The uBeam FAQ

[LapTop006]

Can you run Linux in under a watt? Or do you need a wall charger for that bit?

Easily. A PocketBeagle can idle at about half a watt. Actual usage is more like 3W however.

Half a watt idle? You could go to the moon and back on that!

I guess I need to spend more time outside of my nanoamp world.

That's without significant effort towards power optimisation too. I'm sure there's more efficient systems out there, in fact I suspect once you exclude the screen backlight & wifi chip my laptop doesn't idle at much more than that.

[coppice]

Can you run Linux in under a watt? Or do you need a wall charger for that bit?

Easily. A PocketBeagle can idle at about half a watt. Actual usage is more like 3W however.

You can make Linux systems that idle at very low power levels. If they only need to conduct short bursts of activity, you can get them to run at quite a low average power level, and use capacitors to smooth out the energy demands from the supply. The problem in applications where the supply is weak is trying to get them to boot, because that requires quite a long sustained burst of activity. I haven't seen a system that can effectively spread out the boot process, to avoid high energy demands. It might not be that useful, anyway, if the boot process ends up taking an hour or more.

[jrs45]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-19/a-harvard-dropout-s-plan-to-fix-college-admissions-with-video-games

“It’s something we’ve discussed, how much less scrutiny we would face if we were men, how much more implicit trust you’d get. But there’s nothing you can do about it, and talking about it makes you sound kind of silly,” says Meredith Perry, founder of the wireless technology startup UBeam..."

It's remarkable that she makes this claim, given the amount of investor money she was able to raise without any evidence of a working technology whatsoever.  Seems that she had an abundance of "implicit trust".

[Cyberdragon]

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[Howardlong]

The lack of self awareness is stunning. Does she really think she'd have had the opportunity to spaff all those millions had she been one of the awkward male linear thinkers on the autism spectrum who she loves to berate? The value proposition had little to do with her yet to be invented invention, a bit to do with her being mouthy, and a lot to do with her ticking a few diversity boxes that the VCs were under pressure to deliver on.

[EEVblog]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-19/a-harvard-dropout-s-plan-to-fix-college-admissions-with-video-games

“It’s something we’ve discussed, how much less scrutiny we would face if we were men, how much more implicit trust you’d get. But there’s nothing you can do about it, and talking about it makes you sound kind of silly,” says Meredith Perry, founder of the wireless technology startup UBeam..."

It's remarkable that she makes this claim, given the amount of investor money she was able to raise without any evidence of a working technology whatsoever.  Seems that she had an abundance of "implicit trust".

Yes, she had a stunning amount of implicit trust because she was a fast talking young female blonde in tech, even Mark Cuban admitted as such in an article that being young blonde and female was a part of it. Her inability to realise why she got as far as she did and as much coverage as she did is stunning.

[StillTrying]

Someone trying to light a red LED with US. The 10A bridge rectifier is probably quite lossy at 40kHz.

https://twitter.com/Leeborg_/status/1108499165645029378

[EEVblog]

Someone trying to light a red LED with US. The 10A bridge rectifier is probably quite lossy at 40kHz.
https://twitter.com/Leeborg_/status/1108499165645029378

This idea has GOT to be worth at least $31M in VC funding, a TEDx talk, crazy media coverage, and surely is a Trillion dollar idea?
Mark Cuban might want to invest perhaps?

[Dubbie]

Mark Cuban might want to invest perhaps?

I think his money is all tied up in Merediths next big idea!

Whats that old saying? Fool me once.....?

[beduino]

The 10A bridge rectifier is probably quite lossy at 40kHz.

Probably bridge rectifier not needed since they could use instead additional LED connected in anti -parallel to protect each other against LED low reverse voltage if they worry about, like in attached image

I've sucessfully used many years ago magnetic transducer to convert background noisy environment sound energy into electricity, so nothing new

[EEVblog]

http://www.execelements.com/wednesday-words-of-wisdom-meredith-perry/

Sometimes “reinventing the wheel” is actually a great thing to do.

Funny how she did exactly that. Although she keeps claiming she invented this idea, ultrasonic wireless power transfer had been researched and used for decades. But she was the only one dumb... err... "out of the box thinking" enough to think you can charge a mobile phone with it at several meters, and power TV's and other stuff.

[PaulReynolds]

http://www.execelements.com/wednesday-words-of-wisdom-meredith-perry/

Sometimes “reinventing the wheel” is actually a great thing to do.

Funny how she did exactly that. Although she keeps claiming she invented this idea, ultrasonic wireless power transfer had been researched and used for decades. But she was the only one dumb... err... "out of the box thinking" enough to think you can charge a mobile phone with it at several meters, and power TV's and other stuff.

Still? Does anyone actually check histories before doing these quotes? From page 1 of this thread, reference 61, Charych patent "System and method for wireless electrical power transmission", filed 2003.

"A power transmission system using directional ultrasound for power transmission includes a transmitting device and a receiving device. The transmitting device has a set of ultrasound transducers forming an ultrasound transducer array, wherein the array is a set of spaced individual transducers placed in the X-Y plane disposed to generate an ultrasound beam in the Z direction."

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6798716

[The_Next_Theranos]

http://www.execelements.com/wednesday-words-of-wisdom-meredith-perry/

Sometimes “reinventing the wheel” is actually a great thing to do.

Not sure why that "Wednesday words of wisdom" site is recycling a 4-year old quote from 2015 and claiming it is news for March 2019.

Here's the original source of the quote from 2015.

http://meredithperry.tumblr.com/
archive.org version: http://web.archive.org/web/20160515233258/http://meredithperry.tumblr.com/

The "Wednesday words of wisdom" site claims they "asked some of our nearest and dearest friends and clients to share their secrets", but if that is really so, why is the purported answer the exact same one as was previously published in 2015, even including the quotation marks?

Most likely they're just recycling information scraped from the web and presenting it as news.

[StillTrying]

Get ready for your "wireless" uBeam blood test, maybe.
http://twitter.com/meredithperry/status/1111073889147224065

[PaulReynolds]

Get ready for your uBeam blood test, maybe.
http://twitter.com/meredithperry/status/1111073889147224065

The writers for Season 3 are really just phoning it in now...

[djos]

Get ready for your uBeam blood test, maybe.
http://twitter.com/meredithperry/status/1111073889147224065

I wonder if she's just bought some not quite working medical equipment from her mate Liz? 

[EEVblog]

Get ready for your "wireless" uBeam blood test, maybe.
http://twitter.com/meredithperry/status/1111073889147224065

Be afraid, be very afraid...

[EEVblog]

Hang on, my spidey sense tells me that The_Next_Theranos forum account may have been Perry all along, it all makes sense now... 

[EEVblog]

Someone just sent me a secret pic of Perry's new startup prototype! 

Recharge your phone and test for every known disease with just a thumb prick, it's a zillion dollar idea!

[rt]

Has anyone sent that pic to John Carreyrou yet?! (https://twitter.com/johncarreyrou?lang=en)  He might find it interesting! 

(I amn't on twitter)

rt

(unless you are just trolling Dave!)

[EEVblog]

(unless you are just trolling Dave!)

Me? Trolling? 

[Bud]

Someone just sent me a secret pic of Perry's new startup prototype! 

Recharge your phone and test for every known disease with just a thumb prick, it's a zillion dollar idea!

Meh, everyone knows the secret is in Not turning the phone ON.

[Fungus]

I was hoping she was trying to recharge phones using human blood.

[sdpkom]

Meanwhile in Energous ......

Looks like they are going for chapter 11 very soon.....

As of Dec/31 they had $20m of cash, and were burning $50m/year.
Since, they said they published a prospectus (the initial document for raising money on NASDAQ), anounced they raised $25m, canceled the prospectus, filed a different one, all without actually issuing a single new share to the public (according to the number of outstanding shares on their website)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1575793/000119312519059126/d714685d424b5.htm
https://ir.energous.com/quote

So they should now have money for maybe 4-8 weeks, the number of employees on Linkedin appears the same 73 as before, so the train is moving at the same pace.

The VP of regulatory affairs and operations disappeared from the website, and the VP of R&D assumed his responsibilities
https://energous.com/company/management-team/daniel-lawless/
Michael Leabman, the founder and former CTO is nowehre to be found on the company website anymore...
https://energous.com/company/management-team/michael-leabman/
Mr Leabman was on their board of directors up until recently, they anounced he would be reelected to the board, but apparently he did not.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1575793/000114420418001816/tv483139_8k.htm

I think the mice are abandoning ship, I can't say they have no money, after all $8m is a LOT,  but they are going full steam ahead and the track ends in a few weeks.

[EEVblog]

I was hoping she was trying to recharge phones using human blood.

Wait, are you saying she's a vampire?