Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
this is news ? they have been doing this for ages loads of equipment thats installed along side roads have been using solar and windpower for years in the uk
You will never get to heaven with an Ak 47... But A Zu 30 is good for Low Flying Cherubim
Here's a link for an historical perspective.
2 1
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/14481
Note 2002, FIVE years ago.
Solar panels don't need high temperatures/direct sunlight to work, they just need light and they work perfectly well in the UK.
America, Home of the Brave.
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.
You are talking about a mesh network. Should go fine. Maybe add a directional aerial to connect to it's peers over slightly longer distances, saves a 100% overlapping network.
Dye-Sensitized solar cells will solve that; They have no PN junction and thus no recombination problem at lower light levels.
Solar powered calculators work perfectly well indoors in the UK - the ambient light is enough to power them. I have one sat on my desk here..
PV cells are used for lots of stuff in the UK including some of the the things you list above.