Slashdot Mirror
Potato-Powered Web Server
chazR writes "The guys at Temple of Thee Lemur have done it again. A genuine potato-powered web server. That's potato as in vegetable, not debian distro. This is even cooler than Project EUNUCH. Be gentle with it."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
The only reason things like this get done is because they can. Why do you think the Unites States and USSR were in the space race? Becuase they new it was possible to leave earth and they thought it was damn cool to beat the other to it. But good thing they didnt nuke the moon, that would just suck.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
But I imagine he may have done it on purpose to lessen the intensity of the slashdot effect on the potato-powered webserver.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Stanford University have developed a webserver the size of a matchbox here at the Wearables Lab
-- A kick in the pants is worth 8 to the head.
No... I think it was meant as a joke... That "I'd like to clarify that although we are rather (in)famous for potatoes, let me assure you that all our web servers run on 100% electricity." is "informative".
At least I hope it was a joke...
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I stand corrected. I always get confused, because banana trees reproduce by cuttings, so I forget that those ARE actually fruit. Thanks for the correction.
Geek-grrl in training
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
That was a great game You can find a demo version on Sierra's site in the download section.
Putting a comma between "This" and "is excusable," however, is inexcusable.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
"Old memory boards due to low power consumption".
Uh huh.
Can anyone say troll?
--
Joel
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
First potatoes, what's next? I'm thinking that a crank-powered web server would be nifty...or maybe windmill powered with a battery charger. I'm seeing a competition for alternative powered web servers.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
They could have made this project a little simpler (although it wouldn't have been self-contained) if they had used a standard issue netboot ROM and booted the thing across the network. Coulda mounted the filesystem via NFS and had a hell of a lot more space to play with, too...
Um... That's the same link they printed in the article.
I guess if one vice president(Al Gore) can invent the internet, another vice president(Dan Qualye) must have taught alot of /.'ers how to spell.
It's potato, not potatoe =)
I could not be the first one to come up with this name, right?
Bicycle pedal, thats right, right under the desk. Geeks can surf and burn calories at the same time.
Reloving door, attach a generator to a busy building and watch the electrons dance. Maybe even a webcam so we can watch our unwitting hamster wheelers.
Solar, but with no batteries so you know the weather is crappy if the server went down.
Mice balls, a tiny generator inside every mouse. Sure it'll be much harder to roll on the desk but you'll be providing a valuable service.
Mandatory "donations," want to get in or out of the bathroom? Turn a crank for a while to make x amount of power before the door will unlock. Raise productivity by removing air fresheners and serving slightly spoiled food in the cafeteria.
(Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! Don't forget the http://!)
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Now this is trully green powerd computing.
Hate to tell you this, but over here in Europe potatoes are *not* green. They're brown with maybe some green bits growing out of them, but that's all. Overal, they are definitely not green.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
Please take a look at the photos in the gallery. I am not sure, but shouldn't the power cables on the motherboard be connected the other way round?
By virtue of being /.'ed, the low powered potato server will now be overloaded. They did warn against too many accessing at once on the page, but my guess is that everyone at slashdot will go ahead and connect to the potato server anyway, overloading its small potato power capacity. Oh well...I thought it was pretty cool.
--------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
"
If I got bored, I would see if I could improve the performance of the potato-powered battery by inventing my own.
Here's what I would like to try:
5 Copper rod electrodes
5 Zinc rod electrodes
5 polystyrene cups
6 wires with alligator clips each end ("alligator wires")
1 kilogram of washed potatoes
Tools:
Kitchen blender
Steel wool
Instructions:
* Cut the unpeeled raw potatoes into large chunks and place in blender.
* Blend until smooth.
* Place potato mixture into the polystyrene cups, distributing evenly.
* Clean electrodes with steel wool. This removes the oxides.
* Place one copper and one zinc electrode into each cup.
* Connect the cups together in series by connecting copper electrodes from one cup to a zinc electrode from the next with four of the alligator wires.
* Connect the remaining two alligator wires to the free ends.
I would draw a diagram here, but the <PRE> tag is not allowed HTML.
This should give a battery with an output of 7.5 volts. I have no idea of the current, though - the only way of knowing would be to try it.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Should we be even in the teensiest bit surprised that it got slashdotted?
Barring that it is a very strange motherboard, or a 'unique' power supply, wires should be black to black in general.
Could also be a non-operational mockup before it got going -- ? -- hope it is, would be awfully spiffy to have a potato powered server.
("Hey, man, the server is down again!"
"Huh? What? Really?"
"Wait a second.... Is that ketchup on your chin?"
"Uh... No, no...")
totl.net/Spud/
Zetetic
Seeking; proceeding by inquiry.
Elench
A specious but fallacious argument; a sophism.
that should *probably* read:
http://totl.net/Eunuch/index.htmlhttp://www.dansdata.com/sbs3.htm is also an interesting read... :)
http://www.klub.org/
This web server explains alot...
WOW, SO COOL, How Neat, Never seen anything like it!
THat "404 File not found" error is just awsome.
To bad the Url doesn't work.
you can visit the Worlds cheapest webserver here though "http://207.242.75.69/" Sorry, don't know Html.
However, as it is, my hat is indeed off to them anyway. May their web server spudder along for a long time to come...
___
that, in the spirit of Al Gores announcement. Dan Quayle will state that he invented the Potatoe server
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Dan Quayle probably couldn't spell Beowulf either...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Basis for my argument? Project EUNUCH. Yah, they played 3d games on a 486 chip w/oa a FP unit at 247 MHz in a socket 7 board. Puhleez! It's possible, but I doubt these guys are actually capable of building a web server like this.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
but its not as cool as potato! You see giving someone a smart alecky response produces a big YAWN! I could make one out of batteries, but thats no fun! Now, a fruit bowl powered one would be cool. Better yet, how about a computer that charges batteries for a server by a toilet flushing... I know mine is used enough to power my boxen. (a such is the bowels of college students)
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Has DEVO been notified of this?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I've seen on the Discovery Channel that a guy made little hand crank generators to power small devices. These things were great for running laptops and such. Crank for a min or two, power yer laptop for 5 min. Not great, but if you are in dire straits, it'll getcha by. It was designed for emergency situations for flashlights, and for guys out in the jungle :) I wish that I knew who it was, and I was waiting for consumer devices based on it, but it's been a year or more sinceI saw it, so I've kinda given up :)
now im gonna be getting emails like this: o"ur web server will be down tomorrow to replace the potato's. we will be installing potato's from idaho which should last us another week"
Looks like they have been slashdotted already. Hmmm...wonder what the ratio of potatoes to hits is?
I didn't think potatoes were vegetables. Or is it that tubers are a subset of vegetables? I'm confused. I always thought that vegetables were parts of a plant that we eat that don't have seeds (tomatoes are a naming exception). Potatoes have eyes, which are kinda like seeds in that they can spawn new plants. Does anyone know if potato plants have actual seeds as well?
--
Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
Sigh. Yeah, and 5 minutes after being submitted to slashdot and it's mashed potatoes...
Gives a whole new meaning to the term "fried power supply!"
Now all we have to do is figure out how to use humans instead of potatoes...and hire Keanu Reaves.
Potato, lemon and other vegetable-electrolyte electrochemical cells are, even with big electrodes, only good for a few milliamps per cell. With the nail-sized electrodes shown here, one Cu/Zn electrode pair per spud, and six or seven spuds, they could manage 0.8V (barely) per cell, and 1mA on a very very good day indeed. Probably much less - "high-current" spud cells do it, I think, with many pairs of electrodes in close proximity.
Charitably, this setup could do 5.6V at 1mA, or 0.8V at 7mA, or intermediate values with series/parallel combinations. Any way you slice it, it's less than six milliwatts. Let's give 'em the benefit of the doubt and say 6mW is it.
You can light an LED with that much power. That's about all you can do. Running any sort of PC hardware - desktop or mobile - from 6mW is ridiculous. Wristwatch, yes. More than enough juice. 80386, no way in hell.
If the displayed device actually is the server you're connecting to (or not, depending on slashdotting...), then the "Power Converter/Regulator" is, one way or another, a regular power supply, and the spuds connect to nothing.
St. Brendan's expedition from Ireland, if it wasn't mostly mythical, was probably in the 600s, probably a bit late for Beowulf to get decent French Fries.
All of the well-known Viking expeditions to North America were long after Beowulf. Erik the Red got to Iceland in the 900s; Leif Erikson got to Greenland a bit later, and from there down to Vinland, aka Atlantic Canada. There'd also been another expedition of Icelanders or Greenlanders (I forget who..) who'd sailed by some islands that were probably Canada but didn't land. If the allegedly Viking Kensington Stone in Minnesota wasn't a hoax, it was from the 1200s. So even if Leif met some Inuit in Greenland who traded freeze-dried potatoes with their neighbors 6000 miles to the south, that'd be a bit late.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
hehe...
it's down already...
guess someone really got the munchies
mvg,
Kris "dJOEK" Vandecruys
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
I WANT THAT GAME!
I played it a few times when I was younger, but have never been able to get hold of it since.
Where o where can I get it from?
(or was it The Even More Incredible Machine?)
-Shane Stephens
Next Project: A web server powered by hot grits!
I was looking at the images, especially this one and that's a network card the "Spud Boot v0.3" ROM is sitting on, right?
Why is it sitting on the network card and not the mother board? I've never used boot roms but that doesn't seem right.
---
I wear pants.
If you follow their creative spelling, do it right!
O.K. its race to get the first server to run decomposing Pig manure. This kinda stuff can get out of hand . . .
not the potato itself, but the zinc on the nail
getting oxidized. You should be able to reuse the potato as long as you keep changing nails.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
My science teacher had one of those potato-powered clocks in her classroom. After a few weeks it didn't keep time very well, due to the decomposing power supply. It didn't have the best smell, either.
I can't seem to get through to the site, as usual with /.
I am wondering if the variety of potato used, has been genetically enhanced to function as a powerplant? - heh heh.
The potato powerplant!
Since it won't be eaten, will europeans say this kind of potato is ok?
And how would you like your web server prepared?
Pomme Frite of course!
-Sleen
Nope, its handrolled php3.
- Steve
.. but you can't share one electrolyte for five cells. Think about it: connecting the positive rod from the first one to the negative rod from the next one is effectively shorting out another "cell" in between them, thus cancelling out your voltage gain, drawing a fairly large current across the jumper, and blowing your efficiency all to hell.
.. stack up the slices with the separators and duct tape the whole thing together. Red Green would love it. ;-)
Now, if you *sliced* the potato, with insulating separators in between the slices (Saran Wrap, anyone?) *that* would let you turn your spud into a higher voltage battery
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
Actually it was Al Gore, and the voice was perfect (except there was no detectable lisp). I forgot to check the titles, did anyone notice if Gore did his own voice for the show?
I don't know why they have to be so mean to Steven Hawking, it seemed pretty unnecessary to depict him as so evil.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
He was doing his own voice. This article talks about the gues voice appearance.
Aparently one of Gore's daughters work for the show.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
But I'd really like to know: do potatos taste as good when they've had all their electricity taken out?
Probably not. After use, you'll have oxides and salts of zinc and copper in your potato, which probably won't taste very good.
The potato is actually just acting as an electrolyte and semipermeable membrane - the power comes from the zinc and copper.
There's also the possiblity of sponsorship here. If it were powered by burgers instead of fries, they could put up one of those 'one billion served' banners.
A neat idea, but it probably wouldn't work. Burger grease wouldn't make a very good electrolyte.
to link that webserver on a chip with this potato power concept. A whole computer isnt going to last too long just of tatties, whereas one of those process controllers takes basically ziltch power. Relatively.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
The citric acid is a much better electrolyte. Although I really prefer to power my servers with a large bank of "6-cent batteries". Just take a nickel and a penny, soak some paper in vinegar, and put the paper between the two coins. Instant electricity.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Wow! I mean, you researched that! I'm dumb struck with either respect or pity. Not sure which.
Also, in one of those links mentions:
crop rotation a way of conserving soil fertility by successively planting on the same ground different crops with varying food requirements
I believe the correct definition is:
"Crop rotation in the 14th century was considerably more widespread than John?"
... along with Stephen Hawking and some other people.
:-)
Could be good.
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Solve the world energyproblem, let all pc's run on stressed employees :)
Must destroy mankind! (His watch alarm goes off) Ooh, lunchtime! -- Homer Simpson
Actually, a potato-powered device would still run on electricity, the difference is that the electricity comes from potatoes as opposed to a {coal|nuclear|gas|oil|solar|hydraulic|insert_power _source_of_choice_here} power plant.
- Ed.
The DC-DC converter seems like it's the most important part of their project, but they don't give much mention to it.
;-)
I've experimented a bit with alternate power sources for PCs, and I've found the average 386 mobo with a few megs of memory and nothing else takes 1 to 2 amps at 5v!
Maybe that converter's a lead-acid battery in disguise...
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Recall, it's not the potato that does the powering.. the potato only acts as an electrolyte.
It's the copper/zinc electrodes that are really used up, and their size (as well as how good the electrolyte is) determines how much current can be drawn.
So.. a piece of paper soaked in vinegar could work as well as a potato... if not much better.
What's next---french fry powered PCs?? :-)
Geek Hillbilly
The potatoe after being slashdotted has been turned into a hot potatoe.
I can see it now.. "Please excuse us for the recent downtime. Bob from accounting mistakenly roasted and ate our server with a helping of hot butter."
This gives "server farm" a whole new meaning...
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
According to Nitrozac!
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Think that "the dog ate my computer" would go over well with my instructor at my colege?
Stand out your own head for a change! -- TMBG
The real link to the Temple of the Lemur is
http://totl.net
and the link to the Spudserver page is
http://totl.net/Spud/
All that aside, I think this is really cool. Reminds me of something I saw on MacGuyver, when he powered his alarm clock on a potato.
I would also like to beat the Beowulf trolls to the punch by saying that such a thing would dramatically improve the economy in Idaho.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
What, you didn't read Jon Katz's literary efforts? Not only do we have people, we have real honest to god Geeks(copyright 2000 by Jon Katz) in Idaho. If nothing else, Hewlett Packard has one of it's largest sites here, including a huge set of call centers, all with computers. Since HP has a reputation for trying to be green and boost the local economy, someone should propose that they take up potato powered computing at the HP site. it can't be any more unstable than the stinkin' Pavilions they're supplying half their employees. (No, I'm not bitter, why would you think I'm bitter?)
Geek-Grrl in training (Idaho resident for 6 more days!!)
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
I'd like to clarify that although we are rather (in)famous for potatoes, let me assure you that all our web servers run on 100% electricity.
:-)
We Idahoans learn quickly that we have to be sure and beat potential antagonists to the inevitable potato crack.
However, no-one would ever say "french chip". We either say "french fry" (rarely), or "chip". Chips are British.
could you then make a Spam-powered server? i mean, spam has to be good for something.
Vikings discovered " the americas" long before columbus did, so beowulf could have had a potato. Maybe he was running a webserver on it too, who knows...
Bollocks - I got my American politicians mixed up. They're all the same anyway...
Ford Prefect, looking a right fool
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
We've slashdotted major websites
We've slashdotted a Commodore 64-based Webserver
We've slashdotted a VEGETABLE
What's next? How do you top a vegetable? Slashdotting a webserver running on an actual living brain is all I can think of...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
run windows, would the potato need his "angry eyes" -CH
Powering a computer from a couple of potatoes is not possible. The current you can get from a potato is just a few microamps which is just enough to power a digital watch. From my experience, a 386 motherboard without any expansion cards installed takes 500 milliamps at 5V, which is 2.5 Watts. A digital watch takes 1 microamp at 1.5V. I think that the 'power converter/regulator' box is either empty or contains a battery to power the motherboard.
The Vikings discovered Nova Scotia (and perhaps Maine or even Massachusetts). Potatoes came from Central America. That's about 3000 miles off.
The cake is a pie
There is a place called Flathead Valley? Seen any white houses there recently?
Does anyone know a good potato powered web server that can handle Java servlets and WAP? ;)
152.78.65.48 is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) (JFS) mod_perl/1.21 PHP/3.0.12 on Linux
"Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wuntime ewwors!" - Elmer Fudd
...while we're being slashdotted. We're in the process of moving to a better co-lo facility, on the produce isle.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
LOL! "Score 3, Informative"
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You just know you're in for a fascinating read when the server FAQ contains the question "how often do you change the potatos"
But I'd really like to know: do potatos taste as good when they've had all their electricity taken out?
There's also the possiblity of sponsorship here. If it were powered by burgers instead of fries, they could put up one of those 'one billion served' banners.
So do we get Mashed Potatoes when it gets hit by the slashdot effect?
If it hasn't been Slashdotted to all hell yet, here is the actual link to the server in question.
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
___
lol - i fucked up. I wanted to say french fry...but that would have been redundant in the sentance (doesn't make for good humor). So instead i said chip but forgot to delete the "french" part Now that i look at the post again i'm like "what the fuck??"
:P
oh well. the beautifully patatoic imagery remains the same .
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
, says the poster who knows absolutely nothing about web programming.
--Colbey
Pretty good fake, though.
Yes, but which part? Certainly not Mexico!
The cake is a pie
Barring that it is a very strange motherboard, or a 'unique' power supply, wires should be black to black in general.
:)
Dude! OBVIOUSLY it's a unique power supply.
Whether it's real or not... well... remains to be seen. I've tried batteries-from-lemons myself, and got pretty small max currents.... hrmm.
We should have seen this as the natural progression of things. First, Mr. Wizard did it to a small digital clock....and now a web server. Makes sense to me. You go Mr. Wizard!!
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
HAMSTER WHEEL!!
Imagine how cool that would be.
Take care,
Steve
========
Stephen C. VanDahm
Wow... Even ordinary vegetables/potatoes can be slashdotted. Amazing, isn't it?
How long before the ACs start posting claims of their real woody-powered servers?
; )
Well, I think this goes down in history as the first time we've slashdotted a potato. I feel sorry for the little vegetables.
this has to be one of the coolest things i have ever seen.
Runs at 233Thz (That's tuberhertz)
It can just see the guys one night
Sysad 1: "what the fuck is wrong with the server?"
Sysad 2: "sorry man...the box got fried"
Sysad 1: "What happened...did it overhead"
Sysad 2: "Naw man, we got hungry...the box is fried...want some french chips?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume