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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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
TFA is taking an age to load. Either it's slashdotted, or the sun went in...
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
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"!
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.