Slashdot Mirror
Monitor Draws Zero Power In Standby
fifthace writes "A new range of Fujitsu Siemens monitors don't draw power during standby. The technology uses capacitors and relays to avoid drawing power when no video signal is present. With political parties all over Europe calling for a ban on standby, this small development could end up as one of the most significant advances in recent times. The British Government estimates eight percent of all domestic electricity is consumed by devices in standby."
Sure you're going to use some extra electricity to come out of standby, but this does cut down on that amount in a vast manner.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
Dude... the total energy consumption remains constant. Think about it. For the capacitors to run the monitor that long, they MUST HAVE DRAWN THE POWER IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
*AHEM* From TFA:
Most use some sort of supervisory micro or other electronics to sense you pressing the power switch etc. It might draw very little power, but it isn't nothing.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Not necessarily. If the two polarizers are in parallel, then, yes, it has to twist the light as it goes through to block it. But if the two polarizers are perpendicular, then black is the "default state", and light is blocked unless the liquid crystal twists it to let it through the second polarizer. (My Sony CLIE (SL-10) was like this -- it turned black when the device was off. It looked nice.)
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
There's a difference here, and that is that this new monitor will draw enough power to wake itself out of standby, and then not draw anymore power. Normal monitors generally go into standby, and then continue consuming power, which is less wpoer than an idle screen, but still more than just enough to charge some capacitors.
I don't see it as winning a prize for groundbreaking-innovation, though.
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
The biggest wastage in taditional designs is that they use switch mode power supplies designed to run at full power. They don't operate very efficiently at very low (standby) power. It is far better to completely turn off the power supply and just use a local capacitor to keep the micro going.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
CRT != LCD...
I think you've got it there - the transformer AKA power supply uses a lot of power when the monitor is doing nothing at all - IE in stanby mode. The relay will disconnect the power supply, and store the tiny amount of power needed to turn back on the relay in a capacitor - seems like a good idea to me.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Well, he was talking about CRTs. And you are wrong on both counts. On a CRT more current flows to make the screen white. For an LCD, just remove the signal or power from the screen, but not the light and the pixels go "black". However...transmitting black over air takes more energy. And the sync pulse, even more.
What?
How'd that get modded funny? I tape over mine too. Some blue LEDs literally hurt even glancing at them in a dark room. Then you have the night vision loss.
Blackle seems to say differently. And people have done the math.
Capacitors (to return to the monitor standby topic) will lose their charge over time, which is presumably what the solar cells are to mitigate in this application.
1 Watt??? I built a circuit that used a relay for precisely this. I just called it from the other point of view, it turned itself off. There is no way you need 1 Watt of power to hold anything but the largest relays.
Btw - this 0W standby only works when its a relatively simple thing to monitor for to come out of standby, a line level. Try making a TV that is 0W standby, yet I can boot it with just my remote. Actually, its quite simple, you use a rechargeable battery to power a IR monitoring circuit, but thats cheating
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
If you read the link, you would see that it allows the machine to bypass normal Sleep and go directly to "Safe Sleep" aka Hibernation. (The default—Sleep then Safe Sleep—would be akin to the Hybrid Sleep mode. But it can be configured otherwise.)
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
No, it can be saving power and this is why.
If you power your standby circuit off the line power, you need a transformer or switch mode supply to isolate it from line power and provide the low voltage (probably not 5v, probably 3.3v for most modern devices). The power supply itself unloaded will consume several watts - at very low loads, the power supply is probably less than 1% efficient, so it's just wasting 99% of the energy.
If you charge a capacitor instead, when the supply is under load and operating efficiently, then while you've just shunted energy around - the incremental energy cost of charging that capacitor while the device is on is tiny, and you don't have to keep that big lump of iron running when the device is in standby. Hence instead of consuming 6 or 7 watts (mostly due to the unloaded power supply), you can truly use microwatts to run the standby circuitry because you're using the power transformer or SMPS much more intelligently.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
> As for Fujitsu's 0W-standby monitor, they conveniently omit the fact that this extra relay's coil
> and related components will be drawing an extra 1W or so while the monitor/TV is on
Can you please post a link to the datasheet or page where you read that. I strongly suspect that you made that up because I've never come across a relay that requires 1 *WATT* to work. A relay only requires a few milliamps to work. A 1 watt relay would be a brick sized device that might be used to turn on some stadium lights or or several miles of highway lighting or something - not an LCD screen sat on your desk.
I doubt it adds any significant power consumption wattsoever (geddit?).
Well, nothing prevents plugging it in, but these nifty devices called circuit breakers stop someone from overloading it. And running to the furnace room to reset the breaker serves as a deterrent, so they won't do it too often.
As for separate power and lighting circuits, ?!?!? Don't lights require power? It's not like all the wall outlets are on one circuit, and all the lights on another, if that's what you mean. Circuits tend to be divided by room/rooms they serve, and the entire circuit is wired for 15 or 20 amp, so you can plug anything in that doesn't blow a breaker anywhere it fits. High loads, like an electric stove, furnace, or water heater, are usually 220V anyway, but if 110, are still on their own circuit, and couldn't plug in to a low amp circuit.
Old TVs certainly did have standby. It was called "instant on".
Generally because of obselescence, not failure. Or because of a failure that, in an older device in former times, would have been worth repairing. Those old TVs and radios and VCRs were not maintenance free, as the repairman for my parent's 1969 color TV could attest. My current CRT TVs are all 10 years are older (and the large ones have instant-on), but I don't use them much any more because I've replaced the main one with an LCD TV.
A power consumption meter is essential to monitor the ghost loads of stuff around the house. The makers of the KillAWatt meter have a new model out so the old ones are just $16. Check out what your TV and DVD player are up to -- they waste just as much power as a monitor. When I found out how much, I put them on a power strip so I could switch them off -- *really* off -- easily when I go out of town.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."