[CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals

By Evan Ackerman

This thing is, seriously, the highlight of CES for me (so far) this year. 3D TVs and eBook readers are fine, but there’s nothing amazing about them.

The Airnergy Charger is amazing. Forget your android battery saver/iphone battery saver, this charger handles everything via WiFi directly. This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.

The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.

Here is the really, really unbelievable part: RCA says that the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after. I mean, all kinds of people are pushing wireless charging, but this would hands down take the cake… It doesn’t need a pad and it’s charging all the time, for free, in just about any urban environment.

We didn’t think you’d believe all this, so we made RCA explain it all on video:

Yeah, we’ll definitely be keeping you updated on this one.

http://cookingvalley.blogspot.com/ kerin

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Red Scourge

Bah, Nikola Tesla was already doing this sort of thing 100 years ago!
http://www.facebook.com/klezmai Seb Cardonne

well …
like you said its all about profit ..
and i guess you would make a lot more profit selling normal charger for 20 years
then selling a non-usable product 6 months and then selling nothing because you ruined your reputation..
http://www.itrush.com Cool New Gadgets

What a cool invention, harvesting electricity from wifi signal is just amazing, can’t imagine that..
Matt Buczek

Right. How are we moving electrons with around 0.00001 eV anyway? This is such garbage.
Algae Elbaum

lol, everyone just got completely and effectively trolled, but seriously this guy’s an idion
http://www.facebook.com/seanjc1 Sean J Connolly

This is absolutely awesome, I want one
silangtomilas

oh yeahh,. Am tired of reading all the comment.. I think it would be much more better if I just wrote my opinion in here,…. well ok i’ll say it, i’m no good in math really but I have my common sense with me. first of all, our genius reader had made a computation and they concluded that there is a really a power on those WI-fi signal that could be converted into electrical charges, well that’s good except only on the unthoughtful fact that it takes long for a particular thing to charge and it may even takes years or decade or century perhaps..
Boooom!!!! I have a good Idea why won’t you just study the structure of APC back-up power for the meantime,. at list, you would have something to do rather than proposing the impossibilities base on your calculation…. I also don’t believe in this thing unless I have one ) toinksss
Todd E.

Obviously junk. All radios “harvest power” from the transmitter but it’s a tiny amount just enough to communicate information.
Todd E.

Obviously junk. All radios “harvest power” from the transmitter but it’s a tiny amount just enough to communicate information.
Todd E.

And of course Maxwell, Hertz, Marconi, and all of us that have ever turned on a radio or TV set.
http://saluxjiras.it/ Saluxjiras

I don’t know if it’s really possible and if the profit is more than the loss, but i really think that we have to change the power source of energy. And i think also that capture of wireless wave energy isn’t a real solution.
Anonymous

Gives you an idea of the level of radiation we are all exposed to even by our WiFi hookups at home. If there is enough to charge a battery then there is enough to screw with our brains.
http://www.facebook.com/tlewellyn Tim Lewellyn

Anyone know who TESLA was ? Free energy for all, but no, Edison would have no part of it.

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[CES 2010] RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals