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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."
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.
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.
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.
...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.
Oil floats on water. Electronics usually sink. Problem? You decide.