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Solar Powered Wi-Fi
inkslinger77 writes "A small US startup has announced it has created a system for running Wi-Fi routers in remote places using only the power of the sun. Among the first round of products from Solis Energy is the Solar Power Plant, touted as being capable of supplying 12, 24 and 48 Volts DC for use in stand-alone applications such as surveillance cameras and outdoor Wi-Fi."
Its always illuminating to see developers take a lateral step towards problems.
Here in the UK we use the tiny amount of light to power calculators but I think you would need a panel at least 3km square.
liqbase
For once, I tried to read the article, but there's no link to it.
I think it's a great idea, assuming they can charge a battery to run all night.
I'd have read the article, but there isn't one.
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ilovegeorgebush
I'm struggling to see what's newsworthy or innovative about what will essentially be a silicon solar cell, battery, and DC-DC converter. I've had a similar home-made system on my shed roof for a while now. No doubt it'll come with a confetti like stream of patents :/
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
There have been several such projects such as the MIT http://www.green-wifi.org/ which is itself beholding to the MIT Roofnet project http://www.comclub.org/roofnet/.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
AND WIFI!!!
or didn't you get that part?
Here's a link for an historical perspective.
2 1
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/14481
Note 2002, FIVE years ago.
1. Attach a Solar Cell to a battery.
2. Attach the battery to a wireless router.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
I'm sure it's one of those.
No offense but a lot of people, including myself, have been running similar gear on solar for years. How is the subject of this article somehow something "new"?
It's just a set of products. Nifty, but not revolutionary, well to those with a reliable electricity supply anyway. The nice thing is you can plonk it down literally anywhere in the world.
Deleted
I disagree.
At least for outdoor municipal wifi, the routers are usually mounted on utility poles. There's no shortage of cheap power on utility poles!
You can make the argument that it might not be mounted on a utility pole. Like somewhere indoors. But then that renders the solar aspect pretty useless.
What we really need are solar powered wireless wifi routers that can autonomously position and hover themselves at a fixed location. Now that'd be cool, and useful.
It's a great idea for remote small communities. It makes the world - again - much smaller.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I may be missing what's revolutionary about this, but wouldn't the router need an ethernet cable to access the internet in the first place? Wouldn't it just be more prudent to create a router than powers itself from the ethernet cable?
"Oh boy"
And that is the key -- it is a pre-built set of products.
I could also create something for my shed if i want to look into manufacturers for quality and price, choose the individual components, ensure I knew how they all went together (safely), and mount it on the shed. Just like I don't have the time or interest in building computers from scratch anymore, I don't have the interest in investing all this time into building a custom solution. If they can give a warantee that covers their whole package, they can test the configurations and crazy outdoor conditions, and they can build thousands of them in the time it takes me to assemble one, then super. They aren't stopping you from creating your own custom product for your shed.
I wish someone would make some entry level package like this for homes -- a solar cell, simple cables (as easy as a power cord you can plug into each side), and a battery. Then give me some ways to go battery-out to random appliances and I think it would be a good way to let people try solar without the 10K+ investment and installation knowledge. Even if I only get enough juice to charge my laptop, it is at least a way to get started/interested.
thanks so much for posting it.
We have been doing this in ham radio for better than 20 years! There are several repeaters in the porltand area that run only on wind and solar, one entire repeater network (AB7F) runs only on wind and solar. Even more impressive when you consider the fact the transmit power can range from 20 to 100watts. They also usually have computers and RF based internet links at these sites to provide IRLP access, which is used to connect repeaters via voip. If anyone thinks this technology is new, and cutting edge, they should have the shit slapped out of them!
Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
KE7GAL
City-wide or country-wide WiFi sounds very cool to me. But - walls are a serious problem for WiFi. This in contrast to GSM signals, however in the concrete jungle called Hong Kong (with like 6 or 8 networks), even GSM is not everywhere available, particularly indoors.
I've wireless at home. It has a problem sometimes penetrating the two concrete walls between my living room (where the access point is) and my bedroom (where I sometimes use my laptop as well). I live on the 16th floor, a wireless access point on the ground level will never reach my living room. The penetration is too poor, and the distance is too long. So for city-wide WiFi, are there better solutions available?
In the countryside the problems are of course different - mountains are in the way and distances are often huge. Yet GSM networks are already fully covering even sparsely populated countries like Sweden and Norway. Is there a way do do so for WiFi without setting up repeaters every 500m? Is there a way to penetrate walls like GSM signals do?
The technology is nice, I love it. But at this moment for wireless networking on the go I will continue to use my mobile phone, over GPRS (yes we have UMTS available but that is mighty expensive, not worth it for me). It ain't fast, but it is virtually everywhere available, and has no problem keeping a connection when sitting in the train (try that with WiFi that is not in the train itself).
All and all I wonder, why not use the existing GSM networks? Most developed countries have UTMS available everywhere (USA is a developing country when it comes to digital technology, sad as it may be). Isn't that much more convenient, and cost efficient to use than a newly built WiFi network? There are more and more unlimited wireless plans (in Hong Kong you pay about US$80-100 per month for unlimited UTMS, add say US$200 a month for unlimited UTMS/GPRS roaming in mainland China). It's there, it's ready, and it's getting cheaper fast.
Umm, they have been doing this in Newfoundland since the early 90s. I really dont see why this would merit any attention at all.
TFA is taking an age to load. Either it's slashdotted, or the sun went in...
Like any other short-living snake oil startup, their marketing focus on the blogosphere instead of real potential consumers?
Seriously, it's been decades that solar pannels are used to provide electricity in remote places, and usualy with far larger needs (a few examples: sismic/weather monitoring stations, wells, entire third world villages...).
I guess somewhere in there should be the ability for me to buy it off the shelf or with relative ease pre-assembled and actually use it. Something that I don't think was available before this. I might be wrong though.
What? They run on solar power? And its getting dark? Oh boy, I hope I have enough time left to finish this commen^%$#^%!.+^&[NO CARRIER]
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Depends on the kit and the layout - you can get 10 miles no problem with 5.Ghz kit and there are projects reaching over that in Nepal / India with 2.4Ghz kit. Plus depends on what's in the middle - if you're hopping from small community to small community then they might want to pick up some of the costs. Point taken about reduction in bandwidth due to setting up a mesh network but again depends on purpose - is it for email/ web browsing or streaming video/ playing games which need tiny lag?
Unwirer - The mini-sized mobile wifi devices described in it were the first thing I thought of when I read this story. Personally, I think it's an absolutely *fantastic* idea. Slap solar panel, battery, regulator, and WiFi in ad-hoc mode together, liberally slather with silicone sealant, and attach to roof of buildings!
But the idea of putting a solar power unit and radio together isn't new - so why is this news?
(Not my idea, mind you)
Get a few hundred of these, sprinkle them around town, set them to autoconnect to open APs with a certain SSID and you get free volunteer-run Wi-fi for everyone. Provided enough people change their SSID when you ask them.
So now even cactus can surf the internet. What's next my life as a tumbleweed on MySpace?
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
This clever, patent-pending device will act as a distributor/reflector of music and warez (does anyone use that term anymore), and will add to the misery of the mafIAA.
I can just see hoards of people willing to go spend $69 to buy one of these, and drop it into a remote location... the same people who aren't willing to license all their music.
What do you think?
(PS I'm kidding on the patent pending... you want to take this idea and run with it, go for it! I have 5000 more, that are just as bad!)
Yeah, only the power of the sun. It's such a great power source we should manufacture more.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Instead of trying to churn out 48 Volts which is serious overkill to run a Wifi router, it seems to make more sense to engineer it for lower power. Slashdotters may remember the articles announcing Meraki's stuff. They built a cheap, low power autoconfiguring mesh network Wifi router. The indoor one is $50 and the outdoor is $100. They're bringing a solar product out as well, but apparently it's not ready for sale yet. Oh, and did I mention they run linux? Of course, any solar contractor could hook up a panel, inverter, and battery set to run one off solar now. The difference is the pre-engineered solution has the potential to be cheap.
This is EXACTLY what I NEED!!...A solar powered router! I have a terrible World of Warcraft addiction. This invention would limit my time online to just daylight hours! Then, maybe I can have a night life! There are more important things in life than "trying to get my mage to level 70"!
One thing I noticed about all my LAN widgets (modem, router, Vonage box and Slingbox) is that they run on 12V DC. Since most solar panels output 12V DC that is used to charge 12V storage batteries, shouldn't it be relatively easy to get that hooked up? You wouldn't even need an inverter, just connect the 12V DC power source to the equipment.
If anybody's done this, please let me know.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
They exist, I have seen them for sale. Just google around some solar sale links, there are a lot out there now, tons of different solar dealers and stuff, from under a grand to whatever you want to spend. At the low end I have seen a single panel mounted on a little cart with integrated battery, etc. About as easy as it gets there. I saw another one a friend of mine had for his cabin, more expensive though, six medium sized panels mounted on a frame, said frame on wheels. A separate large box on wheels with charge controller and inverter with normal wall plug/outlets and three gel cell storage batteries went inside the cabin. A 75 foot plug lead connected the two. Took us a grand total of maybe 10-15 minutes to unload the two components and cable from his pickup, arrange the panels aimed south, roll the battery pack part (that was the heaviest from them durn heavy batteries, had to ramp it down off the pickup with some stout boards) inside and store it under a little stairwell, drill one hole in the floor in the cabin to snake the plug up inside, then plug it in. That was it, up and running, plugged in his appliances inside the cabin, he had lights, window fans, plugged in his TV, etc. He had a generator previous to that but didn't have to use it after he got the solar panel setup, for all his weekend visits with his wife and two kids. I've also seen similar rigs that are mounted on trailers. Running the generator was just constant noise to him, he liked the solar a lot better.
Bottom line is, if you really want to "tryout" some solar, get your Credit card out and you'll have something shipped to you quickly, just go google around and pick something out and go for it. This is common ordinary tech now and the price ranges are quite varied. If you want someone to hunt up the links for you, that ain't happening. You might try "solar dealers, entry level", along those lines or "integrated solar packages". It's like shopping for anything else, you have to actually just go look then pick out what you want, because I know what you are looking for exists.
This looks a similar idea to the solar wifi mesh box thingy that Meraki are doing.
They are a startup, partly funded by Google, that are offering free wifi in San Francisco and doing some very neat things with simple to setup wifi meshes.
It's been done for years in other contexts. See, for example, http://www.volunteer.ca/stories/eng/index.php?f=st ory&id=518 which describes a network of Amateur Radio repeaters in the Yukon (Canada).
I did this two years ago.
My 80 ft tower in my backyard has a 3 sf solar panel on
it providing power for my WiFi antenna. Then a smaller 2 sf panel
providing the point to point from the tower to my house.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
I'm surprised to heat this as "news". We've had a functional solar-powered mesh at McMaster University for years, the product of a research lab: http://owl.mcmaster.ca/~todd/SolarMESH/ Although, even then, I'm surprised to find that this is worth a "research lab" ... it seems like a pretty obvious idea requiring things you can buy at Radio Shack.
Of course that leaves out the fact that only about 15% of rural America has broadband access to begin with. Or that even if you have broadband nearby and you get the WIFI router set up, you still have to over-pay a telco or cable company, and if your WIFI point uses more than a bit of bandwidth you get a hugely increased bill or cut off altogether....
Where something like this really fits is "Yo! small municipalities. [or even 3rd world areas] Instead of opening your community to 'Net exploitation, try this: we will sell you common components that will allow you to bring in a single fairly wide 'Net pipe and then allow you to set up access for all of the folks in your town without having to run a large amount of extra wire. These components can use your existing street light power, or when it makes sense, use our solar panel/battery backup system, or both. We'll help you design and install the system and everybody benefits...."
Or have I missed the target completely?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
PoE specifies a rather huge range of input voltages, so if you're using PoE-enabled devices like the (apparently mostly defunct) MeshCubes, you can hook it up to pretty much every power source with a minimum of filters and transformers/voltage regulation. I'd imagine that using the common "wall wart" inputs could cause problems since those may require inputs in a rather narrow range. A simple car battery with some regulation electronics may do the trick though.
The main problem I see with the scenario is that if you don't have electricity, internet access becomes a secondary (tertiary? more-ary?) issue. Get some fridges running first and get clean drinking water, care about pr0n later. But if you have that, how about a base station with combined satellite up- and downlink and WiFi mesh capabilities? That could give you a good starting point and a valid excuse for more solar-powered mesh nodes.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
The city of St. Louis Park, MN uses solar-powered WiFi for everything now: http://www.stlouispark.org/residents/wireless.htm
I've put together a few of these beasts. One network has 7 solar powered hops to the end node and a satellite connection to the internet. Skype works just fine from the end node, it is a little surreal to be in this isolated, remote location talking in to a laptop!
The key is having enough battery to get you through a multi day storm when there will be little sun. It doesn't matter how much solar panel you have when it isn't sunny as you are totally relying on the batteries then. Having more panels just gets your full charge back sooner. I believe we ended up with about 50A-hr of battery per radio.
We also had to build a circuit that would cut the power to the 802.11 radios when the volts got below a certain level (~10V) otherwise something in the power supply circuit of the radio would pop. The circuit would then drop the radio back in when the volts got up to 11 or 12V indicating that the batteries were charged again.
Doesn't the DOT already have a system like this working? I seem to recall many temporary (and some permanent) road signs, indicators, weather stations and even some cameras with a decent size solar panel on it along with a somewhat large box of what I assume is a battery pack. Couldn't this be adapted to wifi repeaters and AP's?
It is rumored that the linksys wrt54g has a DC-DC regulator which will run with between 10-30v of input power. Between this and its ability to run linux, its perfect for a versatile solar powered application.
Solar Power ... surveillance cameras
That's why I only rob stores during eclipses.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
And that is the key -- it is a pre-built set of products.
I've got a page saved on my machine dated 7/11/2004 from hyperlinktech.com with that very thing. I think it was about $1200 at the time. You had to plug your own WRT54G into it, but everything else was included.
The page I have is called "12 VDC Solar Powered Outdoor System", but I didn't find it currently at hyperlink.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I can confirm that this technology is real and ready to deploy. I interviewed with an outfit called Expressnet a few weeks ago and they were working on prototypes for deployment in Moutnatin View and Sunnyvale, apparently they did the delpoyment in Minnesota. They seemed to be very impressed with them.
recycled 'news' just get used to it and have your positive input or just go read something else. :)
This motivates me to get together a 'purpose built' geek packaged solar setup for running a computer up to say 3-400 watts/ 24 hours a day. (for my business.) I am DAMN sure many slashdotters would be interested as I am myself.... anyway here is the 'pre'slashvertisment. http://www.aquatooth.com/ Renewable energy solutions
Do you think their tech support call volume will pick up dramatically around 6-7pm?
I went out to watch the sunset, and when I came back, the network was down.
2 years ago I ran wireless 60 miles out to a dude ranch via solar powered relay towers, and a high power Wi-Fi AP in the middle of the compound, also solar. (A drilling company is leasing bandwidth off those towers too for their rigs to communicate over as well, but that's another story.) Tell me I ain't the first to think of letting the sun power remote devices? Please? It's so obvious I weep for the intelligence of mankind if this is so.