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Green, Wireless Networking
spacepleb writes "A solar and pedal powered bi-directional satellite connection shared out over 802.11b. Given the difficulty of satellite connectivity alone in Europe, these guys turned some heads."
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And how do humans get their energy? From local farms, at the best. No, these people would have done a lot more good for the environment by using a diesel generator and soy oil biodiesel fuel. Yeah, the solar panels are maybe as energy efficient as biodiesel, but as they mention they produce very little energy, in this case only 85 Watts or so.
Maybe its too bad for their /. appreciation that its called the Big Green Gathering and not HAL or Chaos Communication Camp.. Nonetheless they have done a nice and valuable hack, and a green one too...
Generators are banned by the powers that be at the "Green Gathering" whatever they are running on, this may not be correct, but this is how it is.
So a biodiesel powered generator that burns soy oil and creates carbon dioxide is banned, but a human powered generator that burns soybeans and creates carbon dioxide as well, but does so at a lower efficiency isn't.
Just goes to show the short-sightedness of these Greens.
Ehm, would anyone mind explaining what exactly is so difficult about satellite connectivity in Europe? From my experience in setting up systems all over the world, it's no more difficult (or easier) than setting up in the US or pretty much anywhere else (some fun regions in Africa or Asia excluded, where spotty coverage and 'rain fade' can really ruin the party - but Europe??)
Yes, one person pedaling a bike doesn't create very much CO2, but they also don't create very much electricity.
Perhaps if wedid move to personal poewr generation along the lines of a pedal power generator, or a bank of solar cells on the roof, appliances might become more energy efficient?
I've got a 10W halogen globe rigged into a bike light . If I can ride a bike off road at 30km/h (~20mph) by this, I can read a book by it. But I tend to use the 100W incandescent in the lounge room, or the 50W halogen in my desk lamp, simply because that's what's easily available.
If I were truly green I'd swap all those high power globes for smaller ones and rewire the house to run off renewable resources, and use portable lamps closer to what I'm doing rather than a big "light the whole room" one. But that doesn't stop me from wondering why it's such common practice to throw gobs of power into basic tasks.
Perhaps if wedid move to personal poewr generation along the lines of a pedal power generator, or a bank of solar cells on the roof, appliances might become more energy efficient?
More likely we simply would have to give up on many appliances. I mean, in general yes, if you raise the cost of energy, you are going to see more energy efficient products, but so what? I'm all for keeping reasonable taxes on pollution producing products, but beyond that the free market will take care of utilizing our resources in the most efficient manner.
(And possibly South America and Asia)
In most of Africa the only way to get online is a $5000/month VSAT satellite base station.
A pedal-powered link may sound funny to some of you but you are laughing from a position of privilege.
A $1000 satellite station would bring the Internet to billions of people.
And this would remove a significant obstacle to development in many places.
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Using Power-converters for car-usage whould have saved some of the Power.Converting 12V DC up to 220V AC and back down to xxVDC (16V for the IBM-Laptopsand the Powerbooks) is much worse then direct conversion