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OLPC Experiments With Cow-Powered Laptops
An anonymous reader writes "The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost XO laptops: cows.
"We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows/cattle," wrote OLPC's Arjun Sarwal, in an October 21 e-mail posted to one of the group's discussion lists.
Sarwal and others are now finalizing the design of the cow-powered generator."
There is no way this is true.
There is no way they can get cows to power laptops, there is no way they would stay in their wheel.
Now, if they suggested a beowolf cluster of hamsters then I would believe it.
As it stands this article is just a load of bull.
liqbase
"This is a 5CP laptop, but if you could overclock it to 6CP."
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Is it April 1st already?
Charming man. I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one. -Arthur Dent
Whenever I see a herd of cows, they are either standing still eating, or walking to the milking shed to be milked. Getting one to walk on a conveyer belt with no useful purpose for the cow is not going to be easy. They might get a more consistent supply hooking up a dynamo to the cow's jaw, chewing is something they do a lot of.
Is this going to make the OLPC unsuitable for vegans?
Come to think of it, seeing as plastic is made from oil, which was made from animals that died a long time ago, it's already not suitable for vegetarians.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This sounds like something the people of South Park would do. Obligatory Joke. 1. Make cheap affordable laptops 2. Power it with animals 3. ??? 4. Profit!
I can see it now
Later that evening he is having a romantic chat with his girlfriend in the next village. Things get intense and the low power warning comes on her laptop. They are cut off as a great big cowpat soils his keyboard.
(I could have gone further, but hey, this is a family show, right?)
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
And here I was thinking the article was going to be about powering laptops with methane...
This guy's the limit!
# apt-get moo /\---/\
(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
*
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...
Aren't these laptops for developing nations such as India? If so, there are *FAR* better ways to generate energy. I know that cows are work animals, but this is a terrible application. Throw up a few photovoltaics, batteries, and regulators, and you have an generator unit costing the same that does not waste your work/food animal.
Poor people using such animals tend to have a lot more common sense than we do. This is absolutely preposterous.
This "article" rates at least 6 Courics.
I was recently telling my colleagues (working at a wind turbine manufacturer) that we needn't worry that our turbines are 'not running' all over the globe. We'll just use cows and pulleys to generate some power.
We will also cultivate edible plants for biodiesel. Cow dung would be used as more biofuel. Of course, we will have to deduct the methane from their belches and flatulence for calculating carbon credits.
And for the customers who cannot afford large (MW class) wind turbines, we will offer them (along with kW class turbines) some goat-powered generation as well.
I have nurtured these ideas for almost a decade. I am so glad somebody is trying to put them to practice.
Oh, and cows / bulls have traditionally been yoked to grinding stones in oil mills, so no new stuff, really. Those stupid animals keep moving in the rut all day long. Their keepers tie bells to their necks and only check on them if the ringing stops.
Please, somebody ask why the animals don't just shake their head to make the bells ring!
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
It would be a trivial thing to gear up an oil press and drive a tiny generator to power a few laptops.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You know, I bet you could use a gnu just as well as a cow. Same electrical power, higher meta factor.
"You're using a gnu to power a GNU-powered device? My mind just exploded!"
The One Cow per Child Project (OCPC) applauds this initiative. The One Cow per Child Project
(OCPC) needs your charity donation to save children from cowlessness. For only $1 a day you
can feed a cow and make a child happy! Thank you for your attention.
Oh, now I finally understand. It was a feature requested long ago, see:
# aptitude foo
Unknown command "foo"
(...)
This aptitude does not have Super Cow Powers.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
After looking at the generator setup, this is something that would work. Generator from taxi's ready available cheep, a couple of front wheels from motorcycles also ready available. Ditto for 12 volt regulator and batteries. Driving farm animals around in a circle to run mills or other equipment for food processing has been done for centuries.
My question of this working is that I would expect the cow section to run probably 1 RPM. I would expect that the generator must turn somewhere above 400 rpm to put out a full 12 volts. (alternators usually above 700 rpm). So that is a pretty good gear ratio. Hence you see the double gear increase. Seems like it would be better to use a horse, which walks a bit faster, for several hours a day to charge the batteries instead of a cow.
You have two cows. You hook them both to a generator so you can read /.
He is using a couple of bicycle wheels to increase the rpm to drive a truck alternator it looks like. Simple mechanism, easily maintained by the bicycle mechanics of an Indian village. This might find more applications too. Like charging their cell phones. A large part of rural India is still not on the national electric grid. Even the grid goes down sometimes in the rural areas. Most villages have this oil press powered by bullocks walking in a circular path (about 30 feet in diameter) dragging a yoke connected to a central pivot. They take a minute to finish a circuit. RPM=1. The gearing ratio from the picture appears to be 1: 60. (10x6). Not enough in my opinion to drive a standard truck alternator. Their efficiency peaks at around 1800 RPM. (I did a windmill for my undergrad project and I needed to gear it up to 1800 RPM to drive a truck alternator). Need to add another wheel set, not difficult to do.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Moo Moo Moo!
The fact that the XO-1 was specifically designed to run on only 2-3 watts (using Geode at 0.8 watts and LCD-backlit / reflective display at 0.1 to 1 watts), compared to the 15-20 watts on a normal laptop or 100-200 watts on a desktop makes this sort of thing quite feasible.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Alternator, surely.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
they also have too many, using one to run on a giant hamster wheel to power the others olpc would work just fine!
Supercow power is no longer just a cute little joke!
Caveat Utilitor
This is probably going to be quiet dificult to implement.
I mean, the local teacher is going to have to be really keen to get the kids using the laptop because it'll probably need quiet some convincing to get your average developing world farmer to even be bothered strapping his stock into this fandangled contraption set up beside the school.
then can we use it with politicians as well?
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Thats just what we need, gimme more cowbell!
I wonder what Bucky would think about this since he is bashing cows this week.
I, for one, welcome our new dynamo-belt cow overlords.
839*929
it doesn't really show that the laptop is going to be powered by cows .u can't say its cow powered.(unless you have micro cows inside the battery to run the generator)else every place where there is a laptop of this kind should have a cow+gen combination.its a lot easier to use the manual sawing machine technique to generate power. all you have to do is use your feet while using the computer,
You can give away a cow with each laptop. May be you can have the cow circling around you while using your laptop. And it's portable, isn't it?
I think what they may be referring to is the cows' better-educated cousin, the ox. People have been using oxen for just this sort of purpose for millennia. The person who described the ox as being hitched to the vertical shaft of the generator was fairly accurate, as arrangements for ox-powered grain processing are set up in just that way, with the ox or oxen harnessed to a horizontal bar that is in turn attached to the vertical bar and the millstone. The ox then simply walks around in a circle, doing the heavy moving. This was certainly the arrangement back when the Hebrew scriptures were being written, as there's a specific provision for oxen in the book of Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." Or, "if he's working for you, you should allow him to eat." So I suspect OOPC would be a more accurate term. I also believe (but am not sure) that oxen are generally males.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
so you burn more corn feeding the cows... its not like they're a perpetual motion machine.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My computers are super cow powered. See?
/------\/ /\---/\
$ apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/ | ||
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My blog
I've always been really interested in old farm equipment. Older farm equipment tends to be run by pulleys with wide belts. After the internel combustion engine simple one piston engines were rolled around on carts and hooked up with pulleys for powering things. Later on people used a pulley that stuck off the side of their tractor. Before either of these there were sheep treadmills. Sheep are conveniently dumb, have nice strong legs, and can walk for a fairly long time. They are also reasonably hearty animals. The idea is simple, make a treadmill out of wood slats, put it at a slight incline so if the sheep stands on it the sheep will move backwards. Make the incline adjustable so it can handle some load without "stalling". Now put a "fence" around all four sides. Sheep don't like their rump touched, they walk when it get's touched. So put the sheep on the treadmill, and the sheep will automatigically walk to keep from sliding into the rear railing.
There's one at the old farm museum, I think it's in Dearfield Massachussets. In case it's not clear, this is not a joke post, I'm totally serious.
When you consider the use of a cow vs. the use of a small animal (like a hamster) you start having to understand how we turn physical motion into electricity.
A small animal like a hamster is really cute, but they don't produce much usable electrical power. They only run long enough to get a workout, and if they get tired... they stop running. Yes, someone actually turned their hamster's wheel into a generator. The hamster could light up LEDs, but that's nowhere near powering a laptop.
A cow, on the other hand, will produce excellent torque - if you can get it to walk - but then you waste some of that power changing the low-amp high-volt power into higher-amp lower-volt power. Remember - pumping water is essentially a high-torque/low-speed process, but most electrical generation is low-torque/high-speed. (But that's because most electrical generation is for AC power, not the charging of DC batteries. For DC charging, high-torque/low-RPM might work nicely.)
However, what they're probably going for here isn't the optimal conversion of animal power to electrical power. What they're probably trying to do is transform into electricity what they perceive to be widely available power.
Aren't they good enough? That'll stay true to geekdom.
How many gigawatts could be put back into the grid if we hooked those dynamos up to some Slashdotter forearms now that all those Natalie Portman nudie pix have hit the net?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It smells like an application from a previous Ig Nobel winner: http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html
Oxen are basically a type of cattle, so it's not inaccurate to say cow-powered even if they are ox powered. The ones that do work are usually castrated - they are also called "steers". Regarding how much power they generate, it's angular velocity times torque. These are pretty strong animals, so they don't have to move very fast to generate a lot of power.
I only know about this because my next door neighbor is a rodeo performer and has such animals in his yard. The steers make me nervous, because they have big horns and they just stare at me while I go back and forth in front of them riding my big, red "toro" lawnmower. Learning that they were castrated made me feel a little better, since that generally means they're not as aggressive.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
From an energetic point of view it's certainly more efficient to directly use the cow's food as fuel for a generator. Agreed, you can't milk it and heat with its poo...
This seems extremely odd. A cow powered dynamo must be capable of a few hundred watts, the olpc only needs 5-10watts to charge at fast rate. A $10-15 solar panel that's rated for ~10W would be cheaper, easier and require less maintenance.
It's not a stable form of energy, it'll give you fairly dirty spikes and sudden but short peaks. And don't even get me started about brownouts..
:-).
Sorry, couldn't help myself, which is an unintentional pun in itself
Insert
That is why you use batteries. Do you have any CLUE of the latitude of Bombay? You do NOT need sunlight all the time if you can store the energy, and if you don't get enough energy, add more panels and store it when it ISN'T cloudy. Don't curse at me, and please, please, die in a fire.
Why tie the cow to a treadmill/spinning in a circle?
adapt kinetic watch tech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_quartz to charge up a battery pack.. how impossible would it be to have battery packs you clip onto and off of the cows legs... let it walk where it will and at feeding time, swap batteries...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Where do you plug it in? Ewww, never mind!
That's all i got.
But what exactly is the aim of OLPC? I know the simple aim is to get governments and NGOs to buy lots of these rugged little devices and pass them out to children. But what's the intended effect on the children? Will most of these countries where they're deploying (where apparently cow-power might be necessary to even turn the thing on) have internet access? Without that, is it basically a compact calculator/dictionary/encyclopedia (I'm assuming they're loading some practical software like that)? Because this is a lot more work than simply getting them calculators, dictionaries, and encyclopedias.
If most of the users can get reliable internet access out of it, I'm all for it. The internet is insanely empowering for a group of people like that. I just wouldn't suspect that they're going to have much access. Without internet access, I don't see much use for a computer in a society that isn't already first-world and at least at a certain level of economic development.
11*43+456^2
I suppose the steers are what the Victorians would have referred to as "gentleman cows," while the females are engaged in having calves and providing milk. I suspect that if you had an enterprise going where providing power and eventually becoming meat were a priority for your male cattle, you wouldn't want more than one of them to be intact. Bulls have always seemed to me to be a bit...well, testy I suppose. I laughed at myself because when I RTFA I immediately thought of an ox treading out the corn by walking round and round, while harnessed to an arrangement of horizontal and vertical shafts. More creative minds here came up with the treadmills and hamster-wheels. I live in the city and so can only imagine what it would be like to have a few steers as neighbors. It doesn't surprise me at all that they would be used to generate electricity in addition to all the other useful functions they can perform.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
To hook up a couple of Labrador retrievers?
Don't flame me--I actually own one and trust me they have a LOT of more excess energy to spare compared to a cow! But, of course, that would be mean and if you really want to create a win-win situation, it would be to hook the electrical grid up to the treadmills used on The Biggest Loser and supply the whole damn city!
On the surface this sounds like one great big practical joke of a story. But I don't know if I'm impressed or disappointed at the lack of cow flatulence jokes.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
And it turns out all the OLPC project needed to really hit its stride was more cowbell.
It's a good thing the Matrix used humans instead of cows for power, otherwise the movie would have been anticlimactic.
Since the OLPC has now been delayed, and delayed, and delayed, and now to the point where they're begging the public to pay $400 upfront for "two" (one for you, one for someone else... supposedly, something they said they'd NEVER do), rather than stupid ideas like this why don't they actually consider fulfilling their original mandate and get laptops into the peoples' hands?
As for the $400 price tag, I can buy a dell laptop for the same price that actually works
a toilet with a built-in OLPC docking station.
I don't know why but just reading the summary I get this mental image of a laptop with a tube running from it into a cows ass.
I'm not sure what to think about that. Its just weird.
I think it will need more cow bell. Give it more cow bell.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
When I'm driving in my Fiat You really oughta see it I'm 6'2" in a compact but that's OK because the seats go back.
A neighbor about a mile away made the mistake of getting a rodeo cow at auction this summer. he brings it home, it promptly splits,jumps three fences and gets in with my cows. Took me *weeks* (I don't have a quarterhorse yet)to get that sucker corralled by itself where we could attempt to load it into a trailer. I eventually used multiple buckets of feed, walked it half a mile a few steps at a time, and then tricked it into the barn and had a rope tied to the gate and dragged it shut fast. Then to load it into the trailer had to get a tractor in there with a box on the back and just push it in. I made the mistake of getting in there with it on the ground, geez loweez I about got squished and gored, etc. "Spooky disposition" doesn't even come close. Ya it had horns and a thoroughly constantly annoyed attitude. I've only really had two close calls working stock, that cow in general and once a full grown bull that I made the mistake of getting between him and his current love interest. We sold that guy eventually, he just got too big and too mean to be around. It's one thing to watch the rodeo, another thing to be out there on the ground with them big dudes and they are pissed at you. Pretty funny now in retrospect though....
then Gary Larson has already won =)
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The Boy: See, if you don't defragment your hard drive once in a while the computer....
Old Ivor: THE WHAT?
The Boy: The... magic thinky box will start to run slower because data....
Old Ivor: "DATA"? YOU SEEK TO TRICK OLD IVOR!
The Boy: The... thought honey starts to thicken in its veins and it can't move so fast.
Old Ivor: Wow! It is like a new magic thinky box!
The Boy: So what do you use the magic thinky box for?
Old Ivor: I note down the colour and shape of every toadstool I see!!
Old Ivor: Then I save my ideas on the memory square.
The Boy: Where does it get its power from?
Old Ivor: I place the monkey's paw between the fetlocks of a sleeping beast!
The Boy: It's possible that might invalidate your warranty.
http://scarygoround.com/index.php?date=20060911
Glad to see the OLPC project mooving on.
Its a match made in heaven!
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The "cow power" is just solar power collected first by the grass (or whatever) the cow eats, then by the cow. By the time the cow pushes the dynamo, the efficiency of using the 1KW:m^2 that falls on the growing stuff is in the hundredths of a percent. Sunlight might not be "consistently strong", but it's evidently strong enough to grow whatever the cattle eat. What it needs is a battery, which the OLPC has.
Instead of a dynamo of belts and pulleys, which requires a lot of maintenance and isn't portable (like many nomads and people who herd cattle), how about they work on fermenting that grass for fuelcells? The cattle won't have to work as hard, so they won't need as much grass, which extra grass can power the OLPC. The dynamos they're proposing must be supplied elsewhere anyway, even from Fiat taxis, so why not get fuelcells instead? And why not use the demand for them to grow local fuelcell production industries?
And if fuelcells are too expensive or complicated, why not just some standard PV cells, feeding the OLPC batteries? A PV collector the size of a cattle pen could power several OLPCs.
--
make install -not war
Parrot speaks: RTFA RTFA aaaargh RTFA RTFA!
I had a sudden image of the Matrix, except with cows floating in pods instead of humans... And then the daydreaming went all downhill from there! :)
Something tells me that there are a lot more people and/or small animals willing to walk the treadmill based charging system than there are people with the time, energy, and cows...
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Powers gone out in my neighborhood once or twice
I think Gary Larson needs to make a cartoon of this.
Does Gateway Computers want to get some this action of cows running computers?
of the wheel of pain from Conan the Barbarian?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Cow power in India?
But the cow is a sacred animal!
you are correct sir, that is the term I should have used! either way, don't have one, don't really need one as all of mine are pretty tamed up, all I have to do is call them, then come walking up. That rodeo cow was just an odd funny now thinking about it occurrence.
but ya, I really should get a horse. We have a donkey but it isn't the same. His job is to protect the herd from wild dogs and coyotes when I can't be watching them. He (a gelding) barely tolerates my dogs as it is already, any wild ones he runs them down and tries to stomp them. We have an on again off again problem with redneck jerkoffs dumping their uncontrollable pitbulls out in the country where they pack up, that and a few wild coyotes. I've had to shoot a couple wild pitbulls so far. the suckers will actually attack you, I have one female dog saved my ass one day when she got in the middle of an attacking pack and was actually doing a fair job ripping them up, because she is significant;y faster than most dogs outside of say greyhounds. Surprised heck out of me and am eternally greatfull to her. I had a piece, but couldn't get a clean shot so waded in and started kicking, they ran off then surprisingly. Next day I ambushed them, got one, winged another one, haven't seen that particular pack again, but noted a few cows had their tails chomped off short, so that is when we got the donkey, haven't lost any tails since then, nor calves either, which is what I was afraid of. (well, that or actually *us* getting chomped, half a dozen wild dogs can be formidable if they get onto you and you aren't armed). People say it's the dog not the breed but I'd have to call BS on that just from the overwhelming evidence you can lookup and research of dog bites and unprovoked attacks and even pitbulls who are older and allegedly tamed just going nuts one day and turning on their owners or the family's kids. I know any dog can go feral and mean, but I am just not seeing much beyond pitbulls or obvious crosses with pitbull. My current SOP is blast on sight on the property if I see any wild ones now, I am not taking any chances with them things. I mean, breeding works, they are bred to fight and that's it.
Feeding grain to cows is more of a developed agricultural thing. It's used to improve the quality of meat and help increase milk production. Even so, grain, such as corn is usually only a smaller portion of a cow's diet, hay, green feed (cut grass/clover), and pasturing still provide the bulk of a cow's daily intake.
In places where farming is more closer to subsistence, cows are pretty much left on a diet of strictly grass that is naturally available. Using a cow to generate electricity is probably the simplest and most cost-effective method to extract energy from grasses in those areas.
If you were to going to use biogas, you need setup an anerobic digester to break down grass (that would have to be harvested) or manure (which would also have to be manually shoveled up). From there, you'd run the gas through an internal combustion engine, which would require a certain degree of maintenance. If you burned the grass or manure (that still would have to be manually collected), you'd still have to come up with some type of heat engine to convert the heat energy into mechanical and then eventually electrical power.
Why not let the cows do the work of collecting the grass, and then producing the mechanical energy needed to turn an alternator? The mechanics of the system become a lot simpler, involve less input work, and can be cobbled together with junk spare parts commonly available rather than some expensive new machinery.
This is the best troll comment to come along in quite some time.
Comes with built-in music, too!
Never again will a third-world child need to udder the phrase, "I gotta have more cowbell."
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
Is no one else going to make a Mootrix joke?
It must be oxen, not cows.
I suppose you could hitch an ox to an axeltree, have it walk a circle to turn gears that poer a flywheel that runs a generator. They already do something similar with oxen to power irrigation pumps or millstones.