• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 months ago

    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.

    • kubica@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      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.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 months ago

        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.

        • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          There are tons of small devices that don’t have to be connected to be useful. Lots of personal items or small sensors.

          • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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            4 months ago

            There are already lots of concepts for low power wireless communication for example LoRaWAN The issue is not the ISP its the technology used to establish a connection between devices. We need hardware that can run with the low power requirements that come with this research.

            • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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              4 months ago

              That’s not any sort of legal issue stopping you, that’s physics. If you’re trying to create say, some sort of mesh network, and the device is using all of the signal’s power just to run itself, there’s no power left to retransmit. You don’t get something from nothing. We’re talking microamps and smaller with these devices.

              If you’ve ever used a crystal radio, you can get an idea for how weakly powered stuff like this is.

              Edit: look up the channel “EEVBlog” on YouTube, dude has a dozen videos on various such devices and goes into the actual math and viability of each.

    • Orbituary@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      This is the same take as people thinking wind energy steals wind, or solar energy reduces the sun’s efficacy.

      • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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        4 months ago

        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.