Powercast, with the development support of Microchip, has released the Lifetime Power® Energy Harvesting Development Kit for Wireless Sensors.  This kit provides wireless power for remote, battery-free wireless sensor networks (WSN).

The kit (part number P2110-EVAL-01)  includes the following items:
1 - 3W Powercaster Transmitter - 915MHz (TX91501-3W-ID)
2 - P2110 Evaluation Board (P2110-EVB)
2 - Directional, patch antennas - 915MHz
2 - Omni-directional dipole antennas - 915MHz
2 - Wireless Sensor Boards (WSN-EVAL-01)
1 - Microchip XLP 16-bit Development Board
1 - Microchip 802.15.4, 2.4GHz radio
1 - PICkit programmer/debugger

The components in the kit enable wireless and battery-free operation of the sensor nodes at a distance of 40-45 feet (13-15 meters).  Each sensor board can measure temperature, humidity, light, and an external sensor. This can be used for a number of applications including building automation, energy management and industrial monitoring.  Power is provided by Powercast’s new 3W transmitter (TX91501-3W-ID), which also sends factory-set data.  The P2110 Powerharvester receiver converts the RF energy from the receiving antenna and stores it into a capacitor, which is then boosted to operate the wireless sensor board.  The Microchip XLP 16-bit Development Board with the 802.15.4 radio is the access point.

Product Link | Press Release

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“Powercast is the stuff of revolution…”

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Powercast recently presented about wireless power technology and RF energy harvesting to an innovation forum hosted by North River Ventures.  Following that meeting North River posted a review of Powercast’s technology.

Low Power, Free Power

Powercast provides remote, wireless power capability to micro-power devices by harvesting RF power and converting it to DC power.

Powercast is the stuff of revolution:  it spreads cloud access to hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions, of small, low power (microwatt and milliwatt) M2M devices.  Placed anywhere from the simple, like a hotel room motion detector, to the complex, like a reverse osmosis filter that needs constant monitoring but that is hard, and costly, to check by hand,  embedded Powercast devices allow its “hosts” to talk to one another cheaply and efficiently.  Doing this, Powercast brings on line, as it were, a universe of productivity and information tools of unlimited application.  It makes microwatt devices edge servers.

Read more…

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Randy Frank has written a good summary of the state of energy harvesting technology for Electronic Design in an article titled “Making Energy Harvesting’s Promise of Free Energy a Reality”.

With its allure of free energy and maintenance-free operation for lifetimes of 10 and even 15 years, energy harvesting (EH) is grabbing the attention of potential users in many markets. Recent EH developments have made great progress, and the pieces appear to be falling into place.

System components such as microcontrollers (MCUs), RFICs, and power-supply ICs have had to drastically reduce their power consumption and increase performance to complete a useful energy-harvesting system. In addition, software that controls the power management, data collection, and transmission processes while avoiding any unnecessary power consumption is essential.

Read more…

The article includes several graphics, including the following general diagram of a wireless sensor node.

Companies mentioned in the article include HP, EnOcean Alliance, Perpetuum, Micropelt, Powercast, Enertia Energy Systems, Tellurex, CYMBET, Infinite Power Solutions (IPS), Perpetua, CAP-XX, Microstrain, Microchip, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, and Linear Technology.

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The New York Times recently ran an article on various projects and products related to RF energy harvesting, including some commentary on Powercast.

Title: Bye-Bye Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source

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The Economist has has written an interesting article about wireless power as envisioned by Telsa and today’s efforts on ambient RF energy harvesting:

Power from thin air
Wireless technology: It is already possible to send electricity without wires. Can devices be powered using ambient radiation from existing broadcasts?

Read more…

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Powercast demos prelude to mobile network RF energy harvester
Directed RF energy harvester demo is stepping stone to full ambient RF harvesters that can siphon energy from ubiquitous mobile networks

“After setting up an RF energy-harvesting demo at this week’s Sensors Expo collocated with ESC Chicago, Powercast’s director of marketing Harry Ostaffe presented a paper that outlined the concepts and paths to what he believes to be the endgame: full ambient RF harvesting capabilities that sip power from ubiquitous mobile networks and eliminate batteries and direct RF power sources completely.”  Read more…

Powercast presentation - Power Out of Thin Air (PDF)

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Powercast will participate as an exhibitor at the 2010 Sensors Expo & Conference.  At the event Power will be demonstrating a battery-free wireless sensor module powered by RF energy and designed for ultra-low power consumption.  The sensor module provides temperature and humidity data to an access point along with the received signal strength (RSSI) and the ID number of the Powercaster™ transmitter from which it is receiving power.

Powercast has recently released the P1110 and P2110 Powerharvester™ Receivers which are capable of converting radio waves in the range of 850-950 MHz into DC power.  The demonstration sensor module uses the P2110 Powerharvester receiver to store the received energy into a capacitor, and then performs a voltage boost to supply the module components will a regulated voltage.  Both the P1110 and P2110 enable a microcontroller to determine the signal strength of the received power, as well as to recover low-rate data encoded in the power broadcasted from the power transmitter.

Harry Ostaffe, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Powercast, will also be delivering two presentations during the event.  During the pre-conference symposium on June 7, 2010 he will speak on “Design Techniques for RF Energy Harvesting Devices”, and during the main conference on June 8, 2010 he will also present “Power Out of Thin Air: Ambient RF Energy Harvesting for Wireless Sensors”.

Powercast’s exhibit and wireless sensor demonstration will be located at Booth 1022 in the exhibition hall.

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Powercast announced the release of new RF Powerharvester receivers.  The P1110 and P2110 Powerharvester receivers offer additional functionality for power management and intelligent control.  They are designed for the 915 MHz band, but have a wide bandwidth which includes other commonly used frequencies.  The components work with any standard 50-ohm antenna.

http://www.powercastco.com

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Lot’s of people have an interest in harvesting RF energy as a “free” source of power.  It’s important though to understand the applications that have a good fit and those that don’t.

At the 2010 CES, an RCA-branded device called the Airnergy WiFi Energy Harvester was demonstrated.  The device has an RF energy harvester and an internal battery.  It was claimed that the device recharged most of a BlackBerry battery in 90 minutes.  We can only conclude that was from the internal battery and not from a WiFi router (a typical WiFi router puts out only 100mW).  We’ve posted below the CES video and an entertaining analysis of this device by David Jones of the Electronics Engineering Video Blog.

Dave Jones - EEV Blog

RCA Airnergy video from 2010 CES

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Darnell Group has determined that the “crossover” from the “Introduction” phase to the “Growth” phase for energy harvesting and related micro battery products will take place in the 2009/10 timeframe.  Their brief news report can be read here.

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