A California-based inventor has come up with a better way to power your outdoor devices. The revolutionary tech builds off the inductive coupling tech found in wireless phone chargers but can be attached to your window to help carry electricity through the glass to the outside. It’s called a Power Mole, and its currently in the process of being funded on Kickstarter.
The idea of moving electricity through glass isn’t a new one. However, there are a lot of problems when it comes to using electricity through glass windows. For starters, cold glass is a terrible conductor, it often needs to be heated to the point of melting to accomplish much transfer of electricity.
The Power Mole, though, utilized a two-puck system — the main transmitter is attached to the inside of your window, while the receiver is attached to the outside. You can then plug in the transmitter to an outlet inside, and it will carry up to 10 watts of electricity through the window and to the device outside.
Inventor Peter Bevelacqua says that the hope was to make it easier for people to set up outdoor equipment, like the security camera featured at the top of the article, without the need to rely on battery-powered options, install outdoor outlets, or drill through the wall to run a power cord inside.
Instead, the Power Mole is attached to your window using adhesive tape, and then the device — an outdoor camera, Christmas lights, or any other outdoor device that uses USB or 5-volt inputs.
The company behind the device, Acqua Industries, says that the device will deliver up to 10 watts of power through any non-metallic material measuring 30mm thickness or below. Additionally, the device’s Kickstarter page says that it has passed multiple safety tests, including FCC regulatory limits, to ensure its magnetic and electric fields aren’t dangerous.
The Power Mole also has build-in sensors to help detect whether or not the electric and magnetic fields are acting as designed, and it can turn off the fields as needed based on the objects around it — so if there is anything metal, it will disable the fields before unnecessary heat can be transferred to the metallic item.
It’s definitely an intriguing piece of tech that could help revolutionize how you connect outdoor items to a power supply. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the Kickstarter plays out — it’s currently showing as funded, though the Kickstarter is still live, and the first production run is expected to be delivered in just a couple of months.
Until we have solar panels that can replace windows, like these panels that don’t even need sunlight to generate energy, little devices like the Power Mole could be game-changers for homeowners and renters alike.
