this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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154
Researcher has developed, at a cost of less than one dollar, a wireless light switch that runs without batteries, can be installed anywhere on a wall and could reduce the cost of wiring a house by ... (www.ualberta.ca)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Researcher has developed, at a cost of less than one dollar, a wireless light switch that runs without batteries, can be installed anywhere on a wall and could reduce the cost of wiring a house by ...::A U of A engineering researcher has developed a wireless light switch that could reduce the cost of wiring a house by as much as 50 per cent.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (8 children)

What makes his system unique is that the switches run without batteries, harvesting energy from ambient sources such as radio frequency signals.

That is mind-blowing.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Last time i saw a product claiming to run on energy harvested from radio-waves, it was a kickstarter project that (surprise surprise) turned out to be a complete scam.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It is totally possible to harvest energy from radio waves, it's just such a tiny amount that you could barely light a LED

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah that's my point, the energy you can actually harvest is ridiculously small. Even if it was slowly charging a capacitor with this harvested power and saving it for later use, how often can i use the switch before depleting the energy faster than it charges? "oh sorry, you'll have to wait 5min to turn on your lights again, It's not quite charged enough"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

My guess is you would get a couple seconds of light before needing several hours to charge it up again.

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