Unofficial uBeam FAQ

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/

80 7 11 years ago

bmelton• 11 years ago

Previous discussion on uBeam[1].

As someone who isn't at all educated on this kind of thing, I'm eager to hear whether or not the FAQ sheds any particular light on the issues.

As I recall, much of the theory behind it incited rather polarizing discussion.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091

rdtsc• 11 years ago

The first thing I thought of was this:

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sonar_fence

jacquesm• 11 years ago

This is an excellent comment in the old thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542479

uBeam has me puzzled. I do DD for a living and I've learned over quite a few years not to reject ideas out of hand. The best start-ups are the ones that do something that everybody else thinks is impossible anyway.

That said, from the patent application I'm not getting anything novel or interesting, the comment linked above - assuming that's pointing in the right direction - makes me wonder if there is more to uBeam than meets the eye at first glance, defocused beams combined with a feedback mechanism and phased arrays of transducers might be viable (but would not require much in terms of mechanical aiming devices which is why I wonder if they're aware of such tech, and even though hardware requires more capital than the next photo sharing app I do wonder what they'd need $10M for).

If they do not have that particular rabbit or one very much like it up their sleeve then I'd happily bet against them. Since a bunch of high flying VCs went on and invested after doing proper DD you'd have to assume there is something non-obvious about all this. If they have a proof-of-concept and DD was done then you can bet that (assuming the DD team was halfway competent - which is what should be a safe assumption but I've seen a train-wreck (or two)) the practical efficiency for conversion of that proof-of-concept was measured and found to be good enough to warrant further investment.

If no 'proof-of-concept' was shown capable of delivering the required power then this project falls into the basic research with unknown outcome category, which translates into very low probability of success, but that does not jive with their time-to-market prediction, nor does it warrant the barrage of PR.

Even if the tech is viable I don't mind the inconvenience of plugging in my phone at night, and besides it lasts for many days anyway (old tech > new tech in this case...) so it doesn't really mean much to me, but I can see the mass market appeal and that's what drives investment.

If uBeam fails to deliver it will be a serious black eye for a lot of people with high visibility and it will be a set-back for any future hardware start-up that wants to push the envelope.

Personally I wouldn't bet on them but one thing is for sure, if $10M can't get them to create a working device then likely it can't be done at all, given that they've already over-run their initial time-to-market predictions they're not looking good.

DarthMader2• 11 years ago

This wouldn't be the first time Andreeson Horowitz has thrown money at a young founder positioned by the media as the next big innovator with a revolutionary wireless technology. First, Lucas Duplan of Clinkle, next Meredith Perry?

DarthMader2• 11 years ago

https://twitter.com/meredithperry

Looks like Meredith Perry read this article too judging by her latest tweet storm even though she said yesterday she would be going dark until product launch...

I don't understand why she is taking this so personally. Of course everyone is going to doubt you when you say you've invented a new technology. I would expect this type of response from someone much younger but not a CEO who has raised millions.

Go back to work and prove this to the world because you haven't proven anything so far

bshimmin• 11 years ago

Do you really think she's taking it personally, or is that "tweet storm" actually something of a PR exercise? Those tweets don't read as someone who is upset to me - they read as someone who is carefully cultivating a tough image (just the same as her Twitter bio).

That aside, the promise of power without wires is certainly exciting; the prospect of one's eyeballs peeling off in order to use it, less so.

kastnerkyle• 11 years ago

If this really works, the only options I see are that a) it works at a massively ineffective power transfer rate or b) it is dangerous if you accidentally get in the focused beam (or c) a combination of the two). Any kind of beamforming which can get a decent power transfer will, naturally, transfer that energy into whatever is where the power is focused. Granted, uBeam claims to stop power transfer if line of sight between beamer and device is blocked, but then you are counting on a safety mechanism which is "default off" in some sense. I personally would want to see more tests than a 5 week pig trial as mentioned in the techcrunch piece [1]. After all, radium used to be seen as a "health medicine" back in the early 1900s - it was only after years we realized that radiation was really, really dangerous. It would be great to ensure that kind of thing would not happen in this case - but this means something like a multi-year trial period, which is not good for a startup.

If it is inefficient, the energy issues we already have in the world make it seem irresponsible (to me at least) to use something that operates even more inefficiently than the current system, which is already causing global problems with respect to energy consumption and generation. Even inductive chargers have efficiency issues, and it seems like converting to ultrasound and back would have some inherent loss, though it is really dependent on the quality of implementation. If they can avoid danger, and only have inefficiency issues, I could see some success here for low-energy requirement devices.

If it is dangerous, well that is pretty obvious. No one wants to slow microwave their dog/child/foot/hand if the beamforming is slightly off.

I just don't see a way for this product (or any number of other related products, or RF energy harnessing generally) to succeed without some (unknown) fundamental breakthrough or incredibly expensive hardware.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/how-ubeam-works/?ncid=rss&u...

Unofficial uBeam FAQ

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