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #326 on: March 28, 2016, 04:34:36 am »
As well as the urgently needed low speed ultrasonic data transfer capability, there is another positive claim uBeam can add to this product. Apparently the lethal 20kHz sound level for mice is 144dB  for 10s to 3min through overheating in their body. Probably higher frequencies will have the same effect. Just no end to the benefits!

But we should make allowances for the uBeam developers. According to a study by L. Markiewicz in 1978:
Quote
Workers exposed to noise emitted by ultrasound devices suffered from increased neural excitability, irritation, memory problems and difficulties with concentration and learning
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #327 on: March 30, 2016, 08:41:43 am »
Serious research in a paper by The Royalty Society that weighs in on the safety debate and mentions uBeam specifically which is very telling:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/472/2185/20150624
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #328 on: March 30, 2016, 08:50:25 am »
uBeam Faceook post:

The joke hasn't ended yet, they are expanding!

Quote
uBeam has officially expanded! Our Silicon Valley office opens April 4th, and we're tripling the size of the team over the next 9 months. Hiring electrical engineers, transducer design engineers, ultrasonic physicists, mechanical engineers, and vision engineers.

So after all these years of development and 10's of millions of dollars spent, why do they still need transducer design engineers?
Maybe they couldn't hire people last time? Or they have left maybe?
And "vision engineers" tells you a lot. I recon that means their positional system has failed so they now have to incorporate leading edge image tracking technology in order for the beam forming array to follow the phone.
It's folly down a rabbit hole  :palm:

And why open another office in silicon valley. That tells me the haven't been able to hire good people, and they probably think it's the location in Santa Monica that's the problem, when it's really that good engineers can smell a dead project a mile away.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2016, 09:13:10 am by EEVblog »
 

Offline rx8pilot

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #329 on: March 30, 2016, 11:00:11 pm »
I should see if they will hire me. The pay is probably rather good and I never have to worry if my designs work at all. Take the money and run!  :-DD

Factory400 - the worlds smallest factory. https://www.youtube.com/c/Factory400
 

Offline amspire

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #330 on: March 30, 2016, 11:25:55 pm »
I should see if they will hire me. The pay is probably rather good and I never have to worry if my designs work at all. Take the money and run!  :-DD

You will have wear industrial grade noise protectors all day for safety. Not sure what will be more dangerous though - the ultrasonic beams or the verbal noise.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #331 on: March 30, 2016, 11:42:48 pm »
You gotta wonder if the people at uBeam actually use prototypes to charge their own phones?
 

Offline amspire

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #332 on: March 30, 2016, 11:57:43 pm »
You gotta wonder if the people at uBeam actually use prototypes to charge their own phones?
If someone could film the whole thing inside their labs, this would be a fabulous reality TV show. Imaging the design team meetings, and the look on peoples faces when they measure the power transfer. People trying to pretend that the great big heavy box they attach to the phone is cool.

Edit: Sorry for the mistake - I accidentally said "reality TV show"
« Last Edit: March 31, 2016, 12:01:16 am by amspire »
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #333 on: March 31, 2016, 12:05:03 am »
Edit: Sorry for the mistake - I accidentally said "reality TV show"

Unfortunately it is reality that people are delusional enough to still work on this.
 

Offline rx8pilot

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #334 on: March 31, 2016, 12:24:48 am »
It seems so much harder to make real things. This trend toward making a lot of money by simply saying you have a revolutionary idea is awesome. I could fiddle around, get a sweet office, a ton of cool pieces of test gear.  But the real win is that I don't have to work at delivering which is what consumes almost all of my time running a legitimate business. Every time someone gives me money, they expect a product in return and that is a serious hassle.

I have a new product called the cBeam. This revolutionary gadget is a cerebral implant that beams all of your thoughts directly to the cloud where it is stored securely. All of your thoughts are muxed into a single serial data stream so that you will never need to think on your own ever again. Our proprietary analysis algorithm can take all those thoughts and tell you what you are thinking any time you think about thinking. Of course many neurologists said this was totally impossible and futurists have claimed it will be a social disaster. I disagree and with my extensive experience in machining parts and most recently reading about electronics on the internet we can do this if we only have a few deep pocketed investors that want to get in on the ground floor of an amazing opportunity. Seriously - this is serious shit. Send your money now so we can get started (partying) right away.
Factory400 - the worlds smallest factory. https://www.youtube.com/c/Factory400
 

Offline amspire

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #335 on: March 31, 2016, 12:56:47 am »
Unfortunately it is reality that people are delusional enough to still work on this.
If they are smart, they will be using this money to develop some product or technology that can be marketed - such as making new ultrasonic transducers that are not currently available, an ultrasonic tracking technology, a power transfer ability for hostile environments. Perhaps transferring power to instrumentation on a very noisy HV line right next to a 500KV DC converter. With the amount of money they have, they should be able to get some product out of it. Being smart and being ethical though are two different issues.

With all the money they have, it does mean they can setup a lab with (hopefully) smart people and have a budget to pay for real development work. The truth is we do not know what they actually are working on at all and so I cannot say whether this is delusional or cynical.

A company like Acorn Computers in the UK was never going to be competitive long term in the PC market, but along the way, they did develop the ARM cpu core that is now dominant. Acorn did have real working products of course.

If uBeam are dumb, they will be doing a desperate uBeam or bust strategy. If they are smart, uBeam will probably die, but another company will appear with no debts, and with a marketable technology that is nothing to do with the uBeam concept.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2016, 01:01:39 am by amspire »
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #336 on: March 31, 2016, 05:12:43 am »
If uBeam are dumb, they will be doing a desperate uBeam or bust strategy.

It's not about being dumb or not. Meredith has just spent years dissing the geeks, she HAS to prove that she's RIGHT.
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #337 on: March 31, 2016, 05:14:04 pm »
You gotta wonder if the people at uBeam actually use prototypes to charge their own phones?

I am sure they do, but they can't hear you anymore.
 

Offline LabSpokane

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #338 on: March 31, 2016, 05:24:44 pm »
uBeam Faceook post:

The joke hasn't ended yet, they are expanding!

Quote
uBeam has officially expanded! Our Silicon Valley office opens April 4th, and we're tripling the size of the team over the next 9 months. Hiring electrical engineers, transducer design engineers, ultrasonic physicists, mechanical engineers, and vision engineers.

So after all these years of development and 10's of millions of dollars spent, why do they still need transducer design engineers?
Maybe they couldn't hire people last time? Or they have left maybe?
And "vision engineers" tells you a lot. I recon that means their positional system has failed so they now have to incorporate leading edge image tracking technology in order for the beam forming array to follow the phone.
It's folly down a rabbit hole  :palm:

And why open another office in silicon valley. That tells me the haven't been able to hire good people, and they probably think it's the location in Santa Monica that's the problem, when it's really that good engineers can smell a dead project a mile away.

Tripling the staff when all the staff has quit is not an impressive goal.
 

Offline jancumps

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #339 on: April 03, 2016, 03:37:50 pm »
 The company will win the Darwin award though, because anyone who works there will have eggs and egss destroyed by the exposure to the sound waves.
The problem will solve itself. Believers will go as per the dodo.
 

Offline Danseur

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #340 on: April 21, 2016, 12:47:22 am »
More advocacy and lazy "journalism" on uBeam

http://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/mark-cuban-backed-ubeam-prove-doubters-wrong.html
"Meredith Perry's uBeam raised $25 million for its technology, but the startup still faces a very uphill battle."

Uphill battle?  Does that have anything to do with the fact that they can't produce a working prototype and that they keep backtracking on capability like operating through clothing?
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #341 on: April 21, 2016, 12:49:23 am »
More advocacy and lazy "journalism" on uBeam
http://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/mark-cuban-backed-ubeam-prove-doubters-wrong.html
"Meredith Perry's uBeam raised $25 million for its technology, but the startup still faces a very uphill battle."
Uphill battle?  Does that have anything to do with the fact that they can't produce a working prototype and that they keep backtracking on capability like operating through clothing?

Is there any date on that article?
 

Offline amspire

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #342 on: April 21, 2016, 01:05:41 am »
The article would have to be written just after the 19th April 2016 - that was when Meridith Perry appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Apparently, the talk was about how we would soon be living in a "World without wires" all thanks to uBeam.

https://tribecafilm.com/festival/imagination
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #343 on: April 21, 2016, 02:08:51 am »
The article would have to be written just after the 19th April 2016 - that was when Meridith Perry appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Apparently, the talk was about how we would soon be living in a "World without wires" all thanks to uBeam.
https://tribecafilm.com/festival/imagination

Sharing the same stage as Sir Richard Branson  :palm:
Why won't this turd of an idea die? Surely it doesn't have much run left. But Perry will still be rolled out as a master innovator until the moment the whole thing finally goes bust.
 

Offline Delta

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #344 on: April 21, 2016, 11:34:12 am »
The article would have to be written just after the 19th April 2016 - that was when Meridith Perry appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Apparently, the talk was about how we would soon be living in a "World without wires" all thanks to uBeam.
https://tribecafilm.com/festival/imagination

Sharing the same stage as Sir Richard Branson  :palm:
Why won't this turd of an idea die? Surely it doesn't have much run left. But Perry will still be rolled out as a master innovator until the moment the whole thing finally goes bust.

...and even then it won't have been her fault, she'll be paraded as a hero.  It won't be the laws of physics that defeat her, it will be the nasty male chauvinist misogynistic capitalist corporatist racist etcist etcist conspiracy that killed the uBeam.
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #345 on: April 21, 2016, 01:39:19 pm »
To be fair I don't think anyone's saying the concept's blowing away any laws of physics, it's that any implementations will be impractical, and are several orders of magnitude away from being a realistic and widely adopted wireless charging solution for cellphones.

Any "solution" will be hugely innefficient, difficult and expensive to install supporting infrastructure, hugely underdeliver on performance, and has significant safety and regulatory concerns.

Oh, and still nothing's been demonstrated beyond a 1970's remote control transducer moving a meter needle. >$20m for that. No wonder the current "investors" are bigging up this turkey, they want to exit with minimum losses.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #346 on: April 21, 2016, 02:47:57 pm »
To be fair I don't think anyone's saying the concept's blowing away any laws of physics, it's that any implementations will be impractical, and are several orders of magnitude away from being a realistic and widely adopted wireless charging solution for cellphones.
Any "solution" will be hugely innefficient, difficult and expensive to install supporting infrastructure, hugely underdeliver on performance, and has significant safety and regulatory concerns.

Yes, precisely this.
Anyone who claims this is against the laws of physics is wrong, it works. It's just massively impractical, and that's the mistake Perry has made and continues to make. She thinks that just because the laws of physics aren't being broken, and that it works on a small scale, means that it must work and be practical on a large scale. All it needs is money, absolute belief in the idea, and someone with the plucky tenacity to fight all those engineers who laugh at the idea while waving their stupid back-of-the-envelope practicality calculations.
She wrong, massively wrong, biblically wrong. But sadly she'll never understand that, she is too far down the rabbit hole.

Quote
Oh, and still nothing's been demonstrated beyond a 1970's remote control transducer moving a meter needle. >$20m for that. No wonder the current "investors" are bigging up this turkey, they want to exit with minimum losses.

The money seems to be still flowing?
 

Offline Howardlong

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #347 on: April 21, 2016, 03:11:52 pm »
I wonder how many failures makes you a "serial entrepreneur"? Until recently, I considered the decription to be one to aspire to, now I'm not so sure, it seems everyone and their dog is one.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #348 on: April 23, 2016, 11:34:12 pm »
So apparently Ms Perry's dad is a semi famous plastic surgeon who talked up focused ultrasound technology:
http://www.doctoroz.com/blog/arthur-perry-md/fat-removal-without-surgery
Note the date, it seems to be before Meredith came up with her zillion dollar idea of using ultrasound.
 

Offline HackedFridgeMagnet

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Re: The uBeam FAQ
« Reply #349 on: April 24, 2016, 08:34:19 am »
Good find. 

Looks like the need to bullshit people is hereditary.
And that she got part of the idea from Dad.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2016, 08:35:56 am by HackedFridgeMagnet »
 


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