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."

Comments

Re:power isnt free

[CaptainPatent]

Then it just draws EXTRA power while running, to charge the capacitors. Electricity can't be produced from nothing. Yes, but it only draws enough electricity to fill the capacitors instead of constantly drawing enough power to bring the monitor out of 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.

Re:The most frustrating thing is....

[ThinkingInBinary]

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.)

Re:power isnt free

[Zekasu]

A relay cuts off the mains power whenever the video stream stops; capacitors store enough charge to flick the relay back when the signal returns. Solar panels provide enough power to maintain zero consumption mode for up to five days, after which you have to press a regular power button to bring the machine out of standby.
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.

The biggest wastage is in the power supply itself

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You don't need much power to run a very small 8-bit micro, enough to wake a sleeping monitor. We're talking about nano Amps here. A cheap capacitor can keep that going for months.

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.

Re:The most frustrating thing is....

[DAldredge]

CRT != LCD...

Re:The most frustrating thing is....

[iminplaya]

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.

Re:The most frustrating thing is....

[Zaffle]

"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."

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 :)