[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.

Anonymous

The ones in the DC Soup Kitchens have Blackberries…http://current.com/items/90185372_michelle-obama-at-a-soup-kitchen-homeless-with-blackberry.htm
Anonymous

The ones in the DC Soup Kitchens have Blackberries…http://current.com/items/90185372_michelle-obama-at-a-soup-kitchen-homeless-with-blackberry.htm
1cem4n

Wow this gadget is so AWESOME! I can just imagine my phone charging itself all day while I am out and about, finally a company innovative enough to harvest all that free energy from Wifi!
Jessicat

Well this is either a hit or miss. But either way a great start in the process and road towards achieving things of this nature. I am hoping for success at $40. At least they aren't charging an arm and leg for it.
mdcougar

Yea, they're not charging an arm and a leg, but the way I heard it, they're not even charging a phone. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I'm anxious to see if it actually hits the market this summer…
http://www.facebook.com/esenterre Éric Senterre

HALLUCINANT!!! Charger ses gadgets avec les ondes WiFi! Ca, ca sera pratique!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37519367 facebook-37519367

Really amazing piece of hardware… can't wait till it hits market
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=826303057 facebook-826303057

Oops. I am waiting for the 1st of April to order …
jd300

Just to put it in context, even in a magical mythical world where it was able to replace your wired mobile charger completely, it would take about 80 years to recoup your initial outlay of $40. A smartphone consumes approximately $0.50 a year of electricity (heavy users can double this value – only 40 years payback).

This is verging on fraud. I am truly shocked at the audacity of RCA… I will also be very shocked if it makes it to market – the return rate would likely be very high once users realise how little power can be harvested.
Anonymous

I am skeptical of the ninety minute charge of the cell phone (was the Airnergy Charger’s internal battery empty to begin with?), but for harvesting radio waves, I cannot image you could find a better location than a huge trade show.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1799465440 facebook-1799465440

Read about NIKOLA TESLA and try to be more open minded, if the Wright brothers would have given up on flight someone else would have figured it out. And for the math geniuses try reading about tesla, he worked for Thomas Edison and help perfect electrical current that we use today. The same elctricity you are using to power your computer or whatever electronic device you are using to Bash RCA and the component they have made. Lets see if it works before we pass judgement, like people have done so many times before in the past.

http://www.teslasociety.com/biography.htm

The International System of Units unit measuring magnetic field B (also referred to as the magnetic flux density and magnetic induction), the tesla, was named in his honor (at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960), as well as the Tesla effect of wireless energy transfer to wirelessly power electronic devices (which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale with incandescent light bulbs as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial power levels in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project).
Laurentrepond

yeah, completely bogus…
Anonymous

There is no RCA any more. Thompson (a French company) licenses out the name. It sounds like they licensed it to somebody they should not have.

It didn’t cost much at all to build that prototype… because it doesn’t work. If anything, it’s probably nothing more than a usb-charged backup battery.
Anonymous

There is no RCA any more. Thompson (a French company) licenses out the name. It sounds like they licensed it to somebody they should not have.

It didn’t cost much at all to build that prototype… because it doesn’t work. If anything, it’s probably nothing more than a usb-charged backup battery.
Anonymous

There is no RCA any more. Thompson (a French company) licenses out the name. It sounds like they licensed it to somebody they should not have.

It didn’t cost much at all to build that prototype… because it doesn’t work. If anything, it’s probably nothing more than a usb-charged backup battery.
http://www.facebook.com/joelkatz David Schwartz

Yes, it can charge a Blackberry in 90 minutes from its internal battery. The question is, how long does it take to charge its internal battery from WiFi. He never answers that question, and in fact dodges it quite expertly.

This is snake oil.
Anonymous

omg coolest gadget ever!!!!! lolz
Anonymous

omg coolest gadget ever!!!!! lolz
Anonymous

omg coolest gadget ever!!!!! lolz
yoblin

I see what you did there….
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635668028 facebook-635668028

That is too cool!
http://torchtech.judgementgaming.com/ tagno25

If I put it into a 850W output microwave would it be able to charge in ~30 min?
utera

lol someone claimed that RCA was risking its name, why would a big company do that?
RCA is dead. has been for years, its name got sold off, its not the rca you knew. happens all the time these days.
jd300

Nikolai Tesla was an innovator. He did things that nobody had done before. The principles that this device rely on are however very well known and already used in certain applications. There are several well known universities working on the use of this sort of technique. Unfortunately what RCA has done is purely a marketing stunt. Unless they have discovered a new and previously unknown law of physics (which would be much bigger news than the device itself) this will never give the benefits some people here seem to believe it will.
http://twitter.com/Namarrgon Daniel Koch

Well, if there were 12,579 hotspots nearby, all only 5 feet away, then yeah, it might charge in a day (still assuming 100% efficiency).
werewolf_nr

I think ultimately Cynake and Rick have it pinned down. There is no practical way this could work. It obviously is better thought out than most “free” energy schemes in that you do end up with a trickle, but not nearly enough to be useful.
http://twitter.com/Namarrgon Daniel Koch

Actually, 4 square metres would increase the reception only 1,033x, so it'd charge in 12 days (minimum), assuming the AP was no more than 1 metre away from the middle of the conductive hanging. If your neighbour also had an AP just 20 metres away, their power contribution would speed things up by almost 0.08% (13 minutes quicker).

You might be able to bring this down to a mere 40 hours if you used 6 of these wall hangings, arranged in a cube around the router so that they absorbed 100% of the AP's output
http://www.facebook.com/smarthall Daniel Hall

If you absorbed 100% of the AP's output, that would mean that you wouldn't be able to use the AP right?
budfields

(RCA, of course, since it does not exist, has no marketing dept.)
http://twitter.com/KyeSeveN Kye Sakellariou

omgsh wifi harvesting phone recharger ftw, oem battery packs on the way :O such a smart idea!
Anonymous

I love products like these because they remind me that even if I’m a complete failure in life I can still make money selling good old fashioned snake oil.

Did you know that due to the high volatility of snake oil that you can harvest energy from living snakes by condensing oil droplets from the air around them? Think about it, just one snake (which on a yearly basis generates over 1000mWh’s of snake oil energy) living in and around your home could generate enough energy to half charge your cell phone. Additionally snake oil doesn’t break down in the atmosphere so there is a large amount of snake oil energy dispersed in the atmosphere even in areas with relatively low snake densities. Clearly this is situation is preferable to that of collecting energy from wifi. Will wifi energy collection work at the North Pole? No, but snake oil will.
Anonymous

I love products like these because they remind me that even if I’m a complete failure in life I can still make money selling good old fashioned snake oil.

Did you know that due to the high volatility of snake oil that you can harvest energy from living snakes by condensing oil droplets from the air around them? Think about it, just one snake (which on a yearly basis generates over 1000mWh’s of snake oil energy) living in and around your home could generate enough energy to half charge your cell phone. Additionally snake oil doesn’t break down in the atmosphere so there is a large amount of snake oil energy dispersed in the atmosphere even in areas with relatively low snake densities. Clearly this is situation is preferable to that of collecting energy from wifi. Will wifi energy collection work at the North Pole? No, but snake oil will.
Anonymous

I love products like these because they remind me that even if I’m a complete failure in life I can still make money selling good old fashioned snake oil.

Did you know that due to the high volatility of snake oil that you can harvest energy from living snakes by condensing oil droplets from the air around them? Think about it, just one snake (which on a yearly basis generates over 1000mWh’s of snake oil energy) living in and around your home could generate enough energy to half charge your cell phone. Additionally snake oil doesn’t break down in the atmosphere so there is a large amount of snake oil energy dispersed in the atmosphere even in areas with relatively low snake densities. Clearly this is situation is preferable to that of collecting energy from wifi. Will wifi energy collection work at the North Pole? No, but snake oil will.
Anonymous

If you put it inside your wifi router and put tinfoil completely enclosing your router, it might charge it in a year or two.
Anonymous

If you put it inside your wifi router and put tinfoil completely enclosing your router, it might charge it in a year or two.
Anonymous

If you put it inside your wifi router and put tinfoil completely enclosing your router, it might charge it in a year or two.
lamer999

You guys putting up your so-called physics math are not using your brains… taking the energy from the signal wouldn't work (of course it would take too long), so this device couldn't do that and work. It most likely has some wi-fi reactive material that vibrates or moves at the 2.4 Ghz (or whatever) signal, which causes physical motion which charges the battery. I guess that reason why you haven't been on the forefront of a technology like this and they have is because of the same close-mindedness and criticism that you display. Stop watching so much Big Bang Theory.
lamer999

You guys putting up your so-called physics math are not using your brains… taking the energy from the signal wouldn't work (of course it would take too long), so this device couldn't do that and work. It most likely has some wi-fi reactive material that vibrates or moves at the 2.4 Ghz (or whatever) signal, which causes physical motion which charges the battery. I guess that reason why you haven't been on the forefront of a technology like this and they have is because of the same close-mindedness and criticism that you display. Stop watching so much Big Bang Theory.
sammybaby

“It most likely has some wi-fi reactive material that vibrates or moves at the 2.4 Ghz (or whatever) signal, which causes physical motion which charges the battery.”

Meaning, it produces more power than it uses? Sorry, but your theory makes less sense than the original.
Anonymous

Well, you’re right about there being some mechanism involved that we’re unaware of, but you cannot get more energy out of a system then you put in. So if they really are just using the 2.4Ghz spectrum, the other posters are correct, since you could not, using only the 2.4Ghz signal, cause “vibrations” that produce more energy than was inherent within the signal. Energy cannot be created out of nowhere, so if it’s not already stored in the phone, and it’s not in the signal, then you’ve got some laws of physics to violate in order to have a successful product.
StoicSophist

“taking the energy from the signal wouldn't work…It most likely has some wi-fi reactive material that vibrates or moves at the 2.4 Ghz (or whatever) signal”

The signal couldn't do it, so it must be the signal?

Uhhh…what?
StoicSophist

Dude, inverse square law. Look into it.
StoicSophist

Dude, even if this worked (which it can't), and even if homeless people had a bunch of electronic devices, and all bought this device for each one (which is highly unlikely), the power that this thing claims to absorb would be power THAT IS LOST TO YOU ALREADY. This device doesn't suck power out of your wifi antenna like a freaking vampire, it (supposedly) work by absorbing the power you are broadcasting anyway. When your wifi is on it outputs energy in any direction, and you don't magically get that power back if a device doesn't make use of it. It's just gone. I mean, duh.
asdasdasxxxdasd

http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/soupkitch…
felixthecatxxxx

My mind is so open about this that I plan to order ten! Maybe a hundred! This device, along with my perpetual motion machine and pills that turn water into gasoline, will make me the energy king of the neighborhood!
Anonymous

The analysis ignores an important detail: reflection. If you put the device 5 feet from a hotspot, it’s not just going to receive the energy from a 6 square inch cone, but also from waves bouncing off the walls, floor, ceiling, etc. In the extreme case, if you put it inside a black box with a hotspot, it should receive about 50% of the energy (the other 50% would simply be reabsorbed by the hotspot). That’s 50 mW, so the battery would take about 80 hours to charge, assuming 100% efficiency.

Are you going to be able to run a blackberry off this device alone? No way. But it may not be as impractical as it appears at first glance.
jd300

Maybe if you pooled the energy collected from all 100 devices you might be able to extend your battery life by a few minutes? P.S. Bet my cold fusion generator is better than your perpetual motion machine.
http://twitter.com/JMMelancon Justin Melancon

Wow, is this supposed to be a tech site? Some skepticism in the article (even just one sentence!) would have done a lot to save some credibility. Some other posters have already put up the math to prove this is bogus, but common sense should tell you this is too good to be true.
tortorific

In this thread we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

If the energy absorber was able to harvest more energy than the wireless source emitted then you could just plug it into the wireless emitter and bam free energy. So either they have broken all the laws of thermodynamics and come up with a product that will completely solve global warming and oil dependency and is the greatest advancement in all science ever or it's a garbage product that does bugger all.

The maths is right, the device is BS, kudos to Cynake.
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Rose/1659381767 David Rose

Reading about this device just gave me cancer.

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