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Oil-Cooling 802.11 Infrastructure
gomoX writes "A group of 802.11b fans in Tordera, Spain, are running a wireless node on the roof of a building, with the idea of a free wireless network for everyone on the neighbourhood. Its a system running linux with a home made can antenna, mounted on a plastic tool box in the roof. To keep it cool under the sun and protect it from rain, wind, they have immersed it into vegetable oil (yes, the whole thing). As oil is non-conductive, everything should run fine. The site is in Spanish, here is the google translation and the google cache."
.. I've never had deep-fried RAM before.. could be tasty.
If it gets hot, will it fry as much as if it had been Slashdotted?
If so, SIZZLE, Penguin, SIZZLE!!!...!!!!
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
My experience with vegetable oil is that it fries in heat...how the hell does this work?
Wouldn't vegetable oil retain heat longer than the plastic and metal that it was intended to protect? I could see this thing getting very hot on a sunny afternoon.
This is a really great idea. So far /. has only mentioned these kind of things for Europe and North Africa. I wonder if us North Americans will manage to catch up one day? ;-)
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"That should run pretty slick!"
And a few weeks later...
"Eww, rancid!"
The biggest problem with immersion based oil cooling is that it tends to soften PCBs. I suppose that, if you never really jiggle the setup, it will pretty much remain where you leave it (especially if you keep the oil cold and viscious), but it could cause problems.
funny munging
WI-FrIed?
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
In Australia our major power supplier here does that for all of their high-tension cables that go underground - they're encased in a layer of plastic, but the rest is oil. It not only is cheaper and lighter than other sheathing forms, but it insulates and dissapates heat at the same time
If a bolt of lightning hits the oil-immersed wireless node, will it get fried?
A frying beowulf cluster...
No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
Within a few weeks, especially up in the sun and even slightly open to contamination from the environment(toolboxes ain't exactly hermetic), the oil is gonna go rancid.
I wonder what the by-products of the little beasties will do to the components...
Beware thermal runaway problems.
mogorific carpentry experiments
The reason why they used oil is first to avoid the whole thing to get drowned. They reckon that it will avoid condensation water to fry the motherboard... How paradoxal.
It also rubs the lotion on its' skin, or it gets the hose again...please do not be pressing in the penguin, as that excites the penguin too much.
Thank you for your support.
I don't really think this will work, I am fairly sure they used the wrong oil. :D Just because it has oil in the name, does not mean that it all has the same properties... I mean, no. don't really know where to begin here. I hope it is a bogus setup, a troll or something.
my sig
Wouldn't vegetable oil retain heat longer than the plastic and metal that it was intended to protect? I could see this thing getting very hot on a sunny afternoon.
;-) or compressed gas (as in refrigeration) etc....
Of course, one ould add a heat-exchanger to cool the thing based on water cooling
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If they just painted the box they put it in white they would probably reflect more heat then oil absorbs. Of course doing both would be better.
Wouldn't the oil potentially seep between plugs and physical connectors (non-soldered) and potentially cause a bad contact? Even if it meesed up just one pin, it could be disasterous. And what about the fan in the power supply? I saw it mentioned but the google translation wasn't too good.
Those people got the "fried chips" idea all wrong
Con el disco duro creíamos no había problema porque dicen que vienen "envasados al vacío" pues ahora podemos decir que no se si todos son igual pero el que usamos en primer lugar NO lo estaba. Lo metimos dentro del aceite y funciono bien, incluso dejamos todo el sistema 2 días enteros funcionando dentro del aceite sin problema alguno, el problema vino al moverlo para colocarlo en el tejado, que fue cuando posiblemente penetro aceite en el interior y una vez en el tejado no arrancaba. Entonces tuvimos que bajarlo todo de nuevo y buscar otro disco duro, instalar todo el linux de nuevo y no meterlo dentro del aceite. O sea que atención: NO hay que meter el disco duro en aceite ya que por algún lado entra dentro si lo meneas un poco
Basically, they inmersed everything in the oil, including the HDD (they didn't need a CD-ROM or FDD) and they figured the HDD would work even though it had moving parts because they're vacuum-sealed. Not so, their first prototype worked for two days and then the HDD died as oil got into the drive mechanism. They had to look for another disk, reinstall Linux and the rest of the software and then figure out a way to keep the hard disk out of the oil.
So there you have it folks, never put your hard disks in Mazola - they die.
Something like that might come in handy here in FL too, but to avoid deep frying the equipment, it might be a good idea to put some kind of heat exchange unit on the oil.
------
There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.
String cables.
Wireless stuff is all a big fad that'll end as soon as its proven how much cancer it causes.
Wires and cables are where it's at.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I hear that in oil immersion based cooling the oil tends to seep in and interrupt any less than perfect soldering connections, causing mysterious errors.
Any word on this?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Mice & chips ?
They'd better hope that no one posts a link to their server or the whole town will be able to cook their fries in it too...
Have you seen my stapler?
Wow... this is a phenominally bad idea for several reasons... I think they were just doing this for the coolness factor (ha ha ha).
First off, we're using wires to transmit our signals in the first place,so instead of immersing the whole fixture in oil, you ought to run wires up to the rooftops and have all of the computer equipment in the house, in a nice air conditioned room. That will solve the problem of the HDD and motherboard overheating. Just buy some nice fans, electric cooling units, or if you really are worried, water cool the sucker.
Second, yes oil makes a great cooling system, but NOT vegetable oil. They ought to have bought a non-biological version so that it won't spoil and grow things. Anaerobic microbes building up on a motherboard is not a good thing. Not to mention the oil will loose consistancy then, and develop pockets of non-oil byproducts of anaerobic respiration. Mineral oil would work much better, and is nearly as cheap. A gallon of the stuff ought only run $10 or so, compared to $5 for vegetable oil. 2x the price, but it would never have to be changed.
Thirdly, I wonder why they feel the need to use oil for cooling at all, if the attenna is the only thing exposed (as I suggested earlier), heat from the sun won't really effect performance to much, and if it does, build a shade. If it is water proofing you are worried about, that is a slightly different story, but you can easily encase it in transparent plastic (but be careful that it doesn't warp em radition passing through it, this has to be quality stuff.
The idea in general is cool, but not very practical.
...when setting up free access for anyone to use? How long till someone starts sending death threats to the Generalissimo via this point. Will the point provider be willing to put up with the investigations?
My point is, no good deed goes unpunished. Letting anonymous people jack into your connection is just asking for it.
I've thought about doing something like this off and on for years.
The reason: I hate CPU fans.
They're loud. They die with distressing regularity. They're louder *as* they die - the death rattle can last for a year or more.
Put the motherboard in a bin of vegetable oil, keep the drives and power supply out of it (or even put the power supply into it), and you get convection cooling with heat sinks and no fans at all.
The only catch is that you're going to have to either filter the oil or change it regularly even if it _is_ in a sealed container, and have a working procedure for draining the box and cleaning the components if you ever want to swap out a card or perform other reconfigurations.
Still awfully tempting. My second fan is on its last legs at the moment. And don't get me started about chipset fans.
This is why most harddrives on their labels say "DO NOT COVER EXHAUST HOLES"
Im surprised it worked for 2 days. Maybe thats how long it took for the air already in the drive to get pushed out the complex baffle filters that are behind the exhaust holes.
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Vegetable oil will go BAD. It will start to smell like that skanky ho you had last night. You know, that funky cheesy smell.
AFAIK no organisms can use mineral oil as food, and its far less likely to degrade into sludge than any cooking oil. Also it has clear color and relatively no odor.
They are using the wrong type of oil for their project! For starts the oil is organic and will spoil, making things messy. Veggie oil is, in the family of fluidic heat conductors, a poor performer.
What they can use and is readily available at any store that sells Amateur radio gear or wholesale electrical supplies is transformer oil..
It's actually designed to be used in what the RF techs call dummy loads to conduct the heat away from the resistor banks that absorb the RF energy when they test transmitters. The stuff's most commonly used to wick away heat from electrial transformers, both at substations and the transformers hanging on the poles that supply 240 Volt AC to your home.
One COULD try to build a oil-cooling system on a custom PC, but the heat removal would not be as good as glycol/alchohol/water cooled system.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
That guy's computer desk is even messier than mine!
thanks.
...as they did not immerse the one component that is most vulnerable to heat: The harddisk. Of course the HDD is also the one thing that cannot survive being immersed.
In addition I do not see any external cooling or pipes to take the heat away, which means that the only difference is that the componets die a more uniform heat-death. Even though oil is not the best thing for convection. Viscosity is too high.
As "cool" as it looks, some intelligence and knowledge of physics and electronics is still non-optional for successful computer cooling.
One thing that could save the design is two long pipes, a pump and a heat-dump in the basement. And some cooling for the HDD.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
But wouldn't it be better to just run a wire up to the antenna on the roof like normal people do? This is how we handle long-distance WiFi here in the US.
I can only imagine the look on the face of whoever recieves motherboard back on RMA.. trying to figure out why the pcb has some sort of residue on it, and a smell not unlike that of fast-food french fries.
Speak before you think
There's no reason to run more than half a meter of cable...
Use a small external radio, the sort that has three connectors: power, ethernet, antenna.
Keep the computer, hub, etc indoors and just run cat5 ethernet and some low voltage power cable up the the roof.
On the roof, mount the antenna and the radio. Put the radio in a small weatherpoof box, or even a reinforced plastic bag. You shouldn't need more than 40cm of cable. Heck, use a small adapter and mount the radio TO the antenna itself without any cable. Nearly zero loss.
These little radios aren't too expensive and can handle extreme temperatures. There's no reason to have long cable runs or a PCI/PCMCIA radio card.
*end silence of the lambs reference*
mund freud.
He probably meany high voltage anyway.
Yay me!
People who typically do total immersion cooling use mineral oil. It is a non-organic oil, so it doesn't spoil. Doesn't conduct electricity either.
Mineral oil is very similar to transformer oil, which is what electricity companies use to keep the transformers cool.
Old batches of transformer oil can contain PCB, that is, polychlorinated biphenyl. It's an additive that was in common use up until the 70's, because it really improved the oil's thermal behavior. Unfortunately, it's also so hazardous that GE (who made a lot of those "pole pig" power transformers for power distribution) has spent many millions disposing of earth contaminated with the stuff.
It's unlikely that you'll find any PCB-laden transformer oil in the US these days (but not impossible, considering all the old dummy loads stashed in hams' basements), but not impossible. It's less unlikely that you'll find some in other countries.
Unless you know where and when it was made, and that it's safe, don't use the old stuff.
Being Spanish they should be using extra virgin olive oil
PCB is cheap now and can be gotten for free at toxic waste dumps. It was designed for the purpose, is non-flamable and contrary to popular belief, non-toxic.
They removed almost every part of water in the oil to avoid problems (yes, a bit can be dissolved into oil)
They could have used mineral oil wich is less acid and would have worked well.
The thing about HDs is like this: they *were* vacuum closed in the beginning, but in some really dry and heat condition (texas, etc) they kinda explosed. So they started putting some small valves on them to avoid this: so the oil goes in.
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
There's a very good reason to put the WiFi equipment on the roof as close to the antenna as possible. Wiring to connect the radio to the antenna incurs massive signal loss, or is very expensive (and still incurs loss). It's generally accepted in the 802.11 community networking community ;-) that the best place to put the AP is in a tupperware or other similar weather resistant container right next to the antenna.
Your suggestion about mineral oil is smart IMHO.
simon
home page
A few years ago at a boat show I saw a product at one of the booths which looked like a translucent brown liquid, intended as an electronics waterproofing sealant. It was such a long time ago I don't remember the name of the product, but as a demonstration they had a portable B&W television submerged in the stuff and it was still operating fine.
One of my friends used to work at KFC and he had told me how nasty the old oil would get while it sat outside awaiting pickup for disposal. I guess the little leftover bits of chicken probably had something to do with it, but I'm assuming vegatable oil is a pretty friendly enviorment for bacteria to thrive in nonetheless.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
...Freedom fries - vegetable oil-cooled wireless for all!
Puts a whole new slant on frying circuitry.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the google translation actually states that they put it in sunflower oil. Possibly a mistranslation or just incorrect summary from /.?
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
to change the oil every 3000 miles^W GB...
Its not nearly as exciting when you realize that the Spanish words for "Vegetable Oil" is identical to the Spanish word for "Flourinert"!
For all the doubters:
s /p r_01_nppd.htm
http://www.waverlyia.com/WLP/About/PressRelease
Mineral oil *is* organic - it's processed from
petroleum. Do you know where petroleum comes
from ?
All your Pinguino are belong to us!
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
There is more about Spain than Aznar, Blair & Bush.
Congratulation to TorderaWireless.
Iraq, duh.
.. Seriously, couldn't they have just used a longer cord?
Oh wait - then Slashdot wouldn't care.
I would reccomend using Mineral Oil. It has the same non conductive properties as vegietable oil, and has the added benifit of being prety inert. Vegitable oil will begin to decay (its made out of some plant matter and such) Whereas mineral oil will sit there happily for quite some time. I have a P90 running at 233 (the highest the board would go) because it is submerged in mineral oil.
Also, I would reccomend against getting 'Baby Oil' as it is cented and has other additives. Any sort of farmers market type store should carry LARGE quantities of Mineral Oil, as it is used for a cattle laxitive. (i.e. Here in Wisconsin, it is Fleet Farm or Farm and Fleet)
Freedom WiFried.
Just couldn't hold back. Sorry.
Yaaaaaaay Congress!
Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid. --John Wayne
Tension is actually a reference to voltage in this case.
If I ever find you, I will staple a flag to your butt, and mail to you Iran.
I also wanted to mention that not all oil is non-conductive. A good example of conductive oil is toner oil from a laser printer. It's conductive. I once had to tear apart an Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600 (with the 12/660 upgrade) to see what all was damaged when UPS dropped it in transit. As you can imagine, it was seriously messed up. I didn't find one plastic casing that wasn't busted somewhere. The frame was bent (not a good thing in paper-handling equipment). AND most importantly toner oil had made its way onto the I/O board. That board alone costed us, an Apple Service shop $1199. He only paid $2000 for the used printer and $400 for the upgrade. It wasn't worth salvaging. Poor guy. Should have bought insurance.
And finally my last thought on this is that they could actually spend a little time cooling the oil and have decent results. Oil is a common thing to use in radiant heating systems (the DIY systems, not the pay-out-the-ass-for-a-contractor systems). Being non-corosive, and retaining temperature very very well, oil is an ideal thing to use in such a system. Simply put they could pump the oil through an old radiator w/ a fan to cool it even more. Even better would be to bury stainless steal piping in a looping pattern about 4-5 feet deep in the ground. Then circulate your oil through the buried pipework. Let the ground temperature cool the oil by itself. If the reservoir of oil and computer components could only be underground, ie in a basement, you could use convection cooling to circualte the oil for you, cooling the system.
somebody mod that up +64000 funny. shit I laughed so hard tequila came out my nose and destroyed my keyboard. you owe me a new keyboard!!!!
I install Wireless (breezecom/alvarion and teletronics) for a living and here is the way to keep it cool. Buy youself a type 12 electrical enclosure (the rainproof/splashproof type) the ones that are completly sealed. Next buy a cheap 15 USD Bathroom vent fan. Drill two 3/4 inch holes on the bottom on oposite sides. Place a piece of conduit on one side so it reaches almost to the top of the enclosure and extends down about 6 inches. Next place the fan so it blows out of the other hole. This way you get a diagnal airflow and tons of it for a cheap price.
We also experimented with using Dorm fridges to place the equipment in. Weather proof and cool. The only problem is if you leave them in direct sunlight or extreme cold the compressor unit dies. Also you have to remember that a fridge is insulated really well, so if it quits cooling your equipment starts to burn up.
is that food-based oils go rancid, and attract vermin.
These folks would be better off using petroleum-based oil.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
And to think that they could have just spray-painted it reflective silver and added a few more fans.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
um isn't it a little early for april 1st? and will this post even pass the stupid filter? Will they confuse it with a "first post" post? This is the dumbest idea since the Inquisition.
Besides the oil used which many have remarked, I did see another potential problem with the system, in the plastic tool box that they used. I have had bad luck with plastic exposed to the sun for long periods of time. Some PVC pipes that have served as booms for antennas on the roof have turned brittle and cracked easily. Several of the white plastic "milk" bottles have shattered in my hands after less than a year in the sun. They just didn't work too well for long term weatherproofing. I would not like to have 10 liters of rancid sunflower oil draining down MY roof.
Well, there was that one time, but the marks took so long to fade...
Oh. No. What does it mean? To me, tension implies some form of taughtness. Thus, tight wire stretched between power lines.
Yay me!
By going it alone, without the UN, none of that multinational, people who use metric, stuff will creep in. Next stop, Korea, where they can redefine the range of those pesky nuclear missiles.
A friend used to have a VW bug, with a speedo in MPH. When the speed limit is KMH, and you think thats what you're doing, it can be a little scary.
Yes, this is off topic.
Yay me!
This is not the first time it's done. Let me tell you the whole history...
Since three years ago, Iberian hackers hold an annual meeting, called HackMeeting.
The first one (code named hmbcn00) took place in Barcelona (Catalonia), in a squat called Les Naus, in October 2000.
The second one (code named hmleioa01) took place in Leioa (Basque Country) also in a squatted house, the Udondo Gaztetxe, in September 2001.
Finally, last October, it was hold in Madrid the 3rd HackMeeting (code named madhack02).
As the previous meetings, it took place in a squat (El Laboratorio). This time gathered about 600 hackers.
It's not determined yet where the next HackMeeting will take place. Maybe somewhere in the countryside in Aragón.
Well, let's come back to the oil-powered PC.
In every hackmeeting there is a computer room, separated from the talks room. In the 3rd HackMeeting, the local HackLab (called Wau Holland 2001) had assembled a PC, put it in oil and placed in the computer room for public use.
I've placed a selection of pictures of the computer in oil (shot by Maky and Fernando Vicente) in my personal home page. Hope you like them.
Greetings,
Quique
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
First of all, sorry about my silly english, from Spain :D.
;) its avoiding it's easy using sintetic oil, cheapest car oil should work. Vegetal oil is used here cos' its price, no more, no less, but as you should know it degrades so fast.
:D. Thw fishes where out, in the screen , and the computer inside the fishbowl, oil filled instead of water filled.
In second place, about rancid oil
About HD, it never should be placed inside the oil, cos it isn't really hermetic. A HD is prepared for supporting a lot of pressure changes in its moving to its final placing, and all the 'stickers' are prepared for compensating this changes.
And about Oil PCs, one of the first 'we' get working was in Spanish HackMeeting 2003,in Madrid, a PC in a, hummm, fishbowl?, umm, i think that's the name of the container you put fishes inside with water and so
The photos:
[vicente.cc MadHack02]
Check photos under "Un PC en Aceite" (A PC in oil)
See ya!
Knowing something about wireless and microwaves should tell you that we use to put the computers on the roof cos' in that signal we send, in 2'4 Ghz, we can loose it all in only 2 or 3 meters of wiring. So, we put it up.
;D
Here on spain our limit on signal power is 100mW. Lower than in USA as i know. And PigTails are cheaper in USA
See ya
You can get more oiled beautiful photos on :
Nightly beautiful photo
Can we assume they're using an "EXTRA VIRGIN" variety????
Bwahahahaha!
Wouldn't water collect at the bottom of the box with the oil floating on top? Fzzzzt!
They're forgers.
7
It was previously done at the MadHack'02
http://www.sindominio.net/madhack02
and now they've copied the idea.
Here in Spain, it seems they're doing something new and cool.
Wrong!!
Besides, they didn't ask about problems, because we had the same problem with the HD (MadHack's worked for just 2 hours, not 2 days).We tried to seal it with silicone but didn't work.
Pics at:
http://villanos.net/makypress/noticia.php?&id=167
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