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Cites 7Figures2Commas · 2014-11 · on “Putting $10M into UBeam illustrates what is wrong with tech investing”

From Arrington's blog: > In a year or so when this thing is productized you’ll be hearing a lot more about Mary. As you note, that was written on May 23, 2012, more than 2 years ago. According to this article[1], the company is now aiming to be selling "by 2016." This suggests there was either a misunderstanding about the time required to develop a commercial product, or developing a commercial product has taken a lot longer than anticipated. What's interesting to me is that the recent photo from the New York Times[2], which Mark Suster also included in his blog post[3], doesn't on the surface seem to show substantial progress from what was being demoed back in 2011[4][5]. Charging a single

Critical Animats · 2015-11 · on “UBeam Declassifies Secrets to Try to Prove Wireless Power Is Possible”

They had a working demo in 2012. Here it is.[1] You're looking at a single big ultrasonic transducer sending to a bunch of little ones. The little ones are the same ones RobotShop sells.[2] They're very vague about how much energy went in and how much came out. The big heat sinks on the sending side suggest that a few hundred watts are going in. The meter on the receive side is just showing voltage, so there's no indication of the actual energy transfer. There's no beam forming or steering. Anybody could reproduce that demo, but it doesn't prove much. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]

Critical TeMPOraL · 2015-11 · on “Experts Still Think UBeam’s Through-The-Air Charging Tech Is Unlikely”

Well, either it works or it doesn't. What's there to talk about? It's not that they're doing rocket science. > "But even amid a tidal wave of publicity, the company has never publicly demonstrated a fully functioning prototype of its system." This is what I don't get - how the hell did they manage to get investors? I mean, ultrasound charging isn't magic, anyone who knows their stuff around EE should be able to throw together in a month a simple prototype of the tech to show to the investors. That is, a prototype that actually charges a phone, not this[0] which a) doesn't really charge the phone, and b) seems to be geared towards confusing people clueless about electricity. The fact that the

Critical Animats · 2017-02 · on “UBeam finally shows off its wireless charging tech”

Perry first stood a couple of yards from a large white box emitting ultrasound waves, and used a device that glowed red when it was in the waves' path. She then grabbed an Android smartphone in a large and bulky black case, and held it up in that path. When she did so, a large battery charge counter on the screen showed that it was indeed charging. Of course you can transmit some power that way. But how much? And what's the efficiency? Here's their previous demo, from 2011.[1] What they had then was a bunch of cheap ultrasonic transducers [2] aimed at each other. Those used to be popular for hobbyist robotics. Some unspecified amount of power was transmitted about two feet. Probably a few mi