Some people hate cables with a passion; others are agnostic and prefer cabled peripherals to having to stop and charge their mouse. [Matt] from DIYPerks has the best of both worlds with this wireless-powered, no-cable desk setup.
The secret is embedded within the plywood desk: an evaluation kit from Etherdyne Technologies, Inc consisting of a 100 W RF power supply and its associated power antenna looping around the desktop edge. The mechanism is similar to the inductive charging often seen on phones nowadays, but at higher frequency and larger scale, enabling power to be transmitted several feet (at least a meter) above the desktop.
The kit from ETI contained several PCB-coil receivers, which [Matt] built into a number of devices, including a lamp, heated cup, microphone, speakers, his mouse, keyboard, and even a custom base to run his monitor, which really shows the power these things can pull.
The microphone is a non-Bluetooth RF unit lovingly modified to studio quality, at least as far as we can tell on laptop speakers through YouTube’s compression. The speakers use a pair of Bluetooth modules to negotiate stereo sound while staying in sync. And before you ask “what about signal for the monitor?”– we have to inform you that was taken care of too, via a wireless HDMI dongle. Check it out in the video below.
Of course the elephant in the room here is power usage — there’s a 10 W base draw, and probably a big hit to efficiency vs cabled-everything– but we figure he gets partway to a pass on that by using a Frameworks mainboard instead desktop hardware. Indeed, a full analysis might show that the transmission efficiency of this system is no worse than the power to charge/discharge inefficiencies in a more conventional battery powered wireless setup.
While no wires is pretty clean, we’re not sure this beats the totally-hidden-in-the-desk PC [Matt] built last year in terms of minimalist aesthetic. That Frameworks mainboard also likely lacks the power of his triple-screen luggable, but this was still an entertaining build.
this is one of those glitzy/glamorous channels that i really can’t stand. he’s always light on specifics, and heavy on the appearance aspect. his last build with the ‘wireless surround sound’, i bought the dsp modules for another project, and still haven’t figured out how he managed to program them. the included software is garbage, if it even runs at all.
It is just an advertisement and click bait. Personally, when the flash opening happens, I immediately take the url to a transcript extractor, skim it, 90% there is nothing there. Maybe something interesting will come from it for someone. I am on the same page as you, the transcript is meaningless and the minute I reviewed was about as informative as an “Oddly Satisfying” video.
I had similar feelings originaly, because i’ve expected something and i was geting something else. Now that i know what to expect, i am no longer disappointed when i watch those.
To be fair, it is nice that he’s commited to perfecting the visual aspects. Not many people do that in DIY hardware community, so i find it inspiring in that regard. On the other hand, most (if not all) of the electronics he’s using are already quite well covered in other videos that do not care about appearance. It’s not like he’s doing something you cannot figure out after bit of internet research…
That’s fair but I can’t shake the feeling that pretty much all of his “entertainment” misses it’s mark when posted on HaD.
By how much is debatable – The few videos I’ve seen (eg. a few DIY beamer ones (with iPad displays?)) were pretty much useless in the “hacker” context.
For hacker “inspiration” 2-3 pictures of the product would’ve been more than enough.
It’s made to be watched by non engineering people and be entertained. That requires good presentation and trying to not bore them.
Nothing wrong with that, we just aren’t the target audience.
Then why HaD staff keeps posting this crap?
There’s a few reasons!
– One is that it keeps showing up in our tips line. This article doesn’t have the credit, but that’s only because the tip showed up while it was in the publication queue. At least one person thought this video should be written up for Hackaday, even if you did not.
– Two is that it is for inspiration! Like the cartoon said, “knowing is half the battle”– once you know something can be done, you can build on that knowledge if you want to, even if you don’t have every exact detail of how it was done.
– Three is that really well documented content is rare. We love to post cool projects with good documentation, but that’s a thin venn diagram. You might prefer fewer posts of that style, and I would not blame you, but to get the number of posts we make daily? Yeah, we have to feed through the content that exists, which is mostly Youtube these days. (An IMO, [DIY Perks] is a step above a lot of YouTube content in that there is a forum where you can go to discuss the projects and get help from his fan community with implementation. Not even a Discord, and actual, real-life forum!)
That’s just like, my opinion, man; don’t take it as gospel from Hackaday. Editors may feel differently. Honestly, I just think they’re neat.
You are correct, I sent the link to the editors via the “submit-a-tip” the same day the video came out.
Why?
Because i haven’t seen much of these “made-for-non-nerds” type articles and links (which isn’t a problem in itself, but think of it like as you adore knitted outfits and the ONLY forums that are online are made for knitting machine manufacturers… in pashtu.). I figured it would be neat, if somebody with better fundamentals on electronics would get inspired and do something similar FOR US or be like “So this is how you speak to the normies” and make their projects human-readable to the masses.
Also: the guy has a neato community, as said by the person i reply to.
I came up with some big never ending rambling reply, but never submitted it.
Best I can come up with is “Divide and Conquer” and is this “really worth your time or effort”
for me no, I have very little reason to move around most of these devices and already have most of the wires well hidden until you hit “the cord”. That contains everything in one fat split loom wrap that is well out of normal visibility
And people wonder why we can’t address climate change. sigh
Solar power adoption is an exponential curve over time, while other sources of fuel are linear. We’re doing just fine. The sky is certainly not falling, relax. Available energy use per person is directly related to wealth and well being. The solution is not shrinking our lives, but to living better. Don’t believe the crowd that wants you to live in the dark and eat bugs.
Yes, right! Live your life, but don’t listen to those who say: Don’t do anything, whatever you do doesn’t matter, or let the big industry self-regulate. That means they can do whatever they want for the next quarter’s profits, by the way. In the end, they’ll spout a couple of straw man arguments (e.g., eating bugs).
I almost forgot: Don’t feed the troll.
There is no climate crisis, certainly not one caused my man’s activities, except the foolish chemtrailing. I’m sure the amount of facts I would like to point out here would dramatically exceed the limits on post length. All the supposed “authorities” telling us we have to reduce our CO2 emissions are pseudo scientists, not real ones, and they have a political agenda to control the population, not improve the earth.
If you are parodying, well done! If not, you are a fine example of the product of the education system that people of your type keep pushing for.
Nice try elon…
@skalamanga “nice try elon…”
… Elon Musk, the big climate change greenify the world through electrification evangelist? Tell me you treat politics like a team sport without saying you treat politics like a team sport…
Hey, I like my bugs.
I’d have to disagree quite a bit – yes renewable energy is making some gains but that isn’t an excuse to be wasteful – There is still a long way to go before the sustainable technologies are actually doing more than just marginally slowing down the previously huge growth rate of the mess we are generating for ourselves.
So while living better is fine with me how you are doing it still matters – you can live far better than folks in the past have done and still actually use much less energy per person through greater efficiency. So something like this that really doesn’t make life better at all IMO, certainly not enough to actually be worth the cost it brings…
Maybe a smaller and lower powered field that doesn’t waste 10w with no load at all, just maybe that works. So one meant to keep keyboards, mice, headsets and perhaps laptops trickle charged. Still going to face some efficiency problems, but not needing battery or as large a battery in the desktop devices and wearing out the charging ports less so the folks that are not handy enough to replace ’em* don’t have to junk whole devices with years of life left in them might just make up for that, and at the very least brings it back into being plausibly worth it…
*which as everything moves to USB-C is probably a large portion of this reader base even though its HAD and most of us have a least some interest and skill in electronics – most USB-C receptacles I’ve seen are hot air style reflow only, skill with an iron won’t do anything and how many of us have suitable tools for hot air reworking?
You really are one of the most miserable people I’ve ever seen, Gravis. I can’t remember the last time you’ve made a comment on HaD that isn’t just moaning about how horrible the world is, how horrible people are, how horrible an article is, playing the Well Ackshewally role. Good lord, do better.
You can’t address climate change, there is no room in the laws of physics that allow puny humans at our civilisation level to operate on the relevant energy scales. If you believe otherwise then you really need to forget all of your programing and learn some basic maths and physics.
its not by pissing away 40% energy loss to look kewl I can tell you that
Not sure I’d like to be wearing any metal rings near that setup for very long, lol.
“… consisting of a 100 W RF power supply and its associated power antenna looping around the desktop edge…”
So… The idea here is to seat a person in immediate, prolonged, proximity to a tuned loop antenna fed with 100 watts of RF?
Yeah… no thanks.
Yeah, if it’s a 13.5 MHz system then the field is probably well above 100V/m. I wouldn’t sit around that.
Looking at my seating position relative to my desk right now, it looks like that coil would pass about 10 inches from the family jewels. And I’d be entirely within its near-field.
No thanks, seriously!
Great suggestion. Although it might have health effects, it might be useful for applications such as model lighting where people won’t be near it for very long.
Correction: Lighting models hanging from the ceiling.
That would look a lot better than hanging cables and be less unwieldy than batteries.
What are they hanging from, thin air?
cheap renders try to look like the real thing, and now thig guy want the real things look like cheap renders…
“Wireless power”
Batteries?
Radiation, obv.
You can choose which type ;)
It isn’t just the family jewels but blood and brain. When I last went to ham fests I noticed many of the greatest generation didn’t have very good health showing on their skin and such. One younger friend I knew who was healthy worked in transmitter shacks and even bragged about sticking his hand into the magnetic air coupling of a 1.5kW lighting for an AM tower, that’s those two interlocked rings that couple power without grounding the feed at the bottom of a vertical quarter wave tower.
Brain cancer took his life too early!
Another friend’s unbalanced house-mate kept hiding cords from every accessory weather they were hooked up or not. USB, charging, power, signal, you name it. Though he is kicked out we’re still looking for the cords. If you don’t like cables live off grid without electricity.