At Interbee 2023 in Japan, battery manufacturer IDX was giving a sneak peek of some of the new technology it is working on to enhance and provide new ways of monitoring and charging batteries.
The two concepts that I personally found the most interesting were smart batteries with a chip inside that can send all the information about a battery to an app on an iOS or Android device and wireless charging for V-mount batteries.
IDX was showing versions of its Imicro series with an inbuilt chip that can send information via Bluetooth to a smartphone or tablet.
On an iOS or Android device, you can use an app that is able to provide you with a comprehensive array of data about your battery. Everything from remaining power, current, voltage, battery charging cycles, and even how much charge time there is to go can be accessed. This is very handy because numerous people on set could have access to battery information that is being used on a wide array of devices and know when a battery needs changing without needing to physically go over to a device and check.
IDX is still gathering feedback from people in the industry as to what other features could be incorporated. One concept could be to have an Apple iWatch app where you could receive a message when a battery was getting low or a message when a battery has finished charging.
IDX was also showing an early prototype of wireless charging for V-mount batteries. You would be able to simply place a battery on a charger and have it charge without needing to connect it to anything. The wireless charger could also be connected to a laptop and you would be able to see the charging status of the battery. IDX did tell us that they are still looking into other ways of doing this because current wireless charging technology is too slow for charging larger-sized camera batteries.
