Your next smart lock could ditch the battery by harvesting energy from your phone

One of the magical things about near-field communication technology (NFC) is that tags don't need a battery to communicate - you'll never need to buy a new coin cell for your employee badge, because the badge scanner wirelessly beams enough power to the badge to verify it's legit. Now, chipmaker Infineon wants to make the same thing happen with smart locks - ones that can be entirely powered by your phone.

You can already buy fancy door locks in Europe and basic padlocks in China that do the trick, with Finland's iLOQ claiming to have been the first to do it back in 2016. But today, Infineon is selling a new chip and offering full detailed instructions (PDF) to anyone who wants in on the idea.

It's called the NAC1080, and it's designed...

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