Fellow Engineers,

I have to apologize, it took me a long time to get this post finally out, but I have been avidly following everything going on in the competition here. School going on is putting a slight damper on the competition, but I am determined to push through and bring something fun and exciting to the table.

That’s why I am making this post. I am going to give my initial thoughts on the Wireless Transmitter and Receiver units, with my pros and cons of the project. Additionally; I would like to officially describe my chosen project to the group, and what I intend to do with this project.

Initial Thoughts

Out of the Box

Upon first opening the box, I looked at the physical characteristics of the unit. My first reaction was that the receiver unit is amazingly light. Even with all the control logic and the plastic housing, it is amazingly light to hold. The receiver with its plastic housing is quite thick, but I did notice that with very little effort I could remove it from the plastic housing and then it would be nice and small for my project, and extremely thin.

While the transmitter is not extremely light like the receiver, I did like how much smaller it was compared to my expectations. It is very thin for a test platform, and has a nice set of rubber feet. My last test straight out of the box with no power was testing the magnet on the coils. There is a small circular magnet in the center of the coils on both the receiver and the transmitter. When placed together, the receiver locks in place on the transmitter.

This magnet is not very good. It is the single piece of the device that I don’t absolutely love. The receiver stays connected to the transmitter, but if I had anything else besides the receiver, or a slight sideways force, the receiver would easily disconnect from the pad. I think that a more powerful magnet might make for a better user experience when placing a device on the pad to ensure optimal charging levels.

Connecting it to Power

One of the great characteristics of this test unit is that it is really quick and easy to setup. I hauled this unit down to the lab at school, where I connected it to a 19V power supply. The connection took only a few seconds, and immediately I was able to see feedback on the transmitter.

The receiver connected easily when placed on the transmitter, and a led began flashing to say that the device is connected. I tested the output, and got a fairly consistent 5V out. I did notice that the output was not extremely consistent when the coils were not properly aligned, but the magnet is very helpful in aligning it right, though not as much as I would like, as described above.

I tested pulling the receiver away from transmitter slowly, and like others have been able to have a separation of nearly ½ inch and still consistently maintain the 5V output. I want to try placing materials in between the receiver and the transmitter and see what this does to the distance test. Look forward to that in an upcoming video.

Onto my Project

I thought a lot about possible projects for this competition, but finally decided on one that is a little more IT centered, since that is all I really know. I wanted to do something with both the Transmitter and the Receiver, so I am breaking my project up into two parts; one focusing on the Receiver and a cool way to get power to that receiver.

For the receiver I plan to build a truly wireless computer, the first of its kind (ok, likely someone has done this before…). I am going to build a wireless charging wireless Network Attached Storage device. Can it be done? We will see. I plan to connect the wireless receiver to a Linux machine that likely will resemble a wireless-connected Raspberry Pi (if that is not indeed what I will be using…) that is running a file server. This will allow the file server to be available anywhere I have a need, like a network friendly flash drive that you don’t have to plug in.

While that is a fun project, I intend to bring some excitement in with my transmitter project. I am going to build an old-school modern charging platform for the nerd in all of us, based on, you guessed it, Video Games. I plan on making a Zelda-themed charging platform. Stay tuned, there is more info to come, along with a true reveal of the plans for this charger.

I am very excited about this project, and will continue to add updates as I am able, hopefully with my video and pictures. Until then, thank you everyone for all the help that you have already given me. I look forward to working together to make this project exciting and fun.