The uBeam FAQ

[PaulReynolds]

I think you might be over-interpreting this. Perry's LinkedIn profile still states that she was CEO until September 2018. What's in a LinkedIn CV, anyway? People can doctor them as they like, or make just plain stupid errors...

I can absolutely 100% with complete certainty tell you that I am not over-interpreting this.

[sdpkom]

I think you might be over-interpreting this. Perry's LinkedIn profile still states that she was CEO until September 2018. What's in a LinkedIn CV, anyway? People can doctor them as they like, or make just plain stupid errors...

I can absolutely 100% with complete certainty tell you that I am not over-interpreting this.

Both (Perry and McCauley) are very much not the type to "just" make a plain stupid error on their most recent, most prestigious, post, when they are in search of their next thing.

McCauley changed this specific sentence at least 3 times...

[ebastler]

I can absolutely 100% with complete certainty tell you that I am not over-interpreting this.

If you say so... Either you have additional insider information that you are not disclosing, or I sense a logical fallacy here.   

[PaulReynolds]

If you say so... Either you have additional insider information that you are not disclosing, or I sense a logical fallacy here.   

A lot of dirt gets spilled when people are unceremoniously fired with no notice.

There was a reason I pointed it out last November in one of my blog posts.

[StillTrying]

Is there anything about uDream that's actually honest. Asking for a friend.

The Art of Manufacturing was around the end of June '18, I think she still was CEO then, or perhaps she just thought she was.
https://twitter.com/meredithperry/status/1012439593075920897

[PaulReynolds]

Is there anything about uDream that's actually honest. Asking for a friend.

The Art of Manufacturing was around the end of June '18, I think she still was CEO then, or perhaps she just thought she was.
https://twitter.com/meredithperry/status/1012439593075920897

I think it might have been recorded at the end of April but not made available until June.

[StillTrying]

I think it might have been recorded at the end of April but not made available until June.

You're probably correct.

"A couple of months ago, while she was wrapping up a $20 million raise, I came to her office bearing margaritas.."

[PaulReynolds]

Someone posted a link to a short presentation by the current uBeam CEO at OurCrowd summit earlier this year. Some interesting data can be gleaned from the slides (assuming it's not just completely random data they threw up!)

https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2019/06/yet-another-ubeam-video.html

[EEVblog]

Someone posted a link to a short presentation by the current uBeam CEO at OurCrowd summit earlier this year. Some interesting data can be gleaned from the slides (assuming it's not just completely random data they threw up!)
https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2019/06/yet-another-ubeam-video.html

And there you have it, as we all knew uBeam is a flop for charging your phone. THE thing that Perry said was doable from the start.
No one wants to charge their phone @ 1W at a distance of 20cm, and at horrible efficiency.
Or 0.35W at 2m, at even worse efficiency 
I love how they used the elipse bubble to inflate the figures, just draw a straight line from each tip and that's your data, probably best case.
No wonder they had to pivot to low power IoT.

[Fungus]

No one wants to charge their phone @ 1W at a distance of 20cm, and at horrible efficiency.

...using a charger that makes your phone the size of a brick, needs to be held in the air and aligned, and costs hundreds of $$$.

(and drops to near-zero when you're six feet away)

[EEVblog]

No one wants to charge their phone @ 1W at a distance of 20cm, and at horrible efficiency.

...using a charger that makes your phone the size of a brick, needs to be held in the air and aligned, and costs hundreds of $$$.

It's not nearly that bad, you can lie it face down unusable on the table and have the TX above, really practical.
Oh, oops, it sucks at 2m, forget I mentioned it... 

[PaulReynolds]

And there you have it, as we all knew uBeam is a flop for charging your phone. THE thing that Perry said was doable from the start.
No one wants to charge their phone @ 1W at a distance of 20cm, and at horrible efficiency.
Or 0.35W at 2m, at even worse efficiency 
I love how they used the elipse bubble to inflate the figures, just draw a straight line from each tip and that's your data, probably best case.
No wonder they had to pivot to low power IoT.

The numbers here are weird. I updated the blog post to cover this but with a large area transmitter you can maintain maximum pressure (say 145 dB) at the receiver as it moves out by just using more transmit area to compensate for the air losses, with subsequent efficiency loss. That would make the line go straight for a distance before dipping. Also note these numbers imply 30% receive efficiency which I don't believe, and would have implied 60% receive efficiency on the next gen devices which I really don't believe.

And if that beamplot is genuinely focused at 2m (cough 1.2m cough) those transducers either only send sound forward (implying not much use for steering in a phased array), or they found a way to defeat physics and prevent grating lobes in phased arrays with non-ideal pitch. The latter is worth billions so I don't think it's that.

In 2013 getting your phone charging at 1W at 1m was respectable. Today... no.

[sdpkom]

In 2013 getting your phone charging at 1W at 1m was respectable. Today... no.

iPhone X (and most phones today) use a 10Wh battery, which is good (in my experience) for 7AM->9PM so ... ~14-15 hours.
Average power consumption is therefore ~700mW.
800mW would charge your phone (reeeeeaaaaaalllllllly ssssssssssssssslllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww!).

But if you did have 24/7 wireless power, 1W is all you will need to keep your battery full.

Now, if you have line of sight, range, and orientation issues, you obviously need more. If you can only charge 50% of the time you need 1.5-2W. If you can only charge 10% of the time.... you need 7-10W.

_______________________

From the demo they gave at the ourcrowd summit it was clear that
The large unit (the one on the top of their twitter account) has some tracking and phased array capabilities

The small unit (the one they advertise as beta kits), is a good old plane speaker, directing high volume ultrasound forward, no tracking or even detection of receivers.

I think the name "the twitter unit" is suitable for both systems ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azBzKWqUoXU&feature=youtu.be
@ 22:50 you can see the beam is fixed, and the detector is inserted into the beam.... if there was tracking (or safety), it would only appear on the center of the plate.
[this is the "beta" unit]

@25:30 you can see how it would look if it was tracking the receiver.
[this is the old unit with the camera- let's call it the twitter demo

[PaulReynolds]

In 2013 getting your phone charging at 1W at 1m was respectable. Today... no.

iPhone X (and most phones today) use a 10Wh battery, which is good (in my experience) for 7AM->9PM so ... ~14-15 hours.
Average power consumption is therefore ~700mW.
800mW would charge your phone (reeeeeaaaaaalllllllly ssssssssssssssslllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww!).

But if you did have 24/7 wireless power, 1W is all you will need to keep your battery full.

Now, if you have line of sight, range, and orientation issues, you obviously need more. If you can only charge 50% of the time you need 1.5-2W. If you can only charge 10% of the time.... you need 7-10W.

In the 2012/13 era the iPhone 5 was the latest and it had a ~5Wh battery, so a factor of 2 there, USB had lower max rates, and battery management didn't allow for 'rapid charge' for some of the recharge cycle.

Technical people careful of such things may have tended to use "trickle charge", "top up", "maintenance" with regard to charge rate, and "ubiquitous" with regard to availability, when discussing business models with potential funders at that time, as the most common uses of such technology.

From the demo they gave at the ourcrowd summit it was clear that
The large unit (the one on the top of their twitter account) has some tracking and phased array capabilities

The small unit (the one they advertise as beta kits), is a good old plane speaker, directing high volume ultrasound forward, no tracking or even detection of receivers.

I expect the smaller one is the one for the beam plot, and so would want to see the beam plot with the larger steered beam. I'm confident it would not be pretty.

And all that money on transducers to never steer? It's pointless without that. Just get a large plate and drive the hell out of it with stacks from behind and be done, most of the development time of that would be waiting for the component shipment.

[Fungus]

Even with "next gen" technology:

At 2-m maximum useful range you'll need a charger every ten or fifteen feet along the warehouse for this to be useful.

This? Not gonna happen.


It also only charges one thing at a time so I wonder if they've added any sort of prioritizing mechanism to make sure the lowest battery people get the charge in meetings, not the people who don't really need it.



If not? I see people waving their phones in the air to try and get charge, maybe even fist-fights breaking out. 

("Excuse me, I'm a bit low, could you put your phone under a piece of paper so I can get some charge?")

[sdpkom]

("Excuse me, I'm a bit low, could you put your phone under a piece of paper so I can get some charge?")

"Excuse me, I'm a bit low, could you put your phone under a piece of paper for the whole week so I can get some charge?,
Sure, no problem, I can't look at the screen anyway in this room as it keeps rotating near the uBeam transmitter, the accelerometer goes crazy here"

[Fungus]

Wouldn't all the transmitters block the sun?



Seriously, I'm watching their new promo and not one of the scenarios looks like it could work in practice. Not even if they double or triple the efficiency.

[sdpkom]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinemccauley/
Jacqueline McCauley in no longer with uBeam.
Still on the website though....., I guess the website guy also left.

No need for a CFO if you have no money left.

Or maybe better have two.....
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdavidcottrell/

[EEVblog]

[EEVblog]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinemccauley/
Jacqueline McCauley in no longer with uBeam.
Still on the website though....., I guess the website guy also left.

No need for a CFO if you have no money left.

Or maybe better have two.....
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdavidcottrell/

They only started a budget in 2017 

[PaulReynolds]

"Excuse me, I'm a bit low, could you put your phone under a piece of paper for the whole week so I can get some charge?,
Sure, no problem, I can't look at the screen anyway in this room as it keeps rotating near the uBeam transmitter, the accelerometer goes crazy here"

On the list of "Why not to use uBeam" that high power ultrasound knocks out MEMS accelerometers keeps falling off the bottom, well remembered.

https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2017/07/mems-gyroscopes-smartphones-and.html

[madires]

I think we should also look at the financial side of charging/powering devices. Some numbers about recharging your gadgets via the standard SMPSU based on the average price for power in Germany (EUR 0.30 per kWh) which is quite expensive. The yearly cost for recharging daily:
- smartphone EUR 1 - 1.50
- tablet EUR 4
- laptop EUR 10

Any wireless charging solution has to compete with those numbers. A few bucks more for the convenience of not dealing with a cable might be acceptable. But anything much less efficient or much more expensive is a show stopper.

[PaulReynolds]

You know I almost switched off when you linked to Perry's TEDx talk at the end, she triggers my "uBeam PTSD", but I watched it and for the first time didn't want to claw my eyes and ears out. I guess I'm making progress there.

BTW thanks for calling me CTO and not VP Eng, Berte is going to be so pissed about that!

[PaulReynolds]

I think we should also look at the financial side of charging/powering devices. Some numbers about recharging your gadgets via the standard SMPSU based on the average price for power in Germany (EUR 0.30 per kWh) which is quite expensive. The yearly cost for recharging daily:
- smartphone EUR 1 - 1.50
- tablet EUR 4
- laptop EUR 10

Any wireless charging solution has to compete with those numbers. A few bucks more for the convenience of not dealing with a cable might be acceptable. But anything much less efficient or much more expensive is a show stopper.

On a large scale and for a business there does need to be a compelling case that the cost of inefficient charging does allow a valuable function to be performed or saves other expensive functions like labour. For individuals it's a matter of convenience and people will pay for that - I can guarantee you 99% of people have no idea what it costs in a year to charge your phone every day. So if you ask it like this "Imagine you never have to plug in your phone, ever, and it just keeps being powered up. What would you pay every year for that convenience?" and then say "$1, $10, $100, $1000". Basically everyone will say yes to $1 and $10, I think a majority (but not large majority) will say yes at $100, and basically no-one will say yes at $1000. So that says that with a yearly charge cost of say $1 at 100% efficiency, you need to keep real world efficiency at >1%, or ideally >10% (very hard to do but you can get marketing covering for that). So while you are correct, I actually don't think this is the primary show stopper (the massive inefficiency meaning 500 million people block doing this every day adds around 200 PWh to the yearly power demand, not very green).

The first line killers are that it just doesn't charge fast enough, target the devices well enough, for long enough under real world conditions to be practical, the cost of the actual hardware is likely on a par with the phone itself, and it's IMO not safe - the ongoing cost thing comes in after that as a show stopper, as consumers are lazy and pay for dumb stuff.

[EEVblog]

BTW thanks for calling me CTO and not VP Eng, Berte is going to be so pissed about that!

I had a niggling feeling I goofed that. Berte's flame SMS incoming in 3... 2... 1...