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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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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 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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New Scientist magazine has written an article titled “Unplugged: Goodbye cables, hello energy beams” which discusses several technologies and companies in the wireless power market, including Powercast.

As it relates to wireless sensors, RF energy is the only controllable, practical technology to provide power over distance to multiple sensors simultaneously.  Other technologies are either too directional for one-to-many powering (i.e. IR LEDs), or have severe range limitations (i.e. induction, MR).  There are the critics that say RF power is not efficient and most of the energy is wasted.  However, using RF to power sensors at long range (e.g. energy management and building automation) is not about the efficiency of the charging mechanism, it’s about enabling applications and achieving greater system-wide efficiency.  Having a transmitter than consumes a few watts but provides power to sensors which feedback data to control thousands (or tens of thousands) of watts or BTUs provides a significant “energy ROI”.

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Powercast’s wireless power technology, based on RF energy harvesting, was demonstrated at a recent trade show by the Government of Ontario (Canada).

(photos and details to be added)

wireless power Add new tag, wireless power

Product Design & Development (PDD) magazine profiled energy harvesting in “The Brainstorm” section of their August 2009 issue.  The questions asked of the contributors were:

“What is the future of energy harvesting?  What markets will energy harvesting have the greatest impact upon?”

http://e-ditionsbyfry.com/olive/ODE/PDD/Default.aspx?href=PDD/2009/08/01

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Powercast won a Gold-level “Best of Sensors Expo” Award at the 2009 Sensors Expo. The award was granted for innovation in sensor components category for the P2100 Powerharvester module.  The P2100 Powerharvester converts radio waves to DC power and enables battery-free wireless sensors.

At the Sensors Expo, Powercast exhibited wireless power demonstrations with components integrated from Texas Instruments, Esensors, CAP-XX, CYMBET, Infinite Power Solutions (IPS), and NTERA.  Devices were also powered remotely from the Powercast booth to the Esensors and IPS booths at distances of 35 feet and 25 feet, respectively.

Powercast participated in the new Energy Harvesting Pavilion, and conference presentations were given by Harry Ostaffe and Charlie Greene of Powercast.

SensorsMag.com Press Release

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Pittsburgh, PA – April 30, 2009 – Powercast, a leader in the commercialization of RF energy harvesting and wireless power solutions, announced it has joined the Texas Instruments Developer Network to support wireless powering of devices driven by TI’s MSP430.  The MSP430 is a market leading, low power microcontroller embedded in numerous portable and low-power wireless devices.

Powercast’s RF energy harvesting technology and embedded wireless power solutions enable controllable wireless power, over distance, between one or more sources and multiple receivers.  Devices with Powercast components can be designed for battery-free or battery-minimized operation, thereby eliminating disposable batteries and their adverse environmental impact.  These devices can be dormant, with zero stand-by power, and activated remotely with power being sent on-demand, on a scheduled basis, or continuously.

“We are pleased to have Powercast join TI’s Developer Network,” said Eric Siegel, MCU developer network manager at Texas Instruments.  “Combining wireless power technology with the ultra-low power consumption of the MSP430, Powercast’s innovative solutions eliminate the need to replace batteries by providing constant, unattended charge for applications in the low-power RF market.”

Powercast has also developed an integrated module for demonstrating battery-free wireless sensors.  The Powercast module contains an integrated power receiving antenna, a Powerharvester™ module, energy storage, and space for a low-power wireless module like Texas Instruments eZ430-RF2500T.

“The wireless sensor market is rapidly expanding and today’s wireless sensors are predominantly powered by disposable batteries.  Battery replacement creates a significant operational challenge that will greatly impact the willingness of end-users to scale sensor networks or deploy wireless sensors in hard to service locations.” said Harry Ostaffe, Director of Marketing for Powercast.  “Powercast’s wireless power solutions enable battery-free designs for wireless sensor devices, and allow for lifetime operation without changing batteries.”

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An article by Harry Ostaffe of Powercast was recently published in Industrial Embedded Systems.

The article is titled “Wireless power energizes wireless sensor networks”, and discusses how wireless power enabled by RF energy harvesting can provide a controllable and perpetual source of energy for wireless sensors.  The opening paragraphs are included below.

Battery replacement in wireless sensors is a key factor in limiting device location and scale. Through RF energy harvesting, wireless power can recharge wireless sensors remotely and eliminate battery replacement.

Wireless sensor applications and installations continue to grow as the technology evolves. The ability to add remote sensing points without the cost of running wires is resulting in numerous benefits, including energy and material savings, process improvements, and productivity increases.

Disposable, primary batteries typically supply the main power source for wireless sensors. Primary batteries are a readily available power source and have proven to be useful in many applications. However, with primary batteries as the source of power, sensor and component companies have had to focus on decreasing power consumption to overcome the objections of maintenance cost and disruption from repeated battery changes. The resulting benefit is that wireless sensors and protocols are now sufficiently low power as to be powered from sources of energy other than primary batteries.

>> continue reading

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An interesting project we’ve been working on is to power the Texas Instruments eZ430-RF2500 wireless sensor demo system.  The components are easy to set-up and use, and the RF2500T target board has very low power consumption.  The RF2500T modules use TI’s MSP430 microcontroller, a Chipcon radio, and the SimpliciTI protocol.

We powered the RF2500T Target Board without batteries using a 900MHz transmitter and lab boards with a Powerharvester(TM) module.  The capacitor on the receiving board (shown above left) was first charged to 3V and then the sensor was activated.  The sensor would then run continuously as wireless power was available, and then until the capacitor voltage dropped below the operating threshold.

Later, we used one of the “charge and fire” lab boards from the Lifetime Power(TM) Evaluation and Development Kit (shown above right) to automate the operation.  The P2100 Powerharvester module on the lab board is designed to convert RF energy and store it in a capacitor.  When a voltage threshold is reached on the capacitor, the P2100 switches on its’ output to the sensor at 3.3 volts.  When a lower voltage threshold is reach on the capacitor the output to the sensor is switched off.  The power output to the wireless sensor can be continuous if the received power is greater than the power consumption of the sensor, or the sensor can be operated intermittently when enough energy is accumulated in the capacitor.

The ability for a sensor to support intermittent operation, with variable inactive periods or long sleep periods, and with minimal start-up sequencing and communications handshaking, will provide the farthest range with RF energy harvesting.

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