How Would You RoadTest This Wireless Power Dev Kit?

I would use my Samsung S7 high rate charger physically connected to the phone (from a discharged state) and measure the charge time and rates, then compare this using the same charger via the wireless again with time and rate results.

This should give a real world comparison of the efficiencies of the wireless system.

We did a Design Challenge using the Wurth branded version called Beyond the Phone.

Wireless Power - Beyond the Phone

It was a great eye opener to the capabilities of wireless power and Wurth were a really great supplier who went above an beyond during the challenge.

Mark

This is an upgrade to the kit we got for the BeyonD the Phone and how. Some of us received some coils to make our own circuits and it was fun. Maybe someone could use variable coil sizes and do an analysis on the efficiency and how the circuit should be changed or remain the same.

I've done quite a bit of work with Qi charging systems, and have a variety of both transmitters and receivers and devices I built that charge this way.

This looks like a quality implementation.

I would investigate performance of this system relative to others I have on hand, and mix and match performance with other devices.

The "extended power profile" is intriguing - I would like to explore its performance.

That said, I would likely let others tackle this road test - I have enough experience with Qi that more investigation is not a high priority.

Thanks Mark. It looks like e14 did it back in 2014.

Mix and match testing is definitely the way to go. I'm sure the paired kit works well and the designers have published their own accurate and detailed specs. There's not really much benefit just repeating this.

What really matters is how interoperable it is. I've got two Qi chargers and 4 devices - including a couple of Nook eReaders that have had a cheap eBay receivers hacked in. This is the reality of how these devices have to work.

It might be interesting to see if it could be combined with NFC or whether the two would interfere with each other. I can't actually think of a good use case right now but it sort of seems logical to be charging a device and communicating with it at the same time. Maybe a data logger that's being recharged and uploading data at the same time?

Hi Randall,

There was an interesting idea that Monty Chan (aka COMPACT) had during the first wireless road test that I thought was interesting.

He did some testing by doing some remote charging through a glass window.

That got me thinking about using the device to charge IOT devices, both inside and outside the house by just putting the charger up to the window to access the coil on the IOT device.

You could do this with cameras, microphones, PIR sensors, night lights, and all types of sensors.

So how about an remote IOT device charging challenge?

People could identify the IOT device, where it is remotely located and how it could benefit from periodic wireless charging.

Could be fun.

DAB

In the 'beyond the phone' challenge I build a charger for a remote controlled toy car, based on the predecessor of this kit. Being able to transfer a lot of energy of larger distances (and even when the receiver is not placed perfectly on the transmitter) was quite important there. This would be something to test - under which circumstances (distance, orientation, displacement, materials in-between) can you still get a reasonable amount of energy transferred? Can you really transfer 15W without heat problems (the manual says it does only 10W out-of-the-box and must be modified for 15W, tough)?

Not withstanding the desire to test this one, I thought someone did the distance v energy comparisons.

It was quite interesting that the horizontal alignment was equally important and the inital handshaking was the crucial part of the misalignment distance.

One thing to bear in mind with this kit was the external signal from the charger.

I used it to detect if the device was removed and signal to the server it was 'offline' and may not receive updates.

The discussions we had with Wurth before the Beyond the Phone challenge started was very rewarding.

I helped a school project that was looking at technology to assit the elderly, and lead me to suggest using the technology to charge their devices.

I find it hard enough to sort out which way up the micro usb goes, and they are rather fragile, so anything that eliminates that problem is a blessing.

Mark

Yeah, it was me doing all these comparisons. When you design something to be used by kids you cannot expect totally exact handling, that why it was important to me.

I also did something similar with usage detection - I added a current measurement to detect when charging the RC car was finished (because then the input current was dropping, and I could signal end-of-charge).