Hi it's time to look at Wireless Charging. in this case a gift from a company called a Why Charge and I've gotten many requests from this because Linus from Linus Tech Tips did a video on this here it is I'll link it in down below completely Wireless Power! Holy and he's showing off this very cool demo supplied by Ry charge of these two trains going in opposite directions around this track being powered from this infrared transmitter up on the roof. Now this has actually been around for a while and if you have a look at their demo video let's have a look at. It's got wanky music in the background and it's just got all these like just photoshopped graphics.

It doesn't show anything at all and it looks like it's completely not a this is transmitter on the roof that transmits our infrared near infrared beam to the phone and tracks it around and automatically charges. It looks like complete and a heart of but it's actually not It actually it does actually work just like all of these wireless power technologies we're getting things like you beam, you beam works Energies energist works. same thing that our Y charge yes it is pronounced Y charge I Have been reliably informed by the company and it also works. but is it as good and groundbreaking and will it revolutionize the wireless charging industry? That's what we need to take a closer look at.

So this train demo here which Linus was showing off and also him are charging his mobile phone as well and also that Bluetooth speaker down there. They are actually being powered from that unit on the roof via infrared laser and it looks pretty cool and a whole. Granted it's a very cool demo there. It's actually tracking these trains as they go around the track and actually wirelessly beaming the infrared power to them.

Very cool. But as always with these things the Devils in the detail. Now how do they do this and what products do they have? Well I'll link in the website down below and all the reference our stuff I talked about in this video down below. You can have a look for yourself.

but basically they've got this infrared transmitter which they can put on the roof here and the black circle in the middle that actually has the near infrared laser a diode in it. So this does actually use a laser and it's got the tracking system as well which is able to steer the laser beam around and and precisely target the device which are trying to power. So in the case of the trains it would actually be tracking and then multiplexing because it's only got the one laser in it I Believe! So it actually has to track both of them and switch and alternate multiplex effectively. The power between them and it claims to be able to handle up to four devices and it claims to have a 5 watt total delivered power and with that like a fifty-year square meter field of view and they're claiming 5 meters now.

I have actually been talking to the head marketing person at Why Charge and they do say there's more capable than that, but they just limit the distance just for technical issues. and they do have these reference integration products that there are that you can get if you're at like partner up with them and stuff like that. And the one in Linus's video doesn't actually look like this. It looks very quite different with a larger area on the screen like that.

So this is these are just photo shop things. Anyway, the ones that are showing in line since video are just prototypes. So they've got this roof mount transmitter. they've got this external receiver as I said looks nothing like that now the kick transmitter.

This is a 1 watt job and handles up to 10 receivers and this is the one that they had Fda-approved apparel FDA safety approved apparently and they've just got a Cheech Arjun ones which we saw in Linus's video as well as just like a traditional and Qi charging met. but it's got the window and that's the window that looks like is on the prototype for their a mobile phone receiver one as well. So they do have a couple of products that one's capable of 1 watt total delivered power. So pro toys for these things do actually exist and they do work as you saw in Linus's video.

I've been assured by the company that there are no batteries in the Train it is actually receiving the power from the transmitter on the roof and I totally believe them. You can see sort of like a sort of a 3d model here of there's obviously the scanning laser mechanism there and if you go over which I'll link in down below because you're going to need hours to read it and digest it. If you go over to the patents over here, you can have a look at all sorts of stuff. I mean it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on about all the things to do with safety which we'll talk about and it looks like it it comes from auto Output is the original one of the original inventors way back in 2008.

there's another one in 2005 or something and up. Yeah, here it is and apparently he has assigned some of his old patents over to Y charge, so that looks like what happens. But they've also got the new modern one which was granted in 2015 which covers the overall system and it goes into a lot of detail about the safety and the Ocker operating mechanisms and the inbuilt energy storage and stuff like that, tracking and all that sort of jazz. Now as I said, I have been talking publicly on Twitter and also privately via email without Yuval Boger who is the head marketing person for Y charge and basically I tried to ask them hey, first up question: what's the efficiency of this thing? In this case, the end-to-end system efficiency.

How much power do you put in the transmitter on the roof? How much energy do you get? How much power do you get going into your actual product from the cell? So that takes into account the efficiency of the laser, the efficiency of the medium. And the good thing about one of the huge advantages here is that in an indoor environment like this is different outside and spaceborne lasers and other atmospheric things. but in an indoor environment, there's pretty much no loss in the air for this thing. So there's no medium loss.

So if you're transmitting, say one what out of your laser then in theory you should be able to receive one one. There's no loss in the air. Now they were cagey about releasing an efficiency figure for this and that's always a red flag when companies have been working at this for a long time. I think six years at least why charge of being going and they can't tell you an efficiency figure trade secret.

They say all that sort of stuff or will tell you if you're a like signed up and you probably sign the NDA and you're you know one of the integration companies you're working with them then you can find out. But as it turns out we can just do our own calculations now because they need a near infrared laser and I've seen other figures and they seem to be in the ballpark of 60% efficiency for the lead power transmitter. So that's what I've taken here. You know it's just sort of doing back-of-the-envelope calculations here and now I'm Of course the other end of the system you need the solar receiver.

the solar cell now in this case it needs to be are specifically designed to accept the bandwidth of the near-infrared and this one. Here this solar cell can capture all wavelengths of the solar spectrum and you can go into details or link all these down below, but pushing the efficiency as high as a stunning 45% basically. And this is, um, very recently July 2007 A and I Don't know if these are on the market yet. Now you can actually potentially get better than this if you tailor a solar cell that's specifically designed for you know, less than the bandgap reference of the wavelength, the monochromatic wave length that you're dealing with.

This with the laser that's advantageous. You might be able to get higher efficiency than this 45% but as I'll show shortly. They have not disputed my fears here, so let's take a look at them. This is real basic stuff.

Not hard at all to figure out their absolute maximum what they're going to get out of this thing. and I show them these numbers and they really didn't dispute them. So let's go through it quickly. Let's assume that we've got a 1 watt laser diode here and it's 60% efficiency ideal.

that's you know. potential like that's like ones on the market that you can buy. So let's say you get naught point. 6 Watts out of that thing.

Now let's I Originally started out by assuming that they had a large spot size there their laser. they're actually you know sort of beam in that out to a larger spot so that you can get like less error in your tracking and things like that. You don't have to be nearly as precise in that tracking so I'll just run through the numbers, but this is not how they actually do it. Okay, so if it was as large if they're you know the solar panels are that big and your spots around there like that then you actually lose a lot of it.

In this case, you lose 65% and you only capture 35% of the area. So you get point to one what's out of the thing and the solar cell efficiency as you saw 45 percent could be less, maybe could be a bit more, but they didn't dispute these figures. So I believe it's this all lower so you get to 95 milliwatts out of it or 9% 9.5 percent. Let's call it 10% efficiency.

Best-case not assuming any losses and this is also assuming that there's no medium loss in the air in the room, which I think is quite fair because we're not outside, we're not going through clouds, fog, whatever it is, you know, So they should get basically no loss in in a room. So there you go. So it could be 10% best-case But they looked at this and they said, hey, they imply that in states specifically, but they implied that the spot size is smaller and it could potentially be within the area of the that little window that you are see here. So this little window it would be like somewhere it's got to hit that target precisely, hit that target and so all of the laser energy or the 0.6 watts of it hits that area.

Okay, so I've drawn. So let's assume that the capture area is a hundred percent. Even then. Solar cell efficiency: 45 percent Ideal.

We're talking point: Two, seven watts, or twenty seven percent ideal efficiency now. They claimed publicly that their efficiency was end to end. System efficiency was similar to an LED right? which is higher than that. So right off the bat, they're ideal.

I Think they're not getting anywhere close to that and I was able to extract from them in the end that it's somewhere between. Or it was a pretty good guess on my part that it was somewhere between 5% and 27% upper limit. So it's definitely not above twenty seven percent because you can bet your bottom dollar if they would get in. You know, if they were getting twenty five percent efficiency out of this system, I'd be singing it from the freaking rooftops, right? Hey, look in the whole world, you beam.

Ah, screw you Innovation bug. At this point, Zero one percent efficiency. We're getting twenty five percent with zero medium. Lawson They'd be crowing about it.

They wouldn't be keeping silent about something like that. So I think it's way under twenty seven percent. I'm I Guess my spidey sense tells me it's more in that ten percent ballpark. but they said basically imply that's better than five percent.

so it's not horrible. And hey, that's actually not too bad for a system like this. Of course, as I've mentioned in the U beam video, I've done like, you're not going to change the world with this thing. Okay, if your goal is to have every single person using one of these in their home, then that is horrible.

Okay, we design and we have regulations in place. Many countries have regulations in place for our Energy Star compliance for charges and things like that. If everyone was charging their phone, billions of people around the world at, you know, ten percent efficiency or something like that, It's not good for the planet, but for niche applications. Hey, you know if you're getting five to 10 or even 15 percent efficiency, that's pretty dying.

You know that's decent. that's usable. We can work with that. But what impact does this have on safety? Well, let's have a look at it.

This rooftop one which Linus was using here total delivered power five watts their own figure. Okay, and they have not denied that it is under twenty seven percent. So let's take best case: it's twenty seven percent efficiency. I Don't think it is.

but at best case, five Watts delivered power. That means you need an 18 and a half watt near infrared laser. Wow That's a kick-ass laser, but that's best case. Ten percent efficiency.

Okay, you need a 50 watt laser now. I'll link this pattern in down below and sorry I can't go through it because it is just it is super long. I Can do a one-hour video just going through every paragraph of this thing. but suffice it to say that a whole bunch of it.

I'm talking pages and pages and pages. All that goes on about is safety such as reflections, elaborate beams, and small footprint to prevent scattering because even the scattered laser at these sort of power levels can be extremely dangerous. Class four lasers for half a second and that's basically the category that they're in. and they talk about all the extensive safety systems that they have to put in place and things like that.

Another, Payton talks about a retro-reflective are surface so it can actually measure and like the power actually received there. They talked many times about fingerprints on these on this, you know the surface up here cuz you know if you got a mobile phone thing you have fingerprints and that can scatter the light and all this sort of jazz. and they're talking about all sorts of mediums and different types of things to prevent reflections and scattering. and talking about how their safety system depends on the fact that it's in organic matter doesn't reflect the particular wavelength that they got.

Very ridiculously in depth about the safety of this thing. It is like the number one requirement in the system. Now as I said, they have said that they got this model here. just this model the Kik transmitter.

This is the one that is sent away and apparently got FDA approved. Now they actually won't give me that FDA approval document and as far as I've I've asked around as far as I know it's not publicly available. So now as it turns out, the FDA do actually approve like laser products and stuff like this. and once again talk about class for laser lightshow, industrial lasers, medical devices for laser imaging exposure like skin exposure and all sorts of stuff.

I Hazards and laws and regulations and laser products. and interestingly they also have here manufacturers of laser products can request an alternate means of providing a radiation safety. This is called a variance. So whether or not they're their approval relies on a variance to the standard.

Because they're you know, some new sort of application which probably the FDA haven't approved before. We don't know until we get those documents and they apparently won't give it to us, so who knows. But I I Do Not trust. This thing has to have at least an 18 to 20 watt near infrared laser in the thing which is ridiculously dangerous and so they have to have all these protections in place now.

They may have done this absolutely perfectly, but I can't see how you can possibly make this 100 percent safe. I Just don't see it so that FDA approval may not even be worth the paper it's written on. Hey, but it makes great marketing material, doesn't it? I Mean get your next seed funding around? That's what it's all about Now of course this is the only. this is the wonderwhat delivered system that has no nothing to do with this one that they used Linus because this is not a product that they're selling yet so they can have prototype systems and they can demo them and things like that without presumably without having to meet you know approvals for products for sale because it's a prototype and nothing that says that this one is going to be approved for sale.

So yeah, who knows. like you want to put like a class for like 20 What? plus laser in everyone's house in every environment with every sort of surface possible. like I Don't care how short their pulsing these beams, they're making the claim. five watts continuous.

Continue. A total delivered power. You've got to continuously deliver five watt. So I don't care if you're you know, pulsing it on and off you might be in if you want to do that.

If you want a duty cycle the thing lower which I'm sure they're absolutely doing. It's not just continually on. the paitent actually does tell you about this. It tells you that the receiver can actually communicate back, probably via bluetooth or some other short-range RF Comms communicates back to modulate the power level and things like that, apparently.

And then you could potentially even send data over the laser and you know stuff like that so and could even potentially have that retro reflective surface. So the transmitter could have some sort of hunting mechanism so that train could feedback and saying oh no, like my power is dropping. Move it this way a little bit and you know I'm moving in this direction. It could potentially have a you know, really smart algorithms to track that thing.

and it's actually very impressive getting a demo like this working so you know, hats off to them. They've done a good job and also linking and interesting our paper from Renesis of all people here about the photo biological effects of near-infrared exposure to the eye and stuff like that. and there's IEC You know safety limits and exposure limits for, you know, laser radiation and stuff like that. but like okay, it's a cool concept like you know to overcome all the problems with wireless power transfer.

You know it's a ridiculous ultrasonics one of you beam or the energist one. By the way, I will link in this paper from a presentation at Wireless Power Week from who that Christopher M Brown Hats off if I might end up eventually doing an energist video debunking. The inner gist thing is basically a Wall Street scam. This is a publicly listed company and Christopher is like a a venture capital type person and he this is the most brilliant take down of the images concept.

and once again, it's approved. not by the FDA but it's approved by the FCC and he goes into detail about how that means absolutely nothing. and it's absolutely and the share price. And they're actually selling their secret.

Where is it there? You know? Nobody. Nobody on the board of any just is buying there or selling right insider trades. It's just crazy. Anyway, images so both of those white, both you beam and inner just are dead ducks.

just not going to happen. And this one, you know, tri-state Granted it's a good idea, it tries to overcome that, but I don't know. My big concern is safety on this sucker really. And what is the real-world efficiency? Once again, let's see if we can get some data on that.

So Linus does are this impressive demo with this creative A Bluetooth speaker just to show how much power this thing can actually deliver. And of course once again the red flag is no real power measurements done here, not by the company. They of course won't reveal the efficiency figures. They won't show any tests with real power in power out meters or anything like just to even a power out me let alone the system efficiency.

Now I Couldn't find any real power draw figures for the trains. Let's ignore that. but the Creative speaker here and it's the A Creative D1 hundreds wireless speaker uses four double A batteries. It can play up for up to twenty five hours.

and if you take you know phenomenal high-end alkaline four watt hour per cell. They're four cells. Twenty five hours. Do the calculation.

it's about roughly 0.66 watts. or you know, let's say you can round it to say half of what. for example that this thing is actually you consuming when it's playing music. So this demo here really is not that impressive for a unit which is supposed to be able to deliver fire total delivered power of five watts the demo is actually doing is only using like one tenth of that.

So sure enough the system might be able to deliver its claim five watts I Don't know you know my very well be but say for example this phone charging demo which he did which he had problems like holding the thing and tracking and getting all that sort of jazz but it eventually worked and it charged. It showed you know, went, did it and and charge started charging the thing. But what that means like it doesn't matter you you can start a phone charging but does it have that an actual energy and that power to deliver to the phone? And of course you know a char and like phones, you want to charge it a couple of watts or something like that half of what it's you know it's almost trickle charge. But apart from the safety of this thing, yeah the tracking technology might be cool, but like you beam and other companies doing this have a similar sort of that problem of tracking the phone when you're moving it around and like you know the problem is getting that accuracy.

really can they get like the I think the cell is like in my estimates like 15 to 20 millimeters like maximum height. There's a bit of width there, but can they target that and if it's like you know and if it looks like that, for example even a small window, can they actually really get that sort of accuracy? Maybe I if I said they had that hunting algorithm to you know Zone in on it. but geez, come on. and then you're talking about maybe angle effects and things like that.

There could be as I said surface area drop. Based on that, you're not doing the whole surface of the solar cell. There could be issues. you know when you're holding in your hand like this, it's like your heads in the way.

All sorts of things will it be able to track and I it's just Dickey You know it's one of those things that is kind of like just like, why do we want this just put it on a Chi charging pad. They work, they're very efficient and they cost next to nothing and they're already built into your phones. Why do we need this Dickey thing and you've got to plug a Dickey thing into your phone that can snap off and break and you can lose it. No No.

I You know, no, it's a they've got some cool tech here. but I like as far as a practical phone charging solution in the real world that people are going to want to use, sorry just can't see this one flying. So I think I'll leave it there. otherwise the video is just going to be far too long.

but when you run the numbers on this thing, it's not as good as you think it might be. So granted, it's going to have some useful applications. This thing, no doubt about it. I think they've got a future.

It's probably the best of the wireless are apart from the Qi charger of course the best of the wireless like at a distance charging ones. If you can overcome that safety problem, you know. So it's really good for powering senses. And this wire wireless laser power delivery which they didn't invent by the way, it's been around for a long time.

they've just happened a patented this implementation of it. It really does have a decent future, but it's not. As you know, it's not going to be as widespread as you think. Let's take the classic example of the Starbucks coffee house.

You know they're going to give everyone one of these. You know one of these Qi embedded receivers right? and you can just put it on the on the table anywhere. you get one with your order and you can put your phone on that. They leave them lying around and put your phone.

why don't you just have a battery in the thing which was probably what they do anyway and just charge them up the battery like a large high-capacity battery and then just give that to the customer and you can put them in a rack and charge them overnight and they're ready and they can last the whole day And they can go anywhere and they don't need a you know it when you want plus laser scanning all over the bloody place getting all sorts of you know you have to do the laser dance trying to hold it in place like this and I like people walking past and it cuts off and all sorts of thing. It's just a ridiculously complicated and expensive solution that's not really needed sometimes, just sometimes you don't need to invent a better solution. We have phones already have the Chi charges in them. You can already get like a battery pack based Chi charges.

Just put one of those in your Starbucks coffee table. You don't need this convoluted laser system. But as I said anyway, it's got some really good niche applications and yeah, hats off to them I believe it is real, but they will not give me the FDA approval documents that would be interesting to see exactly what they've got FDA approved at what power level and things like that under what circumstances. because I greatly doubt you know they're advertising that.

Oh, it's FDA approved. That's fine. it's done, done, and dusted. no worries.

I don't think it's even close to that ideal. So yeah, I believe it's real and it's really cool. And they did offer. They haven't offered to send me one as such, but they have offered.

like if I'm willing to run a shootout I we could turn up at a trade show, we could invite all their competitors and then we could have a shootout or something like that. Yeah right, they'd run a million miles when it went once. I Bring my power measurement gear with me, you know. And that's why in these sort of demos, they will not show you the power measurement they won't talk about any of the you know, the real meaty technical details which have practical implications and things like that.

They just say oh, it's FDA approved. It's fine, no worries. And look at Powers. A train and a speaker speaker takes a huge amount of power.

Yeah! Peak music power output anyone? Anyway, yeah it's It's really cool. You know everyone loved the 50,000 thumbs up. Look at this. 50,000 thumbs up.

Everyone thinks this is the Ducks guts. And yep, they've solved our wireless power. No, sorry, they haven't got some cool tech. It no doubt works, but there's a lot of issues with it anyway.

If you want to discuss it down below, please do Eevblog forums. The best place to do it. Hope you liked it. Catch you next time.