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)
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.
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
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 =)
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.
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.
This web server explains alot...
However, as it is, my hat is indeed off to them anyway. May their web server spudder along for a long time to come...
___
Dan Quayle probably couldn't spell Beowulf either...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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"
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!"
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.
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
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"?
This is very normal.. it's as good as anywhere else, and is a convenient place to put a boot rom.
It doesn't have anything directly to do with the network card per-se, only that the card provides memory addressing and a socket for a rom.
If the motherboard had a boot rom socket, they could use that...
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.
This gives "server farm" a whole new meaning...
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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
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.
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?
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.
...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.
___
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