Is this the end of the wire?

Tuesday 28 April

You’ve got your flatscreen on your wall, but the slag heap of wires underneath is spoiling your view. What’s a man, or indeed a woman to do? Well, that’s the question that I was hoping to answer when I went to the States recently to find out about… wireless electricity!

First up I headed to Boston to catch up with the guys at WiTricity who have developed a way of powering compatible gadgets from up to 1.5m away wirelessly. Their system uses electro-magnetic energy. A hidden source coil will turn mains electricity into electro-magnetic waves, which are then picked up by the coil in your compatible gadget and turn it back into electricity, which then powers said gadget. Awesome.

Next up, I visited PowerCast – a company with a similar goal, but a different method of reaching that goal. PowerCast uses radio waves to charge tech. The really exciting aspect of this is that RF wireless power is everywhere, so when all our tech is embedded with receivers, they’ll be able to harvest all that ambient power to function. Wires? Who needs ‘em?