Lead free with lesswire: Lesswire develops radio modules for micro CHP plant and onboard internet
With innovative radio modules, the high tech company lesswire has banished cable clutter from our normal working days. This makes life easier and provides for new applications, from onboard internet in cars to the comfortable operation of the local CHP plant.
This innovative powerhouse, though, still lies coverless next to the desk of a developer at lesswire AG. Here, on the eighth floor of 16 Albert-Einstein-Strasse, the finishing touches are being made to the wireless controller of the micro CHP plant for single- and two-family homes before it is sent to customers for a trial period in September.
This ultra compact gas heater cum power generator is scarcely larger than a washing machine and a world first from the company Kirsch. Its intelligence comes so to speak from lesswire, which specialises in wireless data transfer. A resident of Adlerhof since the summer, lesswire provides the controller and the interface that can display at any time how much electricity the user’s power plant is producing in the basement. lesswire founder and Managing Director Ralph Meyfarth (51) is already thinking to the future and wants to combine these CHP plants into smart grids that allow the ideal distribution of power when and as needed.
Meyfarth’s fastidiously tidy office overlooking the city is proof enough of his aversion to cable clutter. He developed his foible for wireless data transfer as early as the nineties when this was still pie in the sky for many. As a management specialist at Siemens-Consulting he was assigned to supervise a joint venture between the chip division of the Munich Group and the IHP, the Institute for High Performance Microelectronics in Frankfurt (Oder). He was the right man for it: after all, he had already set up a new business unit for Siemens Energy and Automation in the USA. Except this time it was different: in 1999 the computer scientist with a doctor’s degree founded his own company out of the IHP: lesswire.
“I’m not the born consultant: taking things in hand, setting up, and pushing ahead doesn’t appeal to me any more,” he confessed. No wonder that he could help out his parents’ structural engineering office with a program he had written himself in his teenage days. His startup as far back as 2001 caused a sensation at Cebit when it presented the world’s largest Bluetooth network. However, when the dotcom bubble burst, the young company found itself on the brink of ruin, but could save itself with development work for the automotive and production industry. This was a time that laid the foundations for the company’s expertise in high frequency radio technologies. Very soon after, its customers included such heavyweights like VW, Hewlett-Packard, and Techem. Four years ago, lesswire became part of the Prettl Group, which cleared the way for own developments.
One of these developments will be delighting web happy motorists this year, in the form of a retrofit radio module that can link any number of WLAN, UMTS, and GPS mobile devices in the car – and that for a price expected to be less than €400. Motorists can then listen to their favourite stations anywhere on web radio, sales executives can view the customer database on their notebooks wherever they are, and the kids can be pacified with web games, YouTube, and Co. on long journeys.
Meyfarth is optimistic of the future, and expects a good €3m turnover following the €2.5m last year. The future will also see new colleagues arriving for the present staff of twenty five. Although just recent arrivals in Berlin, Meyfarth’s team will be packing their bags again at the end of the year and moving a few blocks away to the building at 30 Rudower Chaussee that is currently being renovated.
Meyfarth himself is an old hand at moving around. A long resident of Munich, the mountaineer and skier misses the mountains, but has found compensation in a new passion: running on an advanced level. At the Berlin Marathon he crossed the finishing line in a respectable time. No less strenuous was giving his small high tech company a sound position on the market – and here too he completed the running. However: new challenges are in the offing, and there’s no time to catch your breath.
by Chris Löwer
Link: www.lesswire.com