AnyCharge: An IoT-Based Wireless Charging Service for the Public

Mobile phones have become a necessity of modern life and are used for various tasks, including audio calls, text messaging, Web surfing, video streaming, gaming, and payments. Most of these tasks consume significant battery power, which makes public charging services increasingly important. Therefore, there are many public places and private stores have started to provide free charging services. However, there are several issues that restrict the popularity of public charging service. First, people cannot easily find charging spots. Second, there is no effective way to monitor charging status and manage the chargers. Third, a free charging service increases business expenses. To address these issues, we developed a Internet of Things (IoT)-based wireless charging service system, which is called AnyCharge. There are five major components of AnyCharge: 1) a Wi-Fi enabled wireless charger; 2) an IoT gateway; 3) a cloud-based management platform; 4) a secure Wi-Fi auto-connection algorithm; and 5) a mobile app. The charger is connected to an IoT gateway through Wi-Fi using our secure auto-connection algorithm, and the gateways are linked to the cloud server using message queue telemetry transport. The administrators can monitor and control chargers using the management platform. In addition, Android and iOS apps have been created to allow users to locate free chargers and find the shortest route to the nearest charging spot. We initiated a large-scale experimental deployment in Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Japan. More than 200 chargers have been installed in different places, including restaurants, hospitals, telecom stores, and hotels. Statistics shows that there is a strong demand for public charging services.