
Unofficial uBeam FAQ - 7Figures2Commas
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-ubeam-faq/
======
DarthMader
[https://twitter.com/meredithperry](https://twitter.com/meredithperry)

Looks like Meredith Perry read this article too judging by her latest tweet
storm even though she said yesterday she would be going dark until product
launch...

I don't understand why she is taking this so personally. Of course everyone is
going to doubt you when you say you've invented a new technology. I would
expect this type of response from someone much younger but not a CEO who has
raised millions.

Go back to work and prove this to the world because you haven't proven
anything so far

~~~
bshimmin
Do you really think she's taking it personally, or is that "tweet storm"
actually something of a PR exercise? Those tweets don't read as someone who is
upset to me - they read as someone who is carefully cultivating a tough image
(just the same as her Twitter bio).

That aside, the promise of power without wires is certainly exciting; the
prospect of one's eyeballs peeling off in order to use it, less so.

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jacquesm
This is an excellent comment in the old thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542479)

uBeam has me puzzled. I do DD for a living and I've learned over quite a few
years not to reject ideas out of hand. The best start-ups are the ones that do
something that everybody else _thinks_ is impossible anyway.

That said, from the patent application I'm not getting anything novel or
interesting, the comment linked above - assuming that's pointing in the right
direction - makes me wonder if there is more to uBeam than meets the eye at
first glance, defocused beams combined with a feedback mechanism and phased
arrays of transducers _might_ be viable (but would not require much in terms
of mechanical aiming devices which is why I wonder if they're aware of such
tech, and even though hardware requires more capital than the next photo
sharing app I do wonder what they'd need $10M for).

If they do not have that particular rabbit or one very much like it up their
sleeve then I'd happily bet against them. Since a bunch of high flying VCs
went on and invested after doing proper DD you'd have to assume there is
something non-obvious about all this. If they have a proof-of-concept and DD
was done then you can bet that (assuming the DD team was halfway competent -
which is what should be a safe assumption but I've seen a train-wreck (or
two)) the practical efficiency for conversion of that proof-of-concept was
measured and found to be good enough to warrant further investment.

If no 'proof-of-concept' was shown capable of delivering the required power
then this project falls into the basic research with unknown outcome category,
which translates into very low probability of success, but that does not jive
with their time-to-market prediction, nor does it warrant the barrage of PR.

Even if the tech is viable I don't mind the inconvenience of plugging in my
phone at night, and besides it lasts for many days anyway (old tech > new tech
in this case...) so it doesn't really mean much to me, but I can see the mass
market appeal and that's what drives investment.

 _If_ uBeam fails to deliver it will be a serious black eye for a lot of
people with high visibility _and_ it will be a set-back for any future
hardware start-up that wants to push the envelope.

Personally I wouldn't bet on them but one thing is for sure, if $10M can't get
them to create a working device then likely it can't be done at all, given
that they've already over-run their initial time-to-market predictions they're
not looking good.

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bmelton
Previous discussion on uBeam[1].

As someone who isn't at all educated on this kind of thing, I'm eager to hear
whether or not the FAQ sheds any particular light on the issues.

As I recall, much of the theory behind it incited rather polarizing
discussion.

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8542091)

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kastnerkyle
If this really works, the only options I see are that a) it works at a
massively ineffective power transfer rate or b) it is dangerous if you
accidentally get in the focused beam (or c) a combination of the two). Any
kind of beamforming which can get a decent power transfer will, naturally,
transfer that energy into whatever is where the power is focused. Granted,
uBeam claims to stop power transfer if line of sight between beamer and device
is blocked, but then you are counting on a safety mechanism which is "default
off" in some sense. I personally would want to see more tests than a 5 week
pig trial as mentioned in the techcrunch piece [1]. After all, radium used to
be seen as a "health medicine" back in the early 1900s - it was only after
years we realized that radiation was really, really dangerous. It would be
great to ensure that kind of thing would not happen in this case - but this
means something like a multi-year trial period, which is not good for a
startup.

If it is inefficient, the energy issues we already have in the world make it
seem irresponsible (to me at least) to use something that operates even more
inefficiently than the current system, which is already causing global
problems with respect to energy consumption and generation. Even inductive
chargers have efficiency issues, and it seems like converting to ultrasound
and back would have some inherent loss, though it is really dependent on the
quality of implementation. If they can avoid danger, and only have
inefficiency issues, I could see some success here for low-energy requirement
devices.

If it is dangerous, well that is pretty obvious. No one wants to slow
microwave their dog/child/foot/hand if the beamforming is slightly off.

I just don't see a way for this product (or any number of other related
products, or RF energy harnessing generally) to succeed without some (unknown)
fundamental breakthrough or incredibly expensive hardware.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/how-ubeam-
works/?ncid=rss&u...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/08/how-ubeam-
works/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=twitter)

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DarthMader
This wouldn't be the first time Andreeson Horowitz has thrown money at a young
founder positioned by the media as the next big innovator with a revolutionary
wireless technology. First, Lucas Duplan of Clinkle, next Meredith Perry?

------
rdtsc
The first thing I thought of was this:

[http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sonar_fence](http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sonar_fence)

