Remote controls devour batteries, but that might not be inevitable. In 2021, Samsung demonstrated that they can recharge automatically using light, providing with some televisions a solar remote control equipped with photovoltaic cells. This remote control will be replaced in 2022 by a model collecting a second source of energy: the Wi-Fi waves which pass through our homes, as has been the Korean manufacturer announced on January 5 as part of the Consumer electronic show (CES), the Electronics Show in Las Vegas, United States.
Samsung doesn’t give any details on how this technology works, but judging from recent research, its new remote might be equipped with a radio antenna ortorque oscillators capable of collecting electromagnetic oscillations of Wi-Fi waves.
The recovered signal would then pass through an electronic circuit capable of converting electrical oscillations into direct current, in order to supply the small internal battery of the remote control. The energy collected would be low, of the order of a few tens of microwatts at most.
Close to a Wi-Fi box
In a press release, Samsung explains that this system only works if the home’s Internet box broadcasts in the most common Wi-Fi frequency band, that of 2.4 GHz, and especially if it is housed near the remote control – without specifying the maximum tolerated distance.
In rooms where the Wi-Fi signal is too weak, users will still be able to position their remote control on their back so that it recharges using the sun. But in dark rooms far from Wi-Fi, users will have no other choice but to plug their remote control into a smartphone charger equipped with a USB-C cable, in order to reinvigorate its internal battery.
It is impossible to say at this time whether Samsung’s new solar remote control is much more expensive to manufacture than a conventional model. According to the American tech media The Verge, the Korean manufacturer would have explored other energy recovery technologies before settling on Wi-Fi waves, especially the generation of electricity through the movements of the remote control or the conversion of energy from sound waves.
The collection of “opportunistic” or “passive” energy has been studied for ten years in American, European and Asian laboratories, in the hope of supplying low-consumption electronic objects without batteries. Other sources of energy are studied, such as temperature variations or pressure changes. So many experimental technologies that augur a future where all remote controls do without batteries.