In no way is this a discovery.
This is what crystal diode radios are from the '40s.
Some guy built one in Japan, it’s basically just a thousand transceivers in a box hooked up to a USB port harvesting radio/wifi signals.
Here’s a guy using them to make light:
It’s super cool, but not a discovery.
I remember making a crystal diode radio with my dad as a kid. You can still buy kits for those.
From Radio Shack?!
Definitely not new. This is how RFID tags work. They harvest energy from the transmitter to power the circuitry in the tag to send back a response.
Not new indeed. Kinda reminds me of old Nextel phones that you would put a little LED on the antenna and it would blink from the EMI when sending and receiving data.
Those were cool!
Tap-to-pay on credit card chips, too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectenna
What they’ve done here is use the very old existing rectenna technology and new types of nanoscale rectenna arrays to capture very low energy radio waves without an external antenna. We’re taking -20 dBm or 10 μW.
In the end, I welcome any rectenna advances because if we ever build an efficient optical rectenna it’ll blow photovoltaics out of the water by efficiency. Optical rectennas are like fusion power in just how revolutionary they would be to our energy economy.
Dang that’s actually a super interesting concept. Thanks for the wikipedia link!
Agreed, this is the future Nikola Tesla wanted, and it’s not some wild eyed crack pottery but what he was actually working on in Colorado.
This sort of thing is already being done with many commercial devices. See www.powercastco.com for one of the companies.
Tale as old as time. And guess what will happen? Wifi signal strength will go down.
No radio expert here, but would’nt this at some point interfere with the transmissions if deployed at a large scale?
This ain’t free at all it’s more like stealing electricity with extra steps. Though if it does not degrade wifi or radio signal I’m up for it be used aside from just wasting away.
I know of companies who have already tested and tried this our years ago, didn’t read the article but doesn’t seam very new to me
The dawn of the Matrix is almost here chunmers!
