Look Ma’ No Wire: Charge Your iPod Wirelessly
October 10th, 2005 4:55 PM | by Christen da Costa | 1 Comment
How would you like to eliminate the regular plugin charging of your iPod or cell phone? What if you could walk into your house, put down your device – anywhere – and it would automatically charge?
A company, created as the result of a Cambridge University competition, called Splashpower, has created a technology that wirelessly charges your portable electronics. The new technology uses “electromagnetic induction to accomplish wireless charging of devices.”
βItβs basically the concept of creating a magnetic field that goes parallel to the surface of the pad rather than out of the pad and this has many benefits,β? said Lily Cheng, chief executive officer and cofounder of the company, speaking at a news conference. βIt enables us to deliver a very uniform output across the pad and enables us to make a receiver coil that is very thin.β?
As of right now, you have to place the device directly on their Splash Pads, but the technology most certainly opens up the door for anywhere-charging, wirelessly.
Splashpower, who demonstrated their product at Ceatec 2005, hopes to bring the product to market in 2006, and depending on Splash Pad size, will range in price from $30-$200. An adapter (see pic), so you can charge your device wirelessly will cost about $15-20. The company hopes to eventually get their adaptors integrated into products during production and thus increase demand.
If anything, the pads are a nice aesthetic touch and elimnates the ‘rat’s nest effect’ of cord clutter.
This article traveled some ways to reach our pages – thanks Slashdot.org by way of Erik.
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