Splashpower debuts wireless battery charging system

By Peter Clarke,SBN
iApplianceWeb
(10/30/02, 01:49:03 AM EDT)

CAMBRIDGE, England - A startup based here is planning to come to market with a wireless battery charging technology that will be made available to other companies under license.

Splashpower Ltd. said it has developed a two-part energy-transfer system that operates inductively and therefore has cost and aesthetic advantages over contact systems.

One part of the system is the SplashModule, which the company intends equipment makers will design into their equipment. The second part is the SplashPad, portrayed as being about the same size as a mouse-pad and which plugs into a wall socket.

The essence of the system is that SplashModule-enabled equipment, such as notebook computers, mobile phones and PDAs can be recharged while they are placed on the SplashPad but without the use of a cable, the company claims.

The Splashpower Web site does not reveal the distances over which the technology works, although the two parts of the system are clearly intended to be put in close proximity. Nor does the company discuss the materials the system is made from, how energy transfer rate varies with distance, or the frequency of operation of the technology.

"Our patent-pending innovations enable us to overcome previously unresolved challenges and deliver a safe, convenient, efficient and low-cost solution with all the benefits that inductive power has to offer," the company said.

Similarly the company has not quantified the rate at which energy can be transferred between a particular SplashPad and SplashModule but claims that it is equivalent to wired charging even when multiple devices are being charged on a single SplashPad.

The company does state that the technology is designed not to destroy magnetically stored data so that it is safe to use near credit cards and hard-disk drives.

"Splashpower is poised to 'cut the cord' on the birth of a new market for universal wireless charging of devices ranging from mobile phones, portable gaming devices, to PDAs and the most basic consumer electronic devices," said John Halfpenny, chief executive officer of Splashpower, in a statement.

Halfpenny continued: "Companies such as ourselves and MobileWise - as well as mobile device manufacturers - recognize the need for a better way to recharge portable products. Our solution now represents the next-generation of this technology, and frees the OEM from the tyranny of a contact-based product. There are no design compromises using our technology and we believe that this represents the future of power recharging for both the consumer and manufacturer."

The company said it is in discussions with several consumer and mobile electronics companies concerning the evaluation of the SplashPower technology and its integration into next-generation portable and mobile electronic products.

The SplashModule is less than one millimeter thick and can be integrated inside a device's casing, thus replacing an external dc power supply and requiring no modification to the charge control circuitry, the company stated. In contrast, contact-based technology requires external modifications and can be up to four times more costly to implement than Splashpower, according to the company.

The SplashPad is less than six millimeters thick and can be made in virtually any shape or size, the company said.

"I am tremendously impressed with the innovation and revolutionary capabilities of the Splashpower solution. The possibilities for their technology, especially in the mobile phone and PDA arena, are outstanding. This really is best-of-breed technology and finally unleashes the potential for a truly wireless world," said James Urquhart, co-founder and chief strategy officer at ARM Holdings plc and a member of the Splashpower advisory board, in a statement.

Halfpenny founded and led Micrologic Solutions Ltd. before selling it to ARM. While at ARM, Halfpenny held several management posts and eventually became director of embedded software, responsible for ARM's software engineering and product groups.

For more information on this story, go to www.splashpower.com.

And for more information about the issues, products and technologies in this story, go to the  iAppliance Web Views  page and call up the associatively-linked XML/Java Web map of the iApplianceWeb site and search for product information since the beginning of 2002.

For technical article coverage, go to EETimes In Focus maps on the same Web page and browse or quickly search for all articles on a particular topic since the beginning of 1998.

These Web Maps can be browsed by date, by category, by title, or by keyword, with results displayed instantly either as a list of possible hits or with the specific Web page.