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I think the specs say it'll run on 5v, which is four AA batteries.

Volts is not a unit of power.

Amps * Volts = Watts.

These things draw 2.5 watts. You might get half a day out of 4 alkaline AA's.

You will need a solar panel similar to one of these just to sustain it, as well as provide an adapter to covert to 5v.

The only place I've ever seen LED light bulbs is at http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/. Not associated with this company at all, they just send me a catalog every now and then. I'd definitely be interested in these, but the cost is still to high.

Those look interesting, know if any 'auto level' the input? I am using two transmitters from CC.Crane http://www.ccrane.com/radios/fm-transmitters/fm-transmitter.aspx and they work well, but I am always having to adjust the input level pot on the side. Note, you can boost the RF output a bit by turning the trimpot hiding under the sticker on the bottom.

It might be tricky to find a clear frequency if you live in a metropolitan area. But you can set odd an odd spacing like 95.35 Mhz (assuming your receiver will tune that).

Here you go... http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/geobulb/ A steal at only $120 each for 60 watt equivalents.

Compact Fluorescents are only a temporary solution until we get cost-effective LED light bulbs. They are available now (even at Costco). Which means pretty soon they should actually make sense to use. Right now, they are still a little pricey, despite lasting 30 times longer than incandescents. Plus, those "environmentally friendly" CFLs contain mercury... just what we need more of in our landfills!

Sigh, wasting a good thread for modding by replying to this but since no one else has I'll bite.

Why legislate? If the lamps were cost effective, then the municipalities would make the switch. Right now in central Ohio the primary electric provider charges in the neighborhood of $5 per lamp per month for power. The muni is responsible for purchasing the bulbs if I am remembering correctly.

First, you legislate it since its the only way to get it done. Sad but true. Next, you only need LED light bulbs. You don't have to replace the full lamp, at least if these consumer sites are anything to go by.

If the cost of power and the cost of the bulb are figured in, the LED street lamps take an insane amount of time to recoup the cost. Even when you figure in the labor to replace the bulbs every couple of years it still doesn't add up.

Per the source Wikipedia provided the extra initial cost is paid off within two years just from the electricity savings, and barring a physical disaster (such as the streetlamp falling over or getting shot with a gun) you don't have to change the bulb for 20 years. Really, it is a better choice but it would require work by city employees to actually make the change happen. They may even have to do a slide show!

When many budgets are being stretched to the breaking point would you advocate for your town to install LED street lights that will cost more? Would you vote for your taxes to be increased to purchase the lights, or would you prefer that a couple of employees be terminated to pay for the cost difference? I, myself, am not opposed to the idea of installing power saving, pollution reducing equipment, but there has to be a balance somewhere.

Hell yes I would advocate for this. Budgets don't magically get bigger on their own. You have to work for it. You have to plan and invest for it. This is a very, fucking, simple, means to save the city/town a lot of money and power, and it cuts down on light pollution as an added bonus!

Oh and something else to chew on: as more demand for LED lights increases, in the form of cities and towns using them for streetlights, the manufacturing process will be improved as companies compete with one another to produce a cheaper light bulb to sell. That's basic market principles. Demand drives innovation. Yet another long term economic bonus by mandating a switch to LED lights.

Apparently the Department of Energy in the US thinks they're a damn good thing that should be improved so they can become the defacto light source. They're hosting a contest since May 2008 to create a better LED light bulb. They call it the L-Prize.

Really, once you look at the known facts and the future potential you have to ask yourself why not? A handful of employees might lose their job? Taxes may go up a fraction of a percent? You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't make improvements for the future without paying for it. To hold back on something as simple as this for the reasons you gave is petty, just petty.

you do research in this area? really? then you fail it.

C. Crane's GEOBulb looks very promising in terms of the future of LEDs, but the price is quite painful. I'm personally using some 120-130 lumen candelabra LED bulbs, which delivers close to the light of a 25 watt incandescent.

The LED bulbs are now coming in different color temperatures, so things are progressing.

I don't have one, but this led light seems to not be a directional light (but rather omni directional).

It's certainly not cost effective, but may be at some point soon (then again, it may not be ever)

geobulb link

I think we're talking about two different LED lights. We have some that are roughly â15, See here but those are not a true replacement. The $100 ones are these ones that provide a much better lighting. If you have ones in the Neatherlands like that for â10, post a link. A few of us in the US would like to see that.

C.Crane has these available now. Indeed their 60 Watt replacement known as GEOBulb lists for $119. They just introduced this bulb and expect that price will drop as volume rises. ....do they get the $20,000,000?

C.Crane has these available now. Indeed their 60 Watt replacement known as GEOBulb lists for $119. They just introduced this bulb and expect that price will drop as volume rises. ....do they get the $20,000,000?

Or you could, you know, just buy a LED bulb that is made for 110V. Not hard to find. http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/ My guess is vossman77 poster could probably save as much energy for less cost by converting the house to LED light bulbs rather than messing with solar cells.

Like OLPC, the original Bayless Freeplay Plus Radio was designed for local production.

The problem is that the precision manufacturer in Asia can also produce a rugged, reliable, clockwork dynamo.

He can package more sophisticated electronics and he can beat your price anywhere in the world. Midland XT511 Dynamo 22-Channel FRS/GMRS Emergency Crank Radio

The $67 three pound Midland may not be best-of-breed - but it is an easily portable dynamo powered transceiver and battery charger with AM/FM radio, NOAA weather radio and alerts.

The GeoBulb, a tungsten white balanced LED lightbulb is already here. It is not quite commercially available, but I saw a prototype at Greenfest in November 2007. The price is high, but it lasts for decades. According to my calculations, at $99, it will actually be cheaper than the many tungsten bulbs it would replace over its lifespan (especially if the cost of electricity rises over the next few decades).

http://www.ccrane.com/geobulb/geo-bulb-flyer.pdf

Here's an led bulb that supposedly works with a dimmer:
http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/cc-vivid-led-light-bulb.aspx

The C.Crane company is already selling LED light bulbs. They are more efficient than even compact fluorescent bulbs.

To understand why the free market will fix the lighting problem, look at the automotive market. When gas prices rose steeply, Americans switched to smaller, more fuel efficient cars. As the sales of SUVs plummeted, Ford, GM, and Chrysler suffered massive losses. Toyota with its arsenal of fuel-efficient vehicles is about to become the #1 automotive company in the world. These delightful events occurred before Congress raised fuel-economy standards in a recent bill.

Similarly, as electricity prices skyrocket, the American consumer will haul his ass to Walmart to buy the super-efficient light bulbs.

Legislation is simply not necessary to fix the problem. The free market will fix the problem.

Tried a couple of these (the Belkin in particular really sucked). I finally settled on the iRiver AFT100. It plugs right into the cigarette lighter plug and has a 1/8" plug. It's get just enough signal strength and the audio is loud enough. No batteries required, 3 presets and covers the whole FM band.

The Belkin had low audio, so that when the signal was fading due the weak transmitter the noise was deafening. It was extremely frustrating and I took great joy in destroying it.

Another really good one is the CCrane FM transmitter. http://www.ccrane.com/radios/fm-transmitters/fm-tr ansmitter.aspx It works great but it really isn't very convenient to use in the car.

Mercury, they dont come on right away and are dull and dim, they give off crappy light.. LED is the way to go.. they are 10 times more enegry efficent than CFL and last 4 times longer.

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index .aspx

LEDs are extremely efficient, but in most cases aren't as bright as an ordinary light bulb. The box of ordinary 100 Watt light bulbs that I am looking at says they put out 1690 lumens while using 100 Watts. By comparison, one example of a 30 LED spotlight says that it puts out 150 lumens while only using 4.4 Watts. Perhaps someone could just use more of them, but even then the light they put out is usually a shade of white that seems harsher and less attractive looking. They are very efficient, although I don't know how they compare to fluorescent lights. Many cities are switching to LED light bulbs for their street lights, not so much because of electrical efficiency, but because they don't like having to change light bulbs regularly in such inconvenient hard to reach locations. LED light bulbs last for many years. Here are several examples of LED lightbulbs:

• LED Light Bulbs
• More LED Light Bulbs

When backpacking, I use a Pak-Lite Flashlight. I could use that flashlight all night (at least on the low setting) without worrying about the batteries going dead. When hiking late in the afternoon I always keep a small Pak-Lite in my pocket, just in case I don't make it back before dark. Back in the early 1990s, I was backpacking with a friend over night here in a remote part of the mountains of Northern Arizona. At about 9:00 p.m. the young man and a somewhat older woman came stumbling through the dark came up to our camp sight. They did not have a flashlight and were out of water and were lost. They asked which way the campground was and he said that his new wife and some other relatives were camping down in the campground. The woman was his new mother-in-law and this was the first hike she had ever been on in her life. They had made a wrong turn on the poorly maintained hard to follow trail and got lost. We refilled their water bottle, loaned them an extra flashlight and sent them down the trail in the correct direction. That was back before the days of LED flashlights. The flashlight that I loaned them must have gone dead before they made it back, because the next day I found the flashlight laying on my truck with a thank you note. I noticed that the batteries were dead. So when starting a long hike late in the afternoon I now always keep a tiny 9-volt LED flashlight in my pocket and take some water too so that I don't end up lost in the dark and thirsty like them.

The LED flashlight would be great for use during hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes or the usual ordinary power failures that are caused by summer thunder storms every summer.

One idea I heard floating around was the to buy one for yourself, you would have to buy one towards the initiative.

This is similar to what the Freeplay Foundatation and C. Crane were doing with the Freeplay Lifeline Radios. Buy one for yourself, and one is donated to orphans in Rawanda.

Apparently this wasn't popular enough, because it looks like Freeplay and C. Crane have discontinued the program. The radios were probably too large and ugly for most American shortwave consumers, I suppose.

LED's are dimmable now, if you get the really good ones: http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index .aspx - the only issue is that the array of LED's that fit into a standard light socket still only put out a minimal 60 lumens. A standard, 60 watt incandescent bulb puts out over 900 lumens. Really big difference.

The benefits of course being that the LED's don't "ever" burn out. 10,000 hours of use is a LONG time in the lifespan of bulbs.

So the right answer is to use a mix of LED's for the dimmer switched areas & have a lamp or two with CFL for the times you need really bright, focused light.

I estimated my house's requirements to replace every bulb with this kind of mix - Well over $4,000. Sigh - it's going to be a long slow process. Once LED's really come down in price and visual appeal - we'll see a real difference.

The LED lights are already here but like everything else that is new, they are still pretty costly (per bulb that is). One site I found listed both cost and figures on saving.

http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index .aspx

The figures are from the same people trying to sell you the bulb, so take it as a starting point but they claim their "bulb" lasts for 60,000 hours, using 120 kWh for those 60,000 hours bring the total cost to: $46.95 (@$0.10/kWh)

Cost of bulb ($34.95) + cost of using bulb for 60,000 ($0.10/kWh * 120 kWh).

Compared to an incandescent 60 Watt Light Bulb which only lasts ~1000 hours over the same 60,000 hours costing $400.20:

(cost of bulbs (60 bulbs * $0.67 each) + cost of using bulb for 60,000 ($0.10/kWh * 3600 kWh)

Google also tells me a fluorescent lamp uses ~1/4 the energy of an incandescent bulb, so that would be approx. $100.05 using the same figures above. The cost savings do add up but I don't know if I can bring myself to paying $35 per LED bulb.

Note: I'm not affiliated with ccrane.com. I just found them via Google.

These energy-saving bulbs use 75% less electricity than incandescents and produce far less greenhouse gas to manufacture and use

Don't let the marketing fool you, I don't see any comparison with LED bulbs. This is probably because they know there is none.

The retailer is determined to push energy-saving light bulbs with the help of some unlikely partners.

Even when you factor in that LED lights cost a little more to buy, don't you actually save more money on your power bill and have longer lasting bulbs if you use LED lights? LED bulbs such as the ones shown here claim to be able to use the same light socket. In addition to the useful facts listed on the page here's another tidbit directly from the page:

National Energy Savings:

If every U.S. household replaced just one standard 60 watt bulb with a CC Vivid LED bulb, we could save 24,184,400,000 watts or 24,184.4 mega (million) watts per day.

National savings information based on 103,000,000 households with an average use of 4 hrs per day per house. Based on gross watts.

Oh, I don't know...

http://www.besthomeledlighting.com/all_led_bulbs?g clid=CJ-Mrc7-t4kCFQsEVAodnlYvPg

Here's a 4 watt light bulb for example.

http://www.besthomeledlighting.com/product/G32-120 -E27-70-W

And a host of LED alternatives:
http://www.ccrane.com/lights/led-light-bulbs/index .aspx

And here's a spreadsheet to compare all three:

http://www.productdose.com/article.php?article_id= 1142

Anything else?

You go to C. Crane for the Freeplay FreeCharge:

"step down on the pedal and the generator spins. Charging to full power takes modest dedication."

Yeah, well. Dedication. Before getting in any deeper you might want to ask a vet, an old-timer, about what it takes to work a hand-cranked dynamo.

Have your credit card ready, because portable power is not cheap.

C. Crane has a nice selection of antennas for AM, FM broadcast, SW and Wi-Fi.

The Boston Acoustics Recepter is worth a look as a first generation HD Radio. If you are serious about AM, this is the place to begin.

Radio is a mature and affordable technology with seventy-five years of experience in educational broadcasting to back it up.

"like stealing a post office truck"

It's not stealing. Isn't this more like BUYING a used, surplus truck from the postal service? You give someone a laptop-- what's wrong with them selling the laptop?

What would be the disadvantage in selling these laptops to people in wealthy nations as a commodity? That is precisely what the Freeplay Foundation does with their "Lifeline Radio", which is a robust, windup/solar powered, AM/FM/SW radio designed for people who live in areas without power. You can buy one radio through CCrane and they'll donate a second one to someone in need.

Don't forget a radio. From what I hear the Freeplay lifeline radios are great.
They do not require any batteries, picks up AM, FM, and Shortwave, designed to withstand "harsh conditions", and is powered by solar and/or wind-up. That and if you purchase one they automatically donate another to the Freeplay Foundation to help orphaned children in Africa.

Next step up would be to have a ham license so you could talk back. Although...in an emergency I'm not sure how strict the FCC would be if you didn't have one.

I have a general class ham radio license and have a 2-meter radio in my 4WD truck and a smaller 2-meter radio that I keep in my backpack. There are two main types of radios that hams use, they use an HF radio for bouncing a signal off the ionosphere and talking to people hundreds or thousands of miles away. If they only want to talk to hams locally or in a nearby city they usually use a higher frequency radio such a 2-meter radio that does not bounce off the ionosphere.

About 5 years ago I had a girfriend who was a ham with a technican class license who had a 2-meter/440 radio in her car. If there was ever a disaster and got seperated we had agreed on which frequencys we should use to contact each other. It is not unusual to hear husbands and wives who are hams checking in with each other while one is at home and the other is doing errands. In a major disaster they should still be able to stay in touch with each other.

I have several battery packs for the 2-meter radio that I keep in my backpack. One is rechageable and the other battery pack is not rechargeable but contains AA alkaline batteries which can be replaced from the extra stash that I always keep on hand. Here in Arizona there are ham radio repeater stations on my of the mountain tops. Most repeater stations have battery and/or solar power backup. The can be used to communicate with hams who live 100 miles or so away on the other side of the nearby mountains. The ARRL has some info about becoming a ham. Most of the local hams all know each others name and callsign.

I also keep several LED flashlights around such as the Pack-lite which are so efficient that they will run for 200 hours on high and 1,200 hours on low. I also keep a couple of 5-gallon cans of water in the back of my truck.

Freeplay still makes an AM/FM/SW1/SW2 windup & solar powered (no battery) radio, but it's mostly intended for rural African communities. But you can buy one and donate a second radio for the Freeplay Foundation.

It's the size of a loaf of bread, and it's ugly, but it's not really aimed for American gageteers.

You miss the point of the parent post. There are many situations where it would be nice to have a new (not refurbished computer from a thrift store--often there because several things are broken) computer that may be slightly underpowered but cheap, even in 1st World countries.

And the point here is that not only would it be useful to make available in sub-Saharan Africa or rural India, but to inner-city youth of Liverpool or Los Angeles.

As well, the point here is that you can make something like this available as a cheap commodity computer (avoid the feature bloat... this is to make a very cheap mass-produced computer), it will drive the price down even more simply due to economies of scale. Electronic components are particularly sensitive to volumes of production.

In addition to simply having these computers around at the check-out stands of your local Wal-Mart, there will be a community of developers and tinkerers that will be using the equipment...many of which could translate and port some of the tools and concepts from more expensive equipment to a very cheap platform like this.

There have been some amazing things done with some of the old 8-bit platforms, like the Comodore 64 and the Apple ][, including TCP/IP stacks and web browsers that would have been unheard of when they were originally put together.

An example of a projct made for "an initiative only making sense in desparate circumstances" that has practical application in 1st World countries, The Freeplay Wind-up Radio is one of the most innovative projects to come up. This is a device that doesn't need an external power source, is very rugged, and works in areas of the world like Rwanda or Congo. It is also sold in the USA and Canada to people who want to keep an emergency radio available during a disaster, so you don't have to constantly check and see if the batteries are working.

How come a laptop computer couldn't be any different?

Or to paraphrase your Bill Maher quote a little differently, why not go from 10 to 11 when we can also help a country go from 0 to 1? It doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.

Parent is modded funny, but this is a very reasonable solution; that's what I do at my house and it works fantastically.

You can get a nice little PLL FM transmitter from ccrane.com for around US$70.
With the addition of an antenna wire that is about 6 feet long on the transmitter, I get hiss-free FM stereo that sounds certainly good enough for me, in every room of my house and out in the shop. I've ripped every CD I own and put that on "shuffle" from the main PC, and have either nice stereos (living room and shop) or rinky jam-box radios (bathrooms) about everywhere I can expect to be. Two NI-MH batteries will last for at least a couple days in the thing, or you can use the wall-wort and not mess with transmitter batteries at all.

Implementation notes: (1) PLL synthesized FM is important; don't get a kit without it or your transmitter frequency will drift and your digitally-tuned receivers will get fuzz. (2): There are about 15 radio stations in my local market but I'm several miles out; YMMV if you are in a crowded market with no blank spaces on the FM dial. (3) When you are tired of your digital audio collection, you can always listen to the radio :)

The CCRane FM Transmitter is well-liked on places like fixup.net and XMFan.com. The power output is "adjustable", too, if you don't mind voiding your warranty.
http://www.ccrane.com/fm-transmitter.aspx

I bought the CCrane transmitter http://www.ccrane.com/fm-transmitter.aspx/ and perfomed the easy mod http://www.xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?t=3257&postdays =0&postorder=asc&start=0/ to increase it's output power.

It works great and covers the entire house. It's cheaper than the original post and includes a case and power supply (problems that the original poster had with the ebay one).

I have been thinking about getting this FM Transmitter from the C Crane Company. Yes, everyone's favorite radio manufacturer and sponsor of Art Bell and Drug Limbug.

C Crane makes one whose best feature is that you can set the retransmission frequency. I've bought the cheap ones to find that the four frequencies they choose are often already used in the cities I am in.

It's currently, uh, $69.95 but comes with free shipping.

FM Transmitter features:

* Full stereo on any FM frequency of your choice.
* Exceptionally clean and stable digital tuning for drift-free accurate transfer.
* Selectable Power-Off Timer.
* Approximate line-of-sight range of 70 ft. Walls and metal objects will reduce this range.
* Runs on included AC Adapter or (2) optional "AA" batteries.
* Portable, fits in the palm of your hand.
* Weighs just 5.8 ozs.
* Size: 3.1" W x 3.5" H x 1.1" /End C Crane Plug.

Such as this one or maybe these.

Or maybe go XM Radio?

I don't think any of these radio/internet things are ready for primetime yet........

Such as this one or maybe these.

Or maybe go XM Radio?

I don't think any of these radio/internet things are ready for primetime yet........

Such as this one or maybe these.

Or maybe go XM Radio?

I don't think any of these radio/internet things are ready for primetime yet........

(The CCRadioPlus in and of itself rocks technically, but it's limited to pretty much the same old crap programming, only from further away. It's marketed as the ultimate radio for AM talk.)

(The CCRadioPlus in and of itself rocks technically, but it's limited to pretty much the same old crap programming, only from further away. It's marketed as the ultimate radio for AM talk.)

(The CCRadioPlus in and of itself rocks technically, but it's limited to pretty much the same old crap programming, only from further away. It's marketed as the ultimate radio for AM talk.)

This one is excellent and well-reviewed in a number of publications: http://www.ccrane.com/quick_charger.asp. I have had mine for a while now and can attest it's excellent. It handles from four AAA through 4 D-cells. It has a slow-start (which prevents the batteries from getting hot), and for NiCd, it even discharges the batteries to 1.0V before recharging them. The spring clip is VERY strong, which helps assure good contact (at least I assume that's why they're so strong). You can leave the batteries in it, too, and it will keep them topped off.

It's not cheap (US$40) but it's been well worth it to me. I use rechargeables for everything and in every size except 9V. I get my batteries from http://www.batteryspace.com/. I like the AA 2250 mAh (currently 24 for US$30); they seem to last forever in my digital camera. My 11-year old daughter goes through batteries like crazy for her CD player, radio, clocks, toys, and flashlights, and going all-rechargeable was one of the best moves I ever made. I do keep a spare set of alkaline D-cells for my radio in case of extended power outage, but haven't had to use them yet (My 8 9500 mAh D-cells, like the A-cells, seem to last forever.

The C. Crane charger says it only does NiCd and NiMH, but I also recharge "rechargeable Alkalines" http://www.rayovac.com/products/recharge/rec_alk.s html in it with no problems.

These are more powerful, less subject to interference, have a Phase Loop Lock (PLL) circuit that keeps the signal solid. After that, the antenna you choose becomes the biggest issue. Use a yard-sale cast-off PC, throw your favorite light distro on it and stick it in the attic, with the transmitter hanging off of it.

For controls, use a web interface to your media player software, and you can hit it from any PC on your network. You can run streams, local MP3 or OGG files, internet radio, XM satellite radio, whatever. Put the smarts in the flexible, inexpensive, commodity hardware and hide it away.

I bought one of these neat little power meters a while back, and went around measuring everything icould get my hands on.

My laptops use ~45 watts with the screen on, without the screen it is about 35 watts (one is a PII366, the other a PIII-1GHz, both have 12" screens)

My P4 systems all use about 150 watts (no monitor) in idle (not powerdown, drives spinning) state. The worst I could manage running benchmarks was around 200W. Monitors vary a lot. Mine run about 3w in sleep, about 20W active.

1kwHr/day = ~42 Watts always-on.

electricity here is about $0.07 kW/hr which means I pay $1 per month for each 20W always-on in my apt.
My laptops cost me about $2 each. My computers $7 each.

My SMC firewall uses 7W, and it costs much less to operate than the old Cyrix 166 that used to fill that task (besids which, it doesn't use much more electricity than the wireless router I had before, and also replaces that)

So I'm all for specialized products to fill my needs. Of course, I have a dedicated MythTV PVR box I built myself (which is one of those $7/month electricity expenditures), but I wanted the ability to do multiple simultaneous recordings, have a web-interface , and have multiple front-ends (all of which were not availiable on Tivo until recently, and which have premium costs attached). But it wasn't a cost decision. I just like to tinker.

Sure they do! This one works really well.

And you can mod it to boost the power and/or break FCC 15 regulations for private radio transmissions.

I've got it. I use it. I love it!

When Folding@Home is turned off, my power consumption for the entire system is 140W. When I activate Folding@Home, the Wattmeter reading jumps to about 190-195W.

So if you're concerned about electricity usage in your house, then yes, distributed computing sucks more power.

If you heard any of the commericals played during the program, you would check out: C Crane