Cases convert RF into usable power; Kickstarter funding campaign coming soon
Research and development firm Nikola Labs is set to launch a crowd-funding campaign to bring to market a new smartphone case that purportedly turns energy from Wi-Fi, LTE and Bluetooth into direct current power that provides wireless charging to a smartphone.
Nikola Labs bills itself as focused on “projects where there is unrealized potential due to rapid advancement in electronics.” The promised technology uses a “harvesting circuit. The result is usable energy that can provide power to mobile devices wirelessly,” according to a company website.
Nikola Labs touts the phone case as featuring “sleep protection, battery life extension, RF harvesting antenna, signal strength indicator [and] RF-DC converter.”
Company co-founders Will Zell and Rob Lee recently pitched their device during TechCrunch Disrupt 2015 in New York.
“We allow you to download power from the air,” Zell said. “We’re using 19th century technology to power 21st century mobile devices. It’s a terrible problem. You as a consumer deserve a better solution.”
Zell harkened back to company namesake Nikola Tesla, a pioneer in the field of energy transmission, and Henrich Hertz, who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves.
“When you use your phone, you’re constantly transmitting energy,” Zell said. “But, over 90% of that energy is lost into the environment. That is perfectly good energy that could be put to use and that’s what we do at Nikola Labs.”
He said the current design is for an Apple iPhone 6 and will retail for $99.
In response to questions, Lee said the product is the result of out-of-the-box thinking: “In the area of electromagnetics … most people are trying to do wireless charging. I don’t think anybody has really thought about the fact of capturing energy from the phone itself.”
The Wireless Power Consortium developed what’s called the Qi standard, which sets benchmarks for wireless charging products. Essentially, there’s a power transmission pad that wirelessly sends power into a device with a similarly equipped receiver.
