Energous Updates

A few updates on Energous happenings from the last week or so. First up, Chris Brown of Aristides Capital gave a presentation at a conference, "Kase Learning: The Art, Pain and Opportunity of Short Selling".


It is the best presentation covering everything that is wrong about Energous I have seen, and neatly summarizes a bunch of what I have been saying in this blog, in a way a lay person can understand. According to their SeekingAlpha page, Aristides Capital manage about $83 million in investments. Here are the "Take Home Messages" from this 34 page work of art:

"The people who do publicity and media relations for Energous have done an utterly brilliant job selling vaporware. Congratulations, Ajit Pai and others.

The “advance” upon which Energous was founded, “the pocket of RF energy,” is a fabrication, a “dazzle them with BS” way of saying “constructive interference,” and doesn’t solve any issues. The reasons we don’t transmit large amounts of RF through the air for power—safety limitations, equipment cost and size, and poor efficiency—are the same as they have been for decades.

Energous is a fraud, one which is burning a lot of cash and will run out of money. The company has no chance of making a commercially successful product. We expect the stock will go to $0."

A link to the full presentation is here.

I added the bold above as I'm glad to see more people covering the what I said in my second post on this blog, over two years ago: "In theory, it can be done in limited cases, but in practice cost and efficiency issues will likely render it impractical." 

So many of the individual pages of this presentation cover topics I have often spent hundreds of words to try to get across in posts, so it's a lesson for me in how to be succinct and effective in this area. I won't repeat them all but a few memorable quotes:

Energous Corporation: a worthless equity hyped to $500 million

CEO who lies bigly and often

#FAKENEWS – false & unskeptical media coverage

If you tell the same big lie often enough, many people will believe it

and my personal favorite as an engineer:

Very small numbers add together to make other very small numbers

CNBC covered this and asked the company for a response:

"Energous did not immediately respond to a request for comment."

Download the presentation and read it for yourself, I'm not doing it justice here.

Speaking of "Unskeptical Media Coverage"
There was also a new wireless power article "When will your phone charge wirelessly in your pocket? We asked an expert" on Digital Trends. It focused on Energous and Ossia, with a brief mention of Powercast, so was aimed squarely at the RF at-distance wireless charging market. I was interested to see the analysis from independent experts and a balanced and reasonable piece on the practical issues surrounding this tech. You're going to be amazed by who the experts are:

• Hatam Zeine - Founder and CTO of Ossia
• Gordon Bell - VP Marketing of Energous
• Mark Hopgood - Snr Director Marketing/Strategy at Dialog Semiconductor (Energous Partner/Investor)

aaaaaand that's it. Every single person interviewed has a financial incentive to promote this technology, they are completely biased. Not even a token attempt here to speak to a university professor of electrical engineering, or get a counter viewpoint. Spend a few minutes Googling Energous and you'll find plenty of stories out there on the less savory side of at least Energous. Of course I'm pretty biased since I'm one of those drawing attention to that. Is this a puff piece that's essentially PR for the companies, or is it actually an attempt to inform the reader? If the former, it achieved that goal splendidly, if it's the latter then it's a major fail.

Now I've been harsh on tech journalists covering this topic in the past, and while it's not the ass-kiss fest that David Pogue exemplifies, or the embarrassingly weak coverage from Tom's Guide where they got the wool pulled over their eyes on what they were showing,  this is still another company PR piece masquerading as tech journalism. I'm not sure the author even realizes he's being used by these companies to whitewash their PR and give it a veneer of authenticity.

I was about to take apart the rest of the article, but in the end realized it's just more of the same of what I've written on other journalists. Instead I'll just make this one point - whenever I talk to journalists about Energous, I'm either asked if I have a financial interest or conflict of interest. When I post online I always get someone replying that I'm just a short-seller looking to make money, or am upset I'm losing money shorting the stock despite my repeated statements that I have no position on the company - I even had someone who owns a wireless power company demand that I declare my financial interests because I was, unlike him, clearly biased. Why do I get more scrutiny about my motivations than someone who is doing it for the money? Only answer I can think of - when someone isn't doing something for money, it confuses people. The idea that you're doing it simply "because it's the right thing to do" is utterly alien and therefore suspicious.

Energous' Financials
It was also time for Energous' quarterly financial results, and once again there were no surprises here - it's still a ~$500m company with $25,000 in quarterly services revenue and no sales. With cash in the bank and the current burn rate, they have 9, at best 12, months of operation left before further fundraising is needed. All talk of product delivery and profitability was once again pushed out into the future, as seems to happen every time. By their own admission, they can't get to revenue before they run out of money, let alone to enough sales to break even. No mention of Myant dropping WattUp from their Skiin product, you'd think given the big deal they made of that product announcement a few months ago that it would be important for investors to be told about that. A transcript of the earnings call can be found here. Oh, and they're also awarding themselves millions of dollars in equity because they're doing such a fantastic job.

What's up with WATT, Pt I (or "What's Wrong with Tech Journalism?")

It's been a while since I covered Energous (whose ticker symbol is WATT. Other posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). They're one of the RF based wireless charging companies, and probably the most famous for their bold claims - first claiming 12 devices at up to 10 Watts, then up to 1 Watt at 4.5 meters, while remaining safe. These numbers were so high as to raise many questions as to practicality, both with respect to physics and regulatory aspects. Still, the company stood by its claims, held an IPO, and was floated on the stock exchange. Since then it has raised millions more, and has been burning through cash at the rate of around $15 million per quarter, while repeatedly delaying products and releases in what some call a 'time to carrot' manner.

To me, it was yet another example of the inability of the tech press to truly and effectively evaluate an advanced technology, and repeatedly fail to ask even the most simple and obvious questions such as "What's the efficiency?". David Pogue was one such reporter - in 2015 he sat down with the company CEO and was shown a demo of a charge light activating on a phone, while the CEO told him of how amazing it was and the reported gushed about how it was the most amazing demo ever. No, it's not the uBeam demo from a few months ago despite the similarities - two years on and still the press can't learn. Pogue finishes his 2015 article with this statement:

But I’ve seen it first-hand, and I’m convinced: This technology is real.

Wow, that's awesome, a tech journalist has fully evaluated a piece of complex technology without even cracking the case, speaking to the engineers, or the benefit of a decade or two of experience in the field. I want to believe so let's pour millions more dollars in!

Yes, that's all funny. Except millions of dollars more were poured in, thanks in part to glowing coverage like Pogue's. Fortunately, Pogue at least thought to go back a couple of years later and take a look at Energous, and published an article last month (new link here) where he talks to Energous again with a slightly more skeptical eye. I say slightly more skeptical because he still allows himself to be bamboozled by the company and still fails to ask the basic questions he should - it's frustrating as 5 minutes with a decent engineer would give him exactly what he needs to ask. Let's take a few of these failings in turn:

Consumer Product Logistics

First of all he asks why they haven't shipped the product when it's near a year after the original claim. Or wait, spend 10 minutes searching and find that in 2014 the delivery date was 2015, so it's now two years behind and the delivery is constantly moving out, around 18 months ahead. The excuse is they have gone from one to three products (near, mid, far range) and that has shifted the timeframe, but that products will be for sale late Q3/early Q4 this year. That means about three months from when that interview was given, and they're not certain when a consumer device will be in the shops.

Let me be clear about this - consumer devices that are going to be for sale are ready many, many, months prior to launch. The supply chain issues to get them out mean that, unless you are selling tiny quantities, you're ready >6 months prior. Basically - if you don't know exactly how many of your devices will be on the shelves, on exactly what dates, in exactly what location, you're likely at least 6 months out, more likely a year. A few simple questions like "How many devices will be on the shelves?", "Who are the major retailers committed to stocking them?". "What is your MSRP?", "What are your projected sales volumes?", and "Can I see the retail packaging?" and it should become really clear, really quickly that the company actually has something, or is just selling vaporware.

These questions are so simple, so generic, yet an experienced journalist doesn't know to ask them.

Regulatory

Next they discuss the FCC and regulation, and Energous make it clear that they've been working to create a new testing protocol with the FCC. Awesome. So: 

Who were you working with at the FCC? Can I call them? 

or

The FCC is a public agency and they're only working with one vendor to create a standard that will apply to an entire industry? Is that normal? Let's ask the FCC that too.

Were the FCC called? Anyone there prepared to make comment? What about someone expert in getting FCC regulatory compliance for consumer products to evaluate that statement? (uBeam also made a statement about being universal standard, then withdrew it after scrutiny)

Then the company claims that they can do this with the FCC since the spot size they focus to is 'tiny', localized just as it would be on a charging pad. Fantastic. So:

What's the spot size, in centimeters? What is 'tiny'?

or

You're working at 5.8GHz and so are looking at a multi-centimeter wavelength and an array of emitters only a few elements in size. Even under ideal conditions it's hard to focus, how do you make it "tiny"?

or even

You've stated that if you detect people or animals in the beam path you shut it off. Does that imply it's not safe?

As you can guess, there was no follow up, the tech journalist once again simply accepted the statements of the company at face value and failed to question them. Ridiculously simple questions too. My first post on Energous covers the spot size question and explains it in detail - maybe ask them why those numbers or physics are wrong? It's like the recent coverage of uBeam when the company said they'd have safety evaluated by third party experts and no-one asked "Who would that be? Can we talk to them?"

How hard are any of these questions? And if they don't answer, or dodge, you know something is up. But that would be uncomfortable, and would put access as a tame journalist at-risk, so best not to.

The Charging Pad

Next, they look at the Watt-Up Mini, the charging pad that Energous claim is their first product that has FCC approval - I've pointed out before, it has FCC approval because it puts out so little power it's of no practical use at all. Energous are at pains to point out advantages such as charging the devices at any angle, or compatibility with future long range Energous products, but once again there's no follow up with questions like:

Who are your major competitors to this charging pad? How does the Mini compare to them in charge rate, efficiency, and cost?

If it's a major revenue possibility for them, and they diverted from their core mission because it was so compelling, they should have a clear business justification. It's a simple question. How can you not ask this?!?!?

The Big Devices

Then we get to the full scale medium and large transmitters, and here's where the really interesting part happens. Remember the claims of 15 feet and multiple Watts? Gone, replaced by a 'very, very small amount of power', '15 feet from the transmitter, that’d be hard for us to increase the battery. We’d just keep it from going down.' and  'It’s not charging super fast, like you would be plugged in the wall, but a small amount of energy, trickle charging it.' Just like uBeam in their recent demo, they've suddenly gone from claiming huge charge rates like 'faster than a wire' down to 'trickle charge'.

Let me put this into an analogy the non-technical people can understand. Ever met some guy who boasts he can bench-press 1100 lbs and run the 100 meters in 9.5 seconds, and you know he's full-of-shit because those numbers are just beyond the world-records (1075 lbs and 9.58 seconds) and it would be amazing if he could do one of them? And then when you finally, finally, get him to the gym and track and find he can maybe do 150lbs and then falls over wheezing at 50 meters then staggers over the line in 30 seconds? That's what's happening here - yet everyone claps their hands in the tech example about their amazing progress rather than calling him out for being a blowhard. For anyone with a vague understanding of the situation, or physics, we're sitting wondering if we're the ones taking crazy pills.

Back to the article - it's as if these wireless power companies are all reading from the same playbook - and why not, it's not like tech journalists are going to call them on it. Here's a stunning line:

During my return visit, Energous never demonstrated its transmitters charging a phone — only low-power gadgets.

Let me be clear - a company that raised tens of millions of dollars on claims of huge range, charge rates, and short delivery times, is admitting that their original claims were greatly exaggerated and people need to scale back their expectations. More importantly, they don't show a phone being charged, about the only market that's actually worth addressing for a company with a billion dollar valuation requirement. Of course this led the journalist to ask "How this will impact the share price?", "How they could have got it so wrong?", "How are forward looking financial plans are clearly heavily impacted by the drastic reduction in sales this must imply?". Ha - no, looks like there was just a nod of the head as they took down what was told to them.

The Journalism

There was journalism in this piece though - good investigation, skepticism, and a revelation - sadly it didn't involve Energous itself, but on an internet commentator. The piece starts with the claim that a single person in the whole world was bothered by the original 2015 article - which is bizarre as there were many who questioned Energous, but that would ruin a good story. Todor Mitev appears to be a short seller - a person making money from a stock that goes down, rather than up - and has been following and commenting on Energous for some time. While the short selling does give someone an incentive to drive a price down, did the journalist even pause for a moment and say "Maybe he saw that the stock was overpriced due to the hype from journalists, is just highlighting the reality, and in this capitalistic world making some money from it too?" Apparently, a person like Todor with a financial incentive from short selling can't be trusted, but the three top execs of Energous who take home nearly $5 million a year between them from a company with no product or sizeable revenue are motivated by the angels. Yep, great job there.

There's some suspicion that Todor writes under pseudonyms on forums such as Seeking Alpha, and has been accused there of being the poster Richard X Roe. I've followed Roe's posts, which contain a lot of detailed and accurate physics, and I have had a few short exchanges with him. If his physics was wrong, then it could easily be called out, but in a similar way to how my articles on uBeam are criticized but never attacked for the maths or physics, it's his character that is questioned. Nicely done in re-iterating that line.

An important question to the author - if you asked the questions I've outlined above to Energous, would that impact your access in future, and put at risk your potential earnings as a journalist?

We're all motivated by money. All of us, it's just sometimes it's more obvious than others - but it doesn't necessarily impact the validity of what's being said. To be clear here, I have zero financial interest, long or short, in the fortunes of Energous. I don't even make money from this blog. Looks like I'm the only one with clean-hands - does this mean I get listened to more than any other player?

The Close-Up and Cop-Out

The article ends with some quite frustrating quotes. First, the CEO makes this statement:

We’re on the cusp here. We think that this will all be in the rearview mirror in the next six months or so.

So by the end of 2017 it's all going to be awesome? That's an easy one to follow up on. I'm sure we'll have a year end article doing exactly that. <cough> But it's one of the close-out lines that irritated me most of all. Our intrepid journalist writes:

I never did manage to find out exactly how realistic through-the-air charging is, how close it is to appearing in our phones and watches. I’m not sure anybody really knows.

Of course you didn't find out if it's possible, you failed to ask any serious questions, or even the easy questions. You didn't even try. The closest he gets is a quote from an MIT prof which was:

“I don’t like saying ‘never’ or ‘can’t work,'” he replied, “but I would be skeptical. My guess is that this sort of system, with phased-array antennae, might work, but it is probably not very efficient.”

which if you understand engineering speak is saying "Nope. Not going to work in any vaguely efficient or practical manner." Let me translate again to the bench-press/100 meter analogy "Yes, it's just maybe possible someone can lift that much, or run the 100 meters in that time, even one would be incredible, but two together even more unlikely. I'm just not saying "No" since maybe sometime in the next 100 years one person in a few tens of billions may be able to." 

But then he says "I'm not sure anybody really knows."

To David Pogue, the writer of this article I can say this - Really? THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF YOUR ARTICLE? 

You. Failed.

More than that, you failed when there are many people out there who show the ways in which what they claim can be disproved - how many did you speak to? This blog has several posts that are examples of this and refute many of the points made by Energous not with opinion but easily verifiable maths and physics.

David - I know you think you were being skeptical yet fair to Energous, but really, you just acted as a mouthpiece for them to do their PR again. This time instead of pumping up the stock early on, it's part of the slow letdown. You've been suckered. Again.

Two years ago you told us all it was real. Now you don't know. Why should we listen to you on this, other than you were chosen by Energous?

Last month on Seeking Alpha, I gave my opinion on the viability of Energous, and discussed it with an individual investor. He admitted he had no business, investing, or technical skills by which to judge the company, but it was clear he had been motivated by the publicity the company had generated, which your articles have been a small part of. Understand that your articles actually affect the finances of individuals. Your words have real consequences.

What you meant to say by "I'm not sure anybody really knows." is "It's beyond my capability to understand but rather than admitting so, I wrote the article anyway while thinking to be 'even handed'"

Tech journalism is actually important, and you turned an article about the vast overstatement of capability of a (then) $350 million market cap company, into a PR piece for them. Rather than do the hard job of asking a few basic questions that would highlight the reality of the situation, but endanger your future access, you did a 'gotcha' on an individual who uses a pseudonym and might make some cash when pointing out the realities of the technology. Easy path every time.

I get it, this stuff is actually really complex and hard to understand, beyond most people's capability - but there are some great tech journalists out there, that match skepticism with fair questioning and coverage, and manage to get the complexities explained to a lay audience. To every tech journalist out there, please, pretty please, with sugar on top - be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Next in Part II - what's going on with Energous' share price?

uBeam Withdraw Claims of Wirelessly Charging TVs?

It seems someone at uBeam might read my blog, and has updated a recent posting claiming that TVs can be charged wirelessly. Their page for a recent job ad read:

uBeam is an innovation that will breed innovation. Ubiquitous wireless power will lead to a world with smaller batteries and thinner, lighter devices. With wires virtually eliminated, TVs can sit in the middle of a room cord-free and light fixtures will become “stick-on” without the need for routed power. uBeam is also a universal standard, making those bulky travel adapters a thing of the past. Imagine charging your phone, laptop or even your hearing aid virtually anywhere, without any effort. This is life powered by uBeam.

uBeam have made these claims before, such as in a panel discussion, Oct 2016, the CEO explicitly states TVs can be charged wirelessly with ultrasound, and a previous incarnation of the company website that explicitly states flat screen TV charging. The current company website still carries images showing TVs and other high power devices, so while not stated, it does seem to be implied they can be powered - hence my question as to whether it's a claim the company still stands by.

In a blog post here, I laid out the case why I believed this was near impossible/impractical due to a wide range of considerations. Well, it seems they may have accepted my carefully laid out argument, and have now changed their claims in that page:

uBeam transmits power over the air to wirelessly charge electronic devices. the company seeks to enable a world where device charging is a seamless and untethered experience. It will be the Wi-Fi of energy.

While apparently it's too difficult to do a grammar check on three sentences, it's good to see that they appear to have accepted that my argument is correct, and that it is utterly impractical to charge TVs wirelessly with ultrasound. They even noticed that it's not a universal standard and removed that statement, given the explicit ultrasound limit in most of the world would at best result in about 3 mW at a phone, enough to charge in around 3 months of it being switched off. Oh, and that standards usually have to be run through Standards Association like the IEEE and take years of input from a large committee.

This is the latest in a list of reduced deliverable or performance claims from uBeam such as 'faster than a wire' down to 'trickle charge' style rates, charging through your pocket, mass production in 2016 that never materialized, and claims of efficient and powerful transducers in 2015 that the Chair of their Technical Advisory Board apparently never saw.

Are they withdrawing their claim of wirelessly charging TVs with ultrasound, or simply saving that surprise for later? No one has stepped up to challenge my assumptions or working, and I am still happy to discuss that with anyone who cares to. As you can see, "Arguing the Point" in the manner I suggested seems to work, though I'm getting the feeling it's working better when I blog than when I worked there.

You're welcome, uBeam!

Arguing The Point

Someone on the internet is wrong. You wish to let that person know they are mistaken, as well as inform others to be sure they too do not mistakenly believe this to be true. How do you argue your point in an effective manner, disagreeing with someone, while maintaining civility? There's a good post on How to Disagree by Paul Graham which lays this out, and I'd like to touch on this, especially as it relates to science and engineering discussions.

We're living in a world where we are surrounded by incredibly complicated technology - sometimes the simpler that tech looks on the surface, the more complex it is. There's a large percentage of the population that would have a hard time explaining technology as old as the internal combustion engine in your car, and things get worse from there as you move through things we all use every day but barely know it - encryption and compression get the latest episode of 'House of Cards' onto your TV, but care to lay out how that happens for me? 

More importantly, how do you tell when someone is making false or exaggerated claims about technology? The facetious answer is "study for long enough to become an expert" however even then it's hard - there's a lot of technology out there, and only so many hours in the day. If you don't know the technology, and people are arguing about it, how do you evaluate the arguments they make? One way is to evaluate how they are arguing, even if you don't understand fully what they are saying.

The pyramid in the graphic above is an attempt to lay out Paul Graham's hierarchy (I have no idea where it's from, I'm not taking credit for it, thanks to whoever did it). The pyramid you see here contains the 'best' arguments at the top, the 'worst' at the bottom, and as you can see, it's wider at the base to represent that it's a lot easier to make the worst arguments than the best - 80% of everything, after all, is crap.

At the base it's fairly obvious - if one side is saying "the other guy is a doo-doo head" then they don't have much on their side. Sadly, you don't have to go to far above this for most people to lose critical thinking and an ability to evaluate what's being said. Ad Hominem is actually quite effective in discrediting a party with some audiences - for example saying "they're just a disgruntled former employee with an axe to grind" while ignoring any detailed points that person may have made, or whether they are even justified in being disgruntled. The most common form of argument is often simple Contradiction with no evidence to support it - "My client is innocent, and we're confident that the jury will agree." Frustratingly, we seem to be in a world where there's a media bias to he-said/she-said and placing the weight of argument 50/50, regardless of actual merit of the case.

I've never seen this fake-balance more brilliantly demonstrated than by John Oliver in this Daily Show segment on the Large Hadron Collider, and how there is a "50/50" chance the world would end when it was switched in. The part in question is at around 3:00, but I'd encourage you to watch the whole thing, it's John Oliver comic genius.

Dr Ellis is my hero here. Watch him start at the 'top of the pyramid' and refuse to be dragged down into what we're used to from media. He stays on topic, doesn't get tricked by Oliver (way harder than you might think), sticks to his point, and doesn't let himself be drawn into the arguments from the base of the pyramid. It's a short segment but really highlights how awful the media are in pushing junk science from those with limited understanding compared to those with deep knowledge - but where's the audience in that?

To further illustrate that point, and to show an example of an argument on a technical matter, let's take with this recent statement from uBeam 

uBeam is an innovation that will breed innovation. Ubiquitous wireless power will lead to a world with smaller batteries and thinner, lighter devices. With wires virtually eliminated, TVs can sit in the middle of a room cord-free and light fixtures will become “stick-on” without the need for routed power. uBeam is also a universal standard, making those bulky travel adapters a thing of the past. Imagine charging your phone, laptop or even your hearing aid virtually anywhere, without any effort. This is life powered by uBeam.

I'll take that one bolded point - that TVs can be powered wirelessly with ultrasound in the middle of a room and try and 'refute the central point'.

I'll begin by trying an argument against it:

"They're a bunch of stupid poopy heads" - No, that's bad, that would be Name-Calling

"They're just disgruntled current employees desperate to share their misery with the prospective employee and have no idea of the basics of physics" - No, that's Ad Hominem

"Powering a TV with ultrasound in the middle of a room is not a practical possibility, and is around one hundred times larger a problem than charging a phone in the same manner. While it is theoretically possible, the costs, inefficiency, and safety concerns are staggeringly high, while practical alternatives are low cost, and there is no economic demand to make this happen. Regulatory limits make it difficult in the US, and impossible outside the US." - OK, now we're doing somewhere between Contradiction and Counter Argument.

Let's move this to an argument from the 'top of the pyramid' by Refuting the Central Point

I'll begin by stating my assumptions:

We're talking about a large screen TV, not a small hand held. The TV is in a room you have some control over the infrastructure. The TV does not have a battery and needs a constant supply of power to work that can't be interrupted. From Energy Use Calculator I'm going to take 100 Watts as the power requirement for a 50 inch LED TV. We'll be assuming this is in the USA, and that the pre-2015 OSHA safety regulations are in effect and that in no location is sound over 145 dB used. Outside the USA the 115 dB limit give a transmitter and receiver 1000x area increase requirement. Note this will also apply within the USA should current OSHA limits restrict usage to 115 dB.

I will assume a generous 33% efficiency on receive, with 50% efficiency from transmitter to receiver incorporating both distance and angle of incidence. I will assume there is infinite power available into the transmitter and that efficiency from the wall socket to the ultrasound conversion is also 50%.

I assume each phone case sized receiver, at 5 by 10cm, uses $10 in parts, and we need to sell at 3x BOM to make money.

I'll ignore nonlinearity for the sake of simplicity, even though that's likely to become an issue, and limit the separation of transmitter and receiver to no more than a meter.

Now my calculations:

100 Watts powered means 300 Watts acoustic needs to be received. (100 Watts at 33% efficiency). This compares to around 0.5 Watts requirement for a phone, hence the "hundred times larger" comment. At 145 dB ultrasound is around 300 Watts/m², meaning the receiver will need to be 1 m² in size, that is a square of 1 meter on each side, or equivalent. A 50 inch TV is around 25 by 44 inches in size, (64 by 112cm or 0.72 m²)  so as a meter is around 40 inches, that means the receiver will be around 1.5 times the size of the TV. Ooops, better get to work on that efficiency.

Now a panel that's 1m² is about the size of 200 phone cases, so around $2000 in parts, or $6000 in cost to sell and attach to that 50 inch TV, that costs around $500 right now.

The Transmitter needs to be twice the size of the receiver to take into account that 50% efficiency, so it's 2m², and from the above calculation that means $12,000 for the transmitter.

Note that if the regulatory limit is 115 dB then the area scales by a factor of 1000 and the transmitter and receiver are each larger than the room.

For power supply, going with the efficiencies, the wall socket needs to provide 100 Watts, times 3 for the receiver efficiency, times 2 for the transmit efficiency, times 2 for the conversion efficiency, for a total of 1200 Watts. Fortunately this is (just) what a 110 volt 15 amp circuit can provide at 80% max load regulations allow (1300 Watts).

At 5 hours usage per day, and 12 cents/kWh average power cost in the USA, that's 72 cents per day to run, or $262, of which $22 is the actual TV use, the rest the wireless power system.

The additional 1100 Watts to use the wireless power system will be lost as heat (it's about a one bar electric fire equivalent), so in the winter that will save money, in the summer you'll need AC. I'll call it a wash to simplify this.

Summarizing the Argument:

Given the above, to power a TV wirelessly with ultrasound, it will cost $18,000 in the transmitter and receiver, with an additional $240 per year in running costs. Assuming efficiencies are as high as stated. And that no-one walks into the beam, since any interruption will make the TV switch off. And that you don't mind a receiver that's larger than the TV. And a transmitter that's twice that size and isn't too far from the TV. And that the room gets a bit warm. And that it's in the USA and the OSHA limits don't change to match the rest of the world.

But other than all that, isn't that much more awesome than running a $5 cord to the nearest outlet or paying someone to run a cable under your floorboards?

I think I'm going to call this "impractical".

OK, sarcasm over - I've run my calculations, providing all assumptions, workings, references etc so that anyone who disagrees can say "Your assumptions are faulty, here's what they should be" and then it's simple job to rerun those calculations get the new numbers, and judge from there. If anyone who is an advocate of wireless power would like to argue with these, feel free to correct me, and let's see where it takes the numbers. Or argue that my methodology is incorrect, I'm happy to do so - but like every other time in this blog where I have presented numbers, equations, and physics as core to my argument, I expect I'll be met with silence or more questions as to my motives. The top of the pyramid meeting with a response from the bottom.

My point to most people is this - if you don't understand the physics or details of a technical discussion like this, look to those presenting actual data, references, and their methodology and assumptions. If there is one side doing that, and the other calling names and questioning character, then you should likely consider one side's argument as superior to the other. If both are arguing methodology and data, then you may be watching a genuine scientific debate, which is good and healthy, it's what we want. If both are calling names, they're both idiots.

What Does It Take To Switch a "Phone Charging" Light On?

A few follow up points on the post from yesterday on the uBeam wireless charging.

I did like seeing this quote from the journalist:

Asked why the battery percentage didn’t appear to increase rapidly, Perry shakes her head.

“You’re thinking about it the wrong way, this is about a paradigm shift,” she says. “If you’re moving from your car to a coffee shop to work and your phone is charging while you’re using it, it’s no long about what percentage you’re at. You could stay at 1% all day.”

So it's an artful dodge of the question (that the journalist didn't press on), and perhaps an admission that the charge rate is not 'faster than a wire' as has been stated before by uBeam. It's more the "trickle charge" route, where you get tiny amounts of power over a long period of time. That "faster than a wire" claim was made at a time when the company was stating 1.5 Watts minimum charging which is much more than "trickle charge", and would fully fill your phone in 3 to 4 hours. Saying you stay at the same charge rate all day implies you are charging at an overall average of around 0.5 Watts, including all the times you are not around any uBeam transmitters, but if the charge rate is much greater than 0.5 Watts, why not say?

I noticed in that article the transmitter and receiver 'prototypes' back then in November 2015 were much smaller as well.

If there is actually a "trickle charge" regime, then the phones need charged as they are in use, and most use is a person standing or sitting holding the phone, fingers around the back, at around 45 degrees. Given line of sight, and assuming the 'bezel free front' of most modern phones, this implies the transmitters will need to be on the floor or base of the wall to get access, but will also likely be cluttered. Fingers on the phone case will prevent charging - unless of course you want to hold your phone by the edges as you use it (unlike in the picture above). I'm not seeing how trickle charge works with a mobile user, you need rapid charge in such circumstances. The practicality here, I'm not seeing. Maybe uBeam can layout the actual use-case scenarios they envision?

Also interesting was the quote from technical adviser Matt O'Donnell:

“When Meredith called me in 2015, I was curious and skeptical as hell, because you just hadn’t seen efficient airborne transducers,” says O’Donnell, dean emeritus at the University of Washington’s college of engineering, who now serves as uBeam’s chief technology advisor. “But holy moly, the leaps they’ve made in the past 18 months have been impressive.”

Hmmm, so all this advancement was made in the last 18 months, they had much, much less back then. But I'm confused because in September 2015 uBeam made this statement (among others):

“We’re at a massive inflection point,” said 26-year old uBeam co-founder and Chief Executive Meredith Perry. “We are about to head into a completely new phase of growth.”...In order to ease the transition into production, uBeam said today it has hired former Cisco Vice President of Supply Chain Management Jeff Devine as chief operating officer...“When we were seeking out an operations candidate we were looking at someone with decades of experience from taking a product from prototype to production,” said Perry. “He’s going to be the one that’s going to help us take this from our small shop to what will become our massive multi-million (unit) production next year.”

So which of those is true? Production ready in September 2015, or not? As with the "faster than a wire" claims from 2015 there are some implications as to 'perception vs reality' over the last few years if what Prof O'Donnell says is accurate. (COO Devine left his role at uBeam earlier this year before 'inflection' happened). For a further point of reference, I left the company at roughly the time these claims were being made.

The current receiver case is pretty interesting too. Looking at it, I'd guess 6 by 11 by 1.5cm which is larger than the phone itself, for around 100 cm^3 of volume. A standard battery for a Galaxy S5 is about 15cm^3 so you could have around 7 of those packed into that volume, giving you around 4 days of continuous use before recharging, and would cost about $70. If uBeam are using Murata (or Murata style) transducers in that case, there's around 60 of them at $3 each, so $180 just in transducers there. I'm not seeing the practicality or economics here.

(For those wondering - Murata are the primary maker of the parking sensors that are used in many cars, using ultrasound as the detection method. They're the small circles you see on bumpers, and individually look like cylinders about 1 cm each in diameter and height. They sell millions of them every years to the auto industry, and are around $3 each in bulk. You can go buy them yourself if you like.)

I did notice they have two different arrays that are used at different times, and I wonder if they are operating in the same manner, or if they are specced to handle different test conditions, and what is seen in these demos can't all be done on the one demo system. It's a little hard to tell from the videos as shown.

Now I could make a few more comments, especially on the posters in the background of the video and what they give away, but that's just going way too detailed even for my blog. 

Last point for now - the above picture shows a Kindle Fire on the right, and if you look in the bottom it's indicating "charging", but what rate is it charging at? 4.62 volts and 10 mAmps - basically  under 50 mW. To give you an idea of what that amount is, a typical phone batter is in the 5 to 6 Wh range, which means at this rate it would take over 100 hours to charge your phone at that rate. That's also assuming the phone is switched off, as it's typically consuming at around 500 mW so without that level of 'charging' it's consuming power faster than it's receiving it. I'm not seeing the practicality if that's the case. (A demo of a charging indicator coming on can be found in a newer post, here)

All this indicates is that the floor to show a device charge light come on is not the same as actually charging it - you need to see something like the screen on the left with voltage and current to know actual charging rate. This floor varies by device (iPhone seems to trigger at a higher floor than Android, and the floor varies with charge level IIRC), it's possible it's charging much faster (faster than a wire even?), but if it is, why not say?

As has been said before - physics doesn't prevent you sending power via ultrasound, or RF like Energous does, but can you send enough power to be useful, safely, efficiently, simply, and cost effectively?

Someone was paying attention

Almost immediately after my article yesterday, it looks like someone at uBeam was paying attention and actually did a proper, adult, professional PR piece and got the company onto the front page of USA Today. Much less embarrassing! :) It does also show part of my article was wrong - at least some people care!

To very quickly give a summary:

Reporters buy a phone at a local outlet to use charging (shows phone isn't tampered with, well done), put it in the brick case, and get the charge light to come on. Shows a device with an IR camera for tracking. Done with more than one phone at around 4 feet. They go on to say:

The technology is at least a year away from commercialization, and it faces significant hurdles from ever getting out the door of this 30-person start-up. Even though it can at present power a handful of phones, it's not clear what leaps need to be made to charge a busy coffee shop. And consumer questions will linger about safety as well as cost.

So at least they maintain some skepticism.

In the short time I have available this morning, and I'll update later tonight, I'll make the following comments:

In all this time, have reporters still not learned to press on the key questions? "How much power is being received?", "How much is being sent?", "What's the efficiency?", "How much does it cost?", "Have you proved it safe?", and "If this is what you have now, what were all those 'prototypes' you were talking about 2 years ago?". But those are actual questions that matter, and basically we know the same today as we did yesterday (which indicates it was an awesome PR piece, lots of coverage with no actual info).

Technically, it's still hard to say exactly what's being done, and there's not much to add beyond my earlier articles. The video does make it look like off-the-shelf Murata devices are being used and focused into a tight beam straightforward. Efficiency and safety questions are dodged.

Is this enough to convince someone to put more money in? Most likely, so let's see if someone big enough to price a round steps up or if it's smaller less sophisticated investors again.

What's In A Picture?

Last Wednesday morning someone emailed me the below picture from uBeam, asking if I was going to be writing about it. A few seconds later, I realized that I probably wasn't, as really there's not much new to say - anyone who understands hardware and business knows what's going on, the rest don't want to be educated or are investors. I also realized a couple of days later that pretty much no-one else cares either - I only had a single journalist call me about it and after giving him my opinion, he basically said that he was just keeping his notes up-to-date and editors weren't at all interested in uBeam. Since then, I've had a few questions from the tech side, and I noticed that the EEV Blog is commenting on it, so given I've a couple of spare hours tonight, here's my take. (For those who have asked, I'm in the middle of a piece about the recent Silicon Valley: A Reality Check blog post that got some attention a couple of weeks ago and will get it up soon, honest - read the original if you haven't already) 

I'm going to split this into three sections - my reaction, the tech, and the business implications so people can skip bits that aren't of interest.

The Reaction
What we have here, I'm going to assume, is a uBeam transmitter (large box with hexagonal tiles up top) and attached to the phone a receiver (the black brick in the bottom right). What was my first thought in seeing this? (After finishing laughing that is) Clearly they aren't any better at handling publicity than they've been over the last couple of years, with the PR firm clearly so asleep at the wheel they don't even know they're being ridiculed. Given they can actually manage to turn a positive article from a journalist into another piece pointing out the ridiculousness of typical day to day life in the company, it's no surprise that this quality a job was done here.

This, I believe, is the first official public unveiling of a setup that's been promised almost every year since 2011 or so, from a company that's raised $25 million. Is there simply no realization of how bad this looks, or is there an absolute lack of shame or care? Your big reveal should amaze and wow, it should scream that you are delivering, at the cutting edge, that you know how to get the details right from the finest detail to the grandest strategy. What this says is "Hey Granny, do you think I'll win the school fair with this?" not "Thanks investors for the $25 million, we're about to change the world!"

How unprofessional does this look? First thing is that they don't seem to be interested in tidying up the lab and staging before taking a picture to send out publicly, with bags of paper, white board, old carpet, and generally an unimpressive setup visible. It's like leaving your dirty underwear on the floor when your partner's parents come round for the first time. It makes me wonder if, like President Trump impulsively sending out Tweets in the early hours while no-one is minding the store, uBeam staff came to work in the morning to see the FB feed and said "we posted what?". If any of that team have been laughing about 'covfefe' then perhaps it's out of sympathy for the Whitehouse staff and what they have to go through every day. I read the goings on with President Trump and his staff and every day I see yet another corollary to working at uBeam - just in that case it's actually about something important.

Allow me to give uBeam some suggestions as to what to do next time. Begin with "decide the image you want to present to the world". Is it "sleek consumer design that Jony Ive would be proud of" or "cutting edge sci-fi level tech", for example, then setup the situation to reflect that aesthetic. For the former, put it in a sleek case that you've built with impeccable industrial design, you know, kinda like the one that was shown at the Upfront Summit last year? Any reason you couldn't use that? Put it in a user setting with happy people pretending to charge their phones, at the office or at the coffee shop. For the sci-fi side, get it in the lab with oscilloscopes and other equipment arranged in an impractical manner that would never actually be used that way but looks really cool to the average Joe. Hey you could even take that last setup to the next step and even show the voltage and current at transmitter and receiver!

Whatever you do, decide on a marketing theme that can sell and take the time to do it justice.

Along with the pics, actually put out a press release that says something. Take a look at Energous, they're perpetually 18 months from product after a few years and yet they put out professional press releases. You've a model to work from - take a look!

And one final suggestion - and it's not like anyone would have ever told you this before - when you're doing wireless power, don't show any wires in pictures of things being powered!

Seriously - I've not worked there since 2015 and I'm embarrassed by this.

The Tech

Now some time was taken to do a little blurring on the pic - you can see over the box that photoshop had a blurring filter applied in a circle over it. Perhaps this is to obscure that it's likely off-the-shelf components from Murata as I noted in a previous blog entry. (It could be an image overlaid to truly obscure and mislead, but I don't think so).  That's a bit strange, as I have pointed out in other posts that there's no issue in putting a mesh over the front to obscure what's behind, those Murata devices have it done to them by default. That mesh would also obscure the screws in the plastic and make it look at least a little more professional.

Blurring aside, the transmitter is now in a hexagonal arrangement, unlike the regular grid seen at the Upfront Summit, with 7 hex panels each around 15 elements across, so 45 or so elements top to bottom. If it is the Murata 40S4S then that's 45 cm top to bottom, and around 1600 or so elements total. At $3 each, there's $5000 of transmitter parts right there, and those are parts that sell in enormous volumes to car manufacturers so there's not a lot of room to lower the prices further. That implies a $15,000 transmitter, minimum (typical 3x markup from COGS to sale price). The box is maybe 3 to 4" deep, and it's positioned so you can't tell if there's a ton of electronics or power supplies sitting behind it - there were a lot of electronics in a large box in the Upfront demo, perhaps they've been downsized and rotated to fit in the box. Regardless, it's a pretty ugly box and nothing like the prototype that we were given a 'sneak peek' of at the 2016 Upfront Summit - what could have happened?

The hex pattern is interesting, and I wonder if it's been setup to beamform along the center line only only, no steering, in an annular array manner (concentric rings). This would really simplify the need for electronics, but if there are bad grating lobes (as you will get in an array where the pitch is larger than the wavelength), you can probably charge off to the side anyway as there's uncontrolled energy going in lots of directions. Basically, it doesn't seem the pitch is improved to allow for better steering and any real control - a big issue for safety in my opinion (beaming energy, you kinda want to control that). It also would not be representative of an array capable of steering in arbitrary directions.

The phone is attached to an enormous receive case that could be described as a 'brick' - it looks to be about 1.5cm thick which would allow for a number of the Murata transducers at about 1cm thick, along with an electronics board. Now an advantage of such a large box is that it will shield the MEMS gyros in the phone from vibrations which can damage them, but I doubt that's what it's there for - it's simply the smallest that can be made with Murata commercial transducers.

It may be that you've heard someone say that'll get better with "Moore's Law for Transducers", implying the transducers get half the size or twice the performance every 18 months. On the face of it is a bit silly as Moore's Law refers to the density of transistors on silicon and has nothing to do with ultrasound, but when you think about it and dig deep it's even sillier when you realise that the performance of ultrasound devices is generally tied through the laws of physics to particular device dimensions. Given those Murata devices were released at least 2 to 3 years ago, shouldn't there have been some major improvements to them by now?

But the phone is charging! Errr, well it shows 100% charge, but not that it's charging, and as before no idea of voltage, current etc that we really need to know the charge rate, nor of the overall efficiency of the system. Also, from memory, at >80% charge level the iPhone still shows charging even when less than 250mW are received.

So what do we learn from this picture? Not much other than there's a rearrangement of the previous demonstration, it's still apparently off the shelf parts, the receiver case is enormous, and there's no-one experienced in charge of publicity at the company to put out good pictures. As before, there can still be power received, even in the low 10's to 100's of mW, but as engineers and physicists have been saying all along, it's not transmitting power via ultrasound that's in question, it's can you do it at a useful amount, safely, in a practical way, at an acceptable efficiency, with hardware at a reasonable price. This still answers none of those.

The Business Side

As noted above, this looks like demo hardware, not even prototype, and still hasn't been shown working or efficiencies given. Can it work in a practical situation like an office or a coffee shop, or under standard use cases? What's the efficiency? Can it steer? How does it know where the phone is and track it? Most importantly, is it proven safe? Is it even legal at the dB level in most countries?

Reaction on Twitter seems pretty muted - in a week there's been a whole 3 replies and ~100 'likes' which is pretty telling. Seems the journalists know their audience...

What's really interesting though is that uBeam have not yet announced a new funding round. It's near 4 months since the Upfront demonstration, enough time to have completed a funding round with such slam-dunk technology. I'm saying 'no funding (yet)' as there are no new job ads, no publicity, and if one of the 'big guys' who a company will already have had come through to price the round were interested, they would not allow pictures of the tech to get out, especially if it's an Apple or a Google. Four or five months into fundraising things are starting to get stale, everyone knows that the first guys you spoke to haven't come up with terms (or acceptable terms), and that holding out will just get the company more eager to deal. Even with reducing burn rate by shedding senior staff and closing offices, runway only buys you so much in this type of situation. It's getting close to summer as well, and VC's are notorious for disappearing for July and August.

I have been expecting it announced soon, since there's no shortage of dumb money to go around these days, as when a 'low toxin butter-coffee' company can raise over $19 million, it seems anything will get funded. Perhaps they're holding out for the best valuation and getting that $100m round on an Energous-beating $400m valuation?

Who knows? And, from the public reaction to this picture, who cares?

uBeam - Still All Sizzle?

An eventful day yesterday on the uBeam front, with Meredith Perry finally giving a demo of uBeam technology and showing it charging a phone at the Upfront Summit - well more precisely showing a big box and then a light on a phone coming on if it was put in front of it. Essentially a slightly more glitzy version of the "All Things D" demo done in 2011, showing what 6 years and $25 million gets you.

Wireless charging of a phone thru the air. Woh. 👏 1st public demo ever @ubeam #UpfrontSummit pic.twitter.com/I6GZx7KDri

— Spencer Rascoff (@spencerrascoff) February 3, 2017

From what we see here, in my opinion, is proof that you can take a non-technical audience and baffle them with bullshit - if you want to know that the phone is charging, you need to do more than turn a screen on. Perhaps there is more not seen here, I'm just going on the info that's public, but you need to show voltage, current (at both transmitter and receiver to get efficiency), and the phone sitting in front of that panel for several minutes and see the actual charge level increase over time. But that isn't what they showed - and if it isn't, please enlighten me and tell me what is the difference between what's shown in that video, and what was shown at All Things D 6 years ago.

It seems at least some are not convinced and there are journalists taking a sceptical view, such as Axios (albeit promoted with a tweet that is more sensational than what was shown and the content of the article, and sadly is all that is quoted by most)

This is a science project that is clearly progressing, but not nearly finished yet.

Pretty faint praise after $25 million. There was also this interesting statement:

we're told Perry picked that particular Android for the demo because of its highly-visible charging icon

Why would that be mentioned so specifically by the company, and why does it make me raise an eyebrow?

Now, let's be clear, no-one ever said that transmitting power via ultrasound is impossible, of course it's possible - but is there a way to do so in a safe, efficient, and cost effective manner? That's the challenge, and in any practical sense it had never been shown publicly. In my opinion, it still hasn't. All that has been shown is a screen lighting up.

I'm sure uBeam now have potential funders lining up outside willing to throw money at them, based on this, even though nothing was really shown. And if I'm wrong about that, tell me what was shown that proves it works. What's the charge rate? How long to charge a phone? What is the efficiency? How does this line up with "4 meters, any angle, multiple devices, faster than a wire" touted before? Is it a safe and legal level? (OSHA now seems to have gone back to a 115 dB limit, not the 145 dB from a few years ago, I certainly hope there's no-one in the way of that beam, or there are any grating lobes giving the audience a facefull.)

Now the fact the phone charge indicator comes on proves they are charging at a minimum of 500mW (around 5 volts at 100 mA) needed on the USB port, which is awesome as that's enough to at least trickle charge a phone over about 10 hours. Or does it? Potentially you could access the Qi chipset on the phone to show the charging light when at <500 mW, or other similar bypassing of standard input methods, but in the end there's no way to know without looking at actual charge rate - which isn't shown in any form. If it works so well, I'm surprised those numbers aren't released - "more than 500mW" is a very straightforward statement to make. Or leave the phone in front of the transmitter and see it gaining battery level during the talk. But that would be too easy.

And at what efficiency? At 30% end-to-end it's incredible, at 1% it's very difficult to justify, at <1% it's ridiculous. We don't know those numbers.

How many devices can this charge at a time? What does the system cost? Can it track the phone? What happens at an angle? Was the beam always on, or did it switch on when it saw the phone? What were the safety measures to stop an always on-beam being pointed at someone accidentally? If this is the best case demo today, why were some people saying they had seen a similar working demo years ago? Weren't they moving to production 18 months ago? All questions still unanswered.

I'm really sad, of course, for the senior staff who just left the company over the last couple of months, and what I guess is the closure of the San Jose office (or that's how it appears if you check the LinkedIn profiles). Amazing they would leave just on the verge of a breakthrough like this, but more fool them I guess, what do they know? Passing by on the billions... 

Overall, with a skeptical eye, there's nothing new here. IMO, no significant new information, nothing to show commercial success or capability, and no path to a realistic product. But it won't stop investors from piling in without doing significant due diligence (investors, feel free to call me and prove me wrong), and it won't convince anyone with one iota of technical capability that there's more there than they thought a week ago. More of the same, move along.

For those of you with a technical bent, I'm including a more detailed analysis from what I saw in that demo below. Anyone non-technical, you may want to stop now.

Taking a technical look at what's there and bearing in mind this is with a lot of assumptions - the video shows an array that seems to be made up of a (approx) 30 by 30 collection of circular transmitters, and given what I see on stage it's about a 30 by 30 cm panel, so each is a 1 cm diameter cylinder. Very much like the Murata MA40S4S used in car parking sensors and available off the shelf at around $3 each in bulk. Of course they couldn't use them because that would be a $2700 transmitter BOM component right there, but let's use them as a starting point.

Assume 40 kHz, and let's say we can drive much harder because why not, something like 6 times more (120 volts p-p, or approx 16 dB in sound pressure) to be generous so that's 120 + 16 = 136 dB sound pressure level. They are circular, so we lose 2 dB from area, that's 134 dB out, across a 0.09 m², and at that level that means a peak pressure of 180 Pa and about 37 W/m² or actual 3.35 W transmitted. Incidentally the capacitance of those devices at 2550 pF means (at P=nCV²f) gives 1.3 kW (900 * 2550e-12 * 120 * 120 * 40e3) so right there is around 0.25% efficient on transmit at best, along with a one bar electric fire (update: this capacitance calculation is not correct, I need to update it). A few million people doing this every day means GW more generation capacity, so I hope I'm wrong or we better start building some power stations. (updated efficiency numbers below - a bit better than here, but still pretty awful).

As a side note, those values of amplitude, if I'm in the right ballpark, may avoid the worst effects of acoustic nonlinearity in the distances shown, but in my opinion (and that of physics), would result in nonlinearity if you tried to increase from there, decreasing efficiency considerably.

Now at 1 to 2 m distance you're probably looking at around 3dB loss in the air (pretty low, yay, but still 50% efficiency), so saying you get all of that power at the phone (about 5 by 10 cm) you'd have an focus gain of around 18 times (25 dB), so now we're at 156 dB (wow, that's loud). Now we convert back to electricity, let's say 30% efficient there (massively higher than the Murata MA40S4S), and around 90% on some awesome conversion electronics, it's about 27% conversion efficiency, and you now get to 450 mW to the battery which is almost enough to charge it. Let's go with that - yay we're charging a phone in about 11 hours. If I'm assuming low numbers, then divide that by about 5 to get a 5% overall rate and 90mW, maybe enough to turn on the charging light (and about 2 days to charge your phone, if you don't move it)

At what efficiency? 0.25% at transmitter (I'm ignoring some losses here, but they're minor in comparison to that capacitive loss), a further 50% in the air, and 27% at the receiver, and you've got 0.034% efficiency. (As noted earlier, not including non-linearity). At 12 c/kWh, that's $2 to charge your phone. Ouch. OK, I'm being mean, let's say it's 10x more efficient, it's 20 cents to charge your phone, only $70 per year done every day, still an ouch. And you can heat your room at the same time with a kW scale transmitter, that costs $7500 because of the high BOM and doesn't make you feel so bad about having spent $1500 on a toaster oven.

As an added note from the original post, I noticed on a Twitter feed that some there indicate that the transmitter seemed to be covered by some form of fabric, which looking again at the video you can see is there. This does not mean that ultrasound can pass through clothing, as was previously claimed, but a thin membrane that is significantly smaller than a wavelength and is of a low enough impedance material will not be 'seen' by the ultrasound, for example a mylar film on the order of 10s microns compared to around 8mm wavelength in air at 40 kHz will likely have a minimal effect. Just as with the membranes or meshes used on car parking sensors like the Murata mentioned above... 

I'll add to this as I have time to do so, and check my calcs for any mistakes. Comments welcome on why I'm wrong, and just a disgruntled former employee :)

Edit: Just an update to some of my numbers here. Looking at the Murata data sheet is seems that SPL was measured at 30cm, not at the source, so some modification needed to the calcs. Using Murata's published factors, a further ~10dB needs applied for the diffraction and absorption (BTW that's quite a good document on how those transducers work), so they could be producing as much as 130 dB at source, so I can reduce the applied voltage by a factor of around 3 to around 40 volts, and does reduce the capacitive loss to around 130 W for 3.35 W acoustic transmitted, meaning 2.5% efficiency in that portion of the calculation, so it's overall 0.34% efficient at best, not 0.034%. Yes, that means the sound field could be of greater intensity and higher power, however that would start to push it into the nonlinear regime, and also you'd then be beaming very high sound levels at that cameraman and of course they totally considered safety in this demo...

Interestingly, this means those Murata's can put out over the 115dB level mandated by OSHA, however I'd note that a) the Murata operate at a duty cycle of about 0.4% or less (20 cycle bursts until return signal at up to around 2 m, another good link on car parking sensors), and b) there is a single transmitter, that is as loud as it will get, and decay rapidly after that - unlike a phased array for power which operates at a 100% duty cycle and uses antenna gain to amplify the sound by a factor of several hundred.

Quick guide to spotting non-existent tech

I covered this earlier in a different post, but I wanted to highlight this list from an article in The Register, as a "Quick guide to spotting non-existent tech". Read the company press then go through this checklist when questioning their claims and whether there's more sizzle than steak.

• Refusing to give a launch date.
• Refusing to talk about the tech, claiming confidentiality or trade secrets.
• Using news of investments or hires as evidence of technological progress.
• Promoting itself on a big stage rather than in a small room.
• Offering a well-crafted message and vision but becoming immediately vague when pushed on actual details.
• Offering "exclusive access" – with restrictions.
• Confusing working hard with making progress.

What's interesting in this is how many of these points require a compliant press, many of whom prefer publishing hagiographies rather than investigative pieces - after all it's quicker, easier, and doesn't end up making enemies among some rich and well connected people. Look at the months and years of work it took for John Carreyrou to uncover what was happening at Theranos, all the lawsuit threats and denials by the company. Isn't it much easier to do a puff piece on Elizabeth Holmes and how she just wanted to save the world? Garrett Reim of the LA Business Journal tweeted a comment on this yesterday following an article on the Unethical Side of Silicon Valley by Erin Griffith (which I'll comment on in a separate post).

Many tech "writers" are guilty helpers. Praising unproven products & services just for a pat on the head from a big name investor or exec. https://t.co/F3JR6KyYii

— Garrett Reim (@garrettreim) December 29, 2016

This hits the nail on the head, though I think he may be being a little kind - and don't know which of the terms "enabling", "willfully ignorant", or "complicit" is more apt. That may sound harsh, but remember that the press is part of an ecosystem, and it's clear the incentives now reward them more for page views than accuracy or in depth reporting. They're supposed to be watchmen, but some are making money while choosing to look the other way.

How to improve this situation? All I can suggest is to follow the work of the good journalists, and ignore the 'work' of stenographers posing as reporters. Subscribe to the publications that do the hard work, and deny the others the benefit of claiming page views. In the end, money talks.

Edit: Here's another nice blog post on the "Anatomy of a Scam", specifically regarding Theranos.

Support Real Journalism: Subscribe

If you're concerned about real news, quality journalism, and supporting people who are dedicated to getting the truth out there, then support it with money and subscribe to a newspaper or other outlet whose work you've admired. People like me who blog do so based off the primary work of real journalists - without them, there's nothing.

This year, John Carreyrou has been a standout journalist for his work on Theranos. He broke the story of a company that was risking the lives and health of all of us, deceiving customers and investors, and intimidating those within the company who tried to speak out - and his paper, the Wall Street Journal, supported him against the heavy handed legal threats made. This will make a real difference in people's lives, and the effects of Theranos' actions will be felt in the VC community for many years to come. This takes not just a journalist with skill and real determination to build and break a story, but an organisation that maintains standards and supports their reporters even when it gets tough.

If you want this type of journalism to continue, then support them with money - subscribe to their publication. This year, I've subscribed to the Wall Street Journal in large part due to Carreyrou's work, and also to the New York Times. The NYT is having a sale on subscriptions here, WSJ is having their Black Friday sale here.

I've also found myself reading Business Insider (Biz Carson did great work on Hampton Creek), Bloomberg, and Garrett Reim got me reading the LA Business Journal.

Whichever publication or journalist you've admired the work of - support them in whatever way lets them keep working and stay independent!

And to all those reading in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving!

And in other news...

I've not been commenting much on uBeam lately - there's really no need, I've said pretty much what I felt needed saying, and I'll wait for the post-mortem to take much more time out my life to talk about them - but there have been a couple of events recently that warrant at least a couple of lines.

The first is an article that appeared in Epic Magazine in July, "Silicon is Just Sand", a sizable piece by author Stephen Elliott on Silicon Beach, regarding the growth of technology companies in the Venice/Santa Monica area. It's a nicely written piece that gives a great flavor of the people and culture in Silicon Beach, it reminded me of my time there, and his sarcastic responses to many of the more ridiculous parts lend the feel of "the only sane man in the asylum". Each of the many sections is devoted to a different person or company, with a particular thread running through it. uBeam, however, earned two sections to cover the extraordinary fit of self-destruction that an industry friend of mine described as "managing to shoot themselves in both feet with a single bullet". (Sections 8 and 9, but I encourage you to read it all.)

I'm not going to go line-by-line through the jaw-dropping hilarity of the article. It speaks for itself, just read it. My personal reaction to it was "Yep, sounds like a typical day at uBeam" and I laughed as he was taken from believer to skeptic and closed with "Fake it till you make it".

Second is an announcement from uBeam, which can be found here. The headline is that they've hired an SVP of Engineering, Larry Pendergass, who is a big name and is another tick-box in the needed list for Series B funding. Congratulations, I'm sure this means they are about to give a public demo and release a commercial product any day now, as promised.

What's more interesting, though, is what's not said. First of all, this was picked up by exactly zero press outlets that I'm aware of. A year ago this would have been all over the tech media news, but even Techcrunch didn't touch it. Was this deliberate? If you self publish seemingly important company news last thing on a Friday afternoon it's usually an attempt to bury it, but I'm also wondering if the services of uBeam's PR team are "no longer required" following the above "Silicon is Just Sand" debacle and it's the B-Team that are running press releases now. It's garnered a whole eight likes in the three weeks it's been up, which is about half the number of likes I have on my lowest viewed LinkedIn article and I'm a nobody. It seems the sparkle has dimmed a bit. 

Next thing hidden in there is that it sounds like my replacement as VP Acoustics has "graduated" to the advisory board after about 7 months in the job. Perhaps I can add "gives the company a less embarrassing exit route for departing executives" to the list for reasons to have an advisory board? I'm not sure who is on the team now that has any extensive ultrasound experience, it'll be interesting to see who my replacement's replacement will be. I'm sure he'll be the cream of the crop.

I do love the pictures of what looks to be a monster office in San Jose (8500 sqft or so given landlord data?) for what is now two employees. I'm sure that's been a necessary expenditure over the last few months in light of the imminent product release and huge expansion.

That's it, not much more to say here. Back to more important things.

Update: Rather than do a new post, I thought I'd add this in here:

uBeam are now advertising for a Director of HR. If you are interested, one of the key requirements is:

defining the couture (sic) best able to position the organization as the leader in the market place

so I guess a stylish uBeam uniform is the last thing the company needs before releasing their demo and product by the end of the year? There's a simpler way to ensure they get the job - don't come to the interview through the door, just break in through a window. And if you get rejected, turn up for your first day of work anyway, only losers take 'no' for an answer.