uBeam Ultrasonic Wireless Charging – A Familiar Fish Smell

[theatrus]

Even if a phased array ultrasonic delivery system worked, the power levels needed to charge a modern phone would be astronomical. 

[Artlav]

First CRTs, and now this...

[idpromnut]

From the both sides site above: Is it safe?  Well, it's what is used in pregnancies for imaging and the proximity detector on your car.   

"… safe like sound waves." … This guy needs to stand behind/next to a 747 rev'ing up to full thrust and tell me after that sound waves are "obviously" safe. 

[Richard Crowley]

From the both sides site above: Is it safe?  Well, it's what is used in pregnancies for imaging and the proximity detector on your car.   

Ultrasound imaging of biological objects (including pregnant women) is direct-coupled and further aided by a viscous fluid with reduces the transducer to tissue impedance-mismatch.  It can not be honestly compared to sending power via ultrasound through the air.

Ultrasonic proximity detection uses infinitesimal signals compared to what you would need to transmit useful amounts of power.   

[SeanB]

From the both sides site above: Is it safe?  Well, it's what is used in pregnancies for imaging and the proximity detector on your car.   

"… safe like sound waves." … This guy needs to stand behind/next to a 747 rev'ing up to full thrust and tell me after that sound waves are "obviously" safe. 

OHS came to the hanger one day to inspect, and as it so happened Mackie had taken a newly rebuilt 09K50 out to the engine test bay 500m away. Their SPL meter went to 150dB when he got to the full power setting. They turned it off before he got to the afterburner test cycle though, they were afraid they would break it. We were sitting there saying "What noise".

[coppice]

From the both sides site above: Is it safe?  Well, it's what is used in pregnancies for imaging and the proximity detector on your car.   

Ultrasound imaging of biological objects (including pregnant women) is direct-coupled and further aided by a viscous fluid with reduces the transducer to tissue impedance-mismatch.  It can not be honestly compared to sending power via ultrasound through the air.

Ultrasonic proximity detection uses infinitesimal signals compared to what you would need to transmit useful amounts of power.   

The early medical ultrasound systems used a lot of energy, and the turbid fluids of the body can form some interesting random lensing effects. Combine those two, and people used to worry quite a lot about the sort of damage they might do. These days the energy is far lower, and damage seems unlikely.

[mikerj]

Unbelievably, they have found investors dumb enough to part with $10 million to develop this waste of space.  I know fools and their money are soon parted, but I thought investors tended to do at least some basic research before parting with 6 and 7 figure sums.

uBeam’s Ultrasound Wireless Charging Is Real, And About To Be Really Funded

[eneuro]

Unbelievably, they have found investors dumb enough...

This smile is artificial or she trains how to tell investors that it was  from the begining 


Hmm, let us guess what this hard science problem is -lack of knowledge? 
To be clear, uBeam is still working on a hard science problem where unexpected setbacks can happen. There are plenty of reasons it might not be able to get as cheap, powerful, fast, and safe as Perry hopes. But if it does, uBeam could be one of the transformative technologies of our era. And that’s just the swing for the fences that investors dream of.

Why nowadays Examining Einstein—precise experiments using lasers in space , rather than those bloody uBeam with pink blondy girl image?   

[Riotpack]

Just wack a charging cable at every table, 2x micro USB and 1 each of the 2 popular Apple ones.

[kjs]

guys, calm down..... uBeam does exactly what the Vulture Capital in the US wants. If they pay themselves a good salary and make a lot of noise they will have nice 5-8 years and then move on to the next money-milking-scene.
I was VP of engineering and then CTO in such start-ups and 99.9% of these VC guys including their so-called technical experts don't have the slightest clue. That's replaced with greed, arrogance and ignorance. They make a shitload of money from just managing and spending the money which they are not responsible for. Who cares whether those forced into investing there (some retirement funds, 401K) make losses? The big thing is mobile and IOT is currently coming up. That it will take years before a cellphone manufacturer would bet the company on something new and unproven from a nobody doesn't matter. If you are not into mobile or IOT you won't get money and who cares whether that thing has physics against it? It sounds GREAT! I would say congrats to the founders of uBeam for successfully playing with the system.

[eneuro]

Just wack a charging cable at every table

WPT per room might work too, but forget about ultrasound

Testing something similar now, but whole room ground heating copper pipes with water... connected to a few MHz generator and will see what happends.
At least copper will heat air in the room-if it will provide WPT electricity to small devices ~1m above ground the better 

Anyway no plans to visit TED-I haven't got private jet yet and hate fly commercial airplanes full of depressed pilots 
But I have quite big yard behind house, so CNN, BBC,Discovery science will be able visit me in their helicopters at home at see how it works in practice

[EEVblog]

Update:
Talk of $50M+ funding in the next round:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-cord/
 
Note that Techcrunch are an investor in Ubeam, so yeah, totally impartial article.
And still nothing demoed since the laughable veroboard prototype demo.

[eneuro]

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/26/kill-the-cord/#.gnavhq:Ghpj

You have to click uBeam on right in oryginal link to see that Ubeam "inventors" probbaly are able to change the laws of physics to make it happen 
They wrote:
Our engineering team is comprised of world-class multidisciplinary inventors, where the word “impossible” is not part of our lexicon.

Anyway, on this template page: http://ubeam.com/company/  we can see another executive team members with... the same crappy photos cut and paste (ok-slightly different view on 2nd photo) from I've posted above from another article, where it looks like future CEO woke up in the middle of the night with this "great" idea (notice probably this CEO photo was made in the.. bedroom on second plane  ) and this was published later in "official" ubeam.com web page linked above 

Other executive team VP images also looks like were made in a very not proffesional way, eg.  VIP Paul with shadows on the yellow wall, because of lack of good light to make this photo 
If I didn't missed anything from ubeam.com template web page those three (yep 3 photos) are the only published on their "website".

What can I say-nothing I'm speachless now after visiting uBeam  official web page? 

BTW: Now realized that CEO face is actually square image and their web page designer was very creative to... change its shape to circle 
However, this domain could be available for sale soon, while they paid for this domain only up to AD 2017  and this idea is probably 10 years old, while uBeam domain name was registered AD 2005, but ok it could be taken by someone else before
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=ubeam.com&type=domain
Domain Name: UBEAM.COM
   Registrar: GODADDY.COM, LLC
   Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 146
   Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
   Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
   Name Server: NS75.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
   Name Server: NS76.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientRenewProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 24-mar-2014
   Creation Date: 06-oct-2005
   Expiration Date: 24-mar-2017

[chicken]

where it looks like future CEO woke up in the middle of the night with this "great" idea (notice probably this CEO photo was made in the.. bedroom on second plane  )

How the CEO looks, how professional their head shots are, or when their domain expires has nothing to do with the viability of their invention. Stick to physics and electronics, there's plenty of questionable material there.

[Zero999]

Seems its 17KHZ. For teenagers and could be in a street near you.

http://www.movingsoundtech.com/

Not just teenagers. Plenty of young adults can hear that high. I'm 33 and can hear a cheap speaker connected to a signal generator running at that frequency. A proper tweeter connected to a power amplifier would be unbearable.

[Delta]

Here's a good little article about this scam, a bit less technical than Dave's debunking, but a bit more businessey.  "people think that because they have money, they can buy their way out of basic physics.  Not so.  Physics always wins in the end."

http://lookatmeimdanny.tumblr.com/post/101432017159/how-putting-10m-into-ubeam-illustrates-everything

[EEVblog]

WARNING: Reading the title of this article might ruin your day, or cause you to compulsively bash your head against the desk:

http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/ubeam-meredith-perry-wireless-charging/

and finally a photo of the prototype:

[timofonic]

WARNING: Reading the title of this article might ruin your day, or cause you to compulsively bash your head against the desk:

http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/ubeam-meredith-perry-wireless-charging/

and finally a photo of the prototype:

My cynist inside myself makes me very happy. They are going to scam riches (at least the stupidest ones) at least the money will move to younger scammers.

And maybe this will make a nice novel and a movie...

[LabSpokane]

My favorite Marc Andreessen quotes:

She’s executing very well. Now, ninety percent of her bandwidth is on short-term stuff, but she has a very broad, expansive vision for what follows.

Marc, can I have a job?  Or at least can I have $13M? I won't give you wireless charging, but my personally-funded projects show more progress than Meredith's.  How in the *&^!? can you give someone that kind of dough, get NOTHING in over four years, and still consider their job performance as "very well?"  Meredith won't show you a prototype?  Meredith hasn't even shown up on your doorstep to personally thank you and to demonstrate work-in-progress?  That's a great investment?!! 

Oh, yeah, I remember now.  There's a second round of funding coming and you can't wait to get your money out of this loser.

I’d put uBeam in what I call the Harry Potter world.

Finally, something about uBeam we all can agree with.  It's only viable in a fictional world.  Well said, Mr. Andreessen.

[EEVblog]

I'm not sure how the press never pick up my blog post on it. For me it's #3 on google search for "ubeam"

[bookaboo]

I'm not sure how the press never pick up my blog post on it. For me it's #3 on google search for "ubeam"

Lazy journalism, the "wireless phone charging", "exciting startup", "young female entrepreneur" and "next Elon Musk" stuff is all excellent click bait. It would be a brave journalist that would stick his neck out and make the unpopular "bs" call, plus he would have to get it past his editor.
Still, if I were you I'd fire off some emails offering an interview on the subject - you never know.

[timofonic]

I'm not sure how the press never pick up my blog post on it. For me it's #3 on google search for "ubeam"

Are you sure they don't know it's an scam? This is a scamming plot, with different parts involved.

It happened before...

[eneuro]

http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/ubeam-meredith-perry-wireless-charging/
...
and finally a photo of the prototype:

Probably they spend all investors money to make this photo of... yellow sheet of paper, what ever it is, it must be something worth to see 

Nope, it looks like CEO of company who invested milions of virtual money doesn't have professional photograph and it looks like she made photo of this "prototype" using crappy phone, since this  PCB is on glass table on top of.... beer cans?     


Anyway, when I change parts of this article and exchange  u name with.... it now makes more sense 
The idea? Charge the battery of an electronic device from across the room—no wires necessary. The company is Eneur*o, based in Europe. And the man behind it all is Electric Neuron, its brilliant, ambitious, and occasionally overwhelming co-founder and CEO.

 
Yep, I really need charge the battery of my RF wall radio switch, so... a few small PV solar cells will do the job-they are cheap and no need to mess with bloody sound 
No wires necessary and better no need to even think about  u   idea like hipersonic charging 

BTW: She spend some money for better bed and now her room looks better, but...  those messy NASA astronauts pictures means? 
I could understand one photo, but two similar images side by side-there is no creativity in this design and red carped on her bed maybe is fine for pink blondy girl, but she should watch more Bollywood hits to make her room a look worth to show on any website-maybe install webcam and change company name to uXXXu to make profits? 

[EEVblog]

Another $10M bucks into the UBeam black hole:
http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/ubeam-wireless-charging-funding/

[theatrus]

A company of that scale does not need a CFO. Where is the prototype?