An introduction to wireless charging

“ An introduction to wireless charging: changing the way we think about power

Smartphones are changing the way we live our lives, both online and off. With each new model, we are used to getting more processor speed, new features and programs, and entire new ways of using them. Despite increased capabilities, battery life simply hasn’t kept up. For most users, phones are sending out sad bleeps by lunchtime, signaling a low battery.

Wireless charging is set to change this. We want to eradicate the problem of the dead battery.“

Read more : http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/what-we-do/how-it-works/

„The Wireless Power Consortium created and maintains Qi (pronounced “chee”), the global standard for compatible wireless charging. The Qi standard guarantees that any device carrying the Qi logo will work with any charging surface that carries the Qi logo, regardless of manufacturer or brand.

Qi is backed by over 100 industry-leading companies, who support it because it allows design freedom, product differentiation, and guaranteed wireless charging interoperability .WPC also provides easy access to the essential patents.“

http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/about/frequently-asked-questions.html

Make a slim watch with ARM Cortex-M3 EFM32

Hack-a-Gecko project by Anders and Adam 

How to make a very slim watch and keep battery life long? In this Hack-a-Gecko project, they tried to catch two birds with one stone.

The Idea
We thought it would be cool to utilize the extremely low power EFM32 in combination with an extremely low power display to create a wrist watch demo application. And usually, the smaller and thinner something is, the cooler it is. (Admittedly, wrist watches do not necessarily follow this trend… big watches.)

Anyway, we wanted it slim. The starting point was the memory LCD display from Sharp (link). It is truly a Nano ampere display technology. And it is also thin, only 0.75 mm. A watch also needs a battery, cool new technologies exist such as the Thinergy battery, but the voltage of 4.1 V is a bit awkward. We decided to use a standard 3.0V CR1616 cell as it can power the EFM32 and display directly. Thickness of battery + display is 2.35 mm, is it possible to design the electronics as well within this thickness limit…? Challenge accepted!“

http://blog.energymicro.com/2012/12/12/make-a-slim-watch-with-arm-cortex-m3-efm32/

found via http://hackaday.com/2012/12/12/super-slim-wristwatch-build/

What is ANT ?

„ANT™ is a proven protocol and silicon solution for ultra-low power practical wireless networking applications.  Designed for 2.4 GHz operation, ANT is perfectly suited for any kind of low data rate sensor network topologies in personal area networks (PANs) and practical wireless sensor networks (WSN).

ANT has been intentionally engineered to simplify practical wireless network development and optimize network efficiency.  ANT-powered network nodes can operate for years on a coin cell battery compared to months for other technologies.  Rich in capabilities, ANT provides reliable data communications, flexible and adaptive network  operation and cross-talk immunity. “

http://www.thisisant.com/pages/technology/what-is-ant

Today was the first time I realized this technology. It’s definitly worth further investigation.