Devices Connect with Borrowed TV Signals, and Need No Power Source
Devices that can make wireless connections even without an onboard battery could spread computing power into everything you own.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518111/devices-connect-with-borrowed-tv-signals-and-need-no-power-source/
It has been a while, sorry to my regular reader(s). Nothing has really grabbed me until this…
One of the reasons for the phenomenal increase in wireless gadgets has been the phenomenal _decrease_ in energy consumption to operate them (remember the initial cell phones? They weren’t nicknamed ‘bricks’ for nothing! My parent’s was practically hard-wired into their car and while in principle portable, it was too heavy to move regularly, and that was just a couple of decades ago). Our current environment is awash in electromagnetic radiation (of radio/microwave origin, it is also awash in sun light half of every day and light is electromagnetic radiation) and I have often wondered about extracting that energy for some sort of use (see rectenna). This article is interesting because they have demonstrated that it is indeed feasible, now someone just has to develop a compelling use case and produce the product for less than what it is worth…
