cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426215
I would find this super cool if it wasnt for the fact that all of the radio frequencies are owned by the military and corporations. Outdoor IoT could be amazing, but it is kind of dead because you cant actually connect it to the internet without laying down cable or using 4G which is horrible for low power applications.
I don’t know what kind of idea you are getting. Radio and wi-ifi are waves. The wave is what can be used, you don’t care who generated it. To say it somehow the wave is in the air and you just take advantage of it being there to convert it to energy. Doesn’t matter what the wave could have been read as. In general a radio station is not going to stop working for a whole region just to stop you from using it.
Maybe i left out too much context.
Im not talking about the research itself, but about how it could be utilized.
Their idea (having small devices that can be powered by nothing but stray radiowaves) apparently works and is great by itself.
However its usefullness is limited if you cant somehow connect those devices with the rest of the world. Thats the issue im complaining about.
There are tons of small devices that don’t have to be connected to be useful. Lots of personal items or small sensors.
This is the same take as people thinking wind energy steals wind, or solar energy reduces the sun’s efficacy.
Technically, a properly tuned receiver that’s using the signal for power can create radio “shadows” behind the device. People have also been caught with giant coils in their attic siphoning power from nearby radio stations and high voltage power lines, because they can detect the power draw.
Wind energy does.
It’s just that we can’t extract sufficient energy from it to have any meaningful impact.
