Technology

60112 readers

2028 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

154

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

59 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] kae@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Wireless switches — consisting of a transmitter on the switch and a receiver near a light fixture or other appliance — have been around for many years, and have been proven that they can reduce the material and labour cost for wiring houses, says Kambiz Moez, director of electrical engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, but they require batteries to operate.

So the product already exists, what is novel here is a concept to harvest RF energy I stead of batteries.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I think this is the usual thing where some engineer/scientist has developed a product that's interesting and put out a press release then a journalist got ahold of it, grossly misinterpreted what was being said and wrote an article speculating that this would lead to all kinds of things that are not even remotely possible.

The article claims this will somehow save money on wiring a house, but that emphatically does not seem to be the case, that's not the problem being solved here. This isn't a revolutionary breakthrough, this is just a slightly interesting design to power IoT devices via wireless power rather than the usual dime batteries.

[–] Nighed@sffa.community 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I imagine replacing the battery in your light switch in the dark (because you can't turn the lights on) is probably rather annoying. This sounds like a cool idea.

[–] realharo@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Replacing the battery in your light switch is something you do maybe once every 3 years.

And you can still use your phone as a backup remote.

[–] venusenvy47@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't call it "harvesting" if you have operate power transmitters on each floor of the house. "Energy harvesting" usually means you are using something that is already present in the environment.

"each floor would have one or two RF (radio frequency) power transmitters to powe r up all switches inside the house."