State-of-the-art Light-harvesting and Energy Storage

Energy harvesting is the process by which energy available in the environment is captured and converted into usable electrical energy. This energy can be stored in super capacitors for powering low energy electronics and for substituting for batteries. After several days of tinkering with duty cycles and efficient sleep modes we were able to apply the latest in light-harvesting technology to come up with our battery-free device called m1BeaconLite.

The patent-pending mBeacon1Lite, becomes the industry’s first battery-free proximity beacon solution capable of running without batteries. This revolutionary solution features the latest in energy-harvesting and storage technology that converts ambient light into a power source capable of handling a typical BLE application such as iBeacon and other proprietary formats in a small form factor at an affordable price.  The design is capable of using common indoor light sources such as fluorescent, incandescent and LED.

Energy harvesting delivers an scalable and environmental-friendly approach to indoor beacon deployments while reducing beacon equipment total cost of ownership. Most of indoors venues such as stadiums, retail stores, hotels, shopping centers have something in common, that is an abundance of ambient light. The tremendous operational and energy-harvesting efficiency of the m1BeaconLite, combined with our cloud based management and remote monitoring capability, enables our customers to realize the benefits of beacons without having to worry about battery-life or wired installations.

Unlike existing BLE beacons, the solution doesn’t require a battery to run; it utilizes a small photo-voltaic cell to convert ambient lighting into a stable power source that can power the beacon. The solution includes a cloud based server that can collect proximity, movements and dwelling patterns over time. In addition, the transformational solution provides powerful analytics under a single web based platform.

The most comprehensive family of beacons

The solution joins the mBeacon1, mBeacon2 and the mBeaconGW – Netclearance Systems, Inc. multi-mode proximity beacons. The m1BeaconLite is an affordable BLE-only and battery-free device that can be easily installed near ambient light sources. All Netclearance Systems, Inc. solutions, utilize beacon technology and feature an open server APIs (REST), mobile SDKs, and advanced analytics capabilities. In addition, Netclearance Systems, Inc. is the only company that offers a comprehensive web-based content and beacon management platform for all smartphones. It supports new and legacy smartphones by offering a unique low-power Wi-Fi and BLE beacon architecture that is compatible with all mobile platforms.