An iPhone 6 case has been developed that allows users to harvests power from the radio waves. Phone always transmit the information with the network. More than 90 percent of our phone’s transmitted energy is lost to the environment.Now there is a solution to reuse that energy.
US-based startup Nikola Labs demonstrated its iPhone case at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, the case was connected to a live voltmeter and was able to create power fluctuations when it was placed near a Linksys WiFi router.
This is not an extra battery. It simply works passively. New case embedded with a harvesting antenna, captures wasted radio frequency signals like wi-fi, Bluetooth and 4G. Using an energy harvesting circuit converts them to electricity, which gets dumped back into the phone. The resulting energy can be used to power mobile devices. There are no internal batteries or capacitors and no way to store any of this energy while it’s not connected to your phone. So it looks lighter and slimmer than other cases. The case would not harvest energy when the phone was in use – or else it could run the battery down further and affect the phone’s performance.
It won’t charge very quickly either – the antenna and power-converting circuit can only extend the battery life of an iPhone 6 by about 30%, and it all works extremely slowly. So,battery constantly hovering between 90% and 100%. It is possible to harvest a small amount of electricity because of tiny sensors. They could also put this into many different devices, such as wearable technology, embedded sensors, medical devices and Internet of Things devices — anything that doesn’t require massive amounts of electricity.
Nikola Labs, Dr. Rob Lee, is an engineer – he’s a former chair of the Ohio State University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and this particular technology comes straight out of Ohio State’s engineering department. Dr. Lee and Nikola Labs got an exclusive license from Ohio State University.
The iphone case prototypes just arrived from @LR_LaserRepro. Excellent work! @3dsystemscorp #asseenincolumbus pic.twitter.com/6SB1ftMhwE
— Nikola Labs (@NikolaLabs) May 1, 2015
Still the product is unnamed. The company says it will offer more details about the hardware when it debuts its Kickstarter campaign in June. The plan is to launch the product within a year. The case will be available for pre-order through Kickstarter next month for $99.
“Our next product that we’re going to bring to market is a wireless charger that will provide near-field and far-field powering solutions to meet you as a consumer where you are, whether that’s at home or in your vehicle,” Zell (Nikola Labs co-founder) said.
