Slashdot Mirror
Tablet Prototype Needs No External Power Supply
timothy writes "I'd like to see computing devices with no need for an external power supply — an e-book reader, a general knock-about PDA, a phone — all kinds of things. But there's a certain heart-strings appeal to such a computer intended as an educational tool for precisely those kind of places where basic infrastructure (like the provision of electricity) is a stumbling block. Perhaps built-in solar makes more sense, in more places, than the hand-cranked power the OLPC project ended up dropping from their laptops-for-kids program."
I'd like to say it was from a PC with no outside power supply, but I can't. I don't think I can get the generator and bicycle rigged up in time.
The best thing about built-in solar and no external supply is that it would force users to regulate their usage time.
In this house, we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!
No external power supply they say, well then, either they finally created a perpetual motion machine, or they're getting the energy from some external power supply.
It uses a tiny solar cell, like a calculator. If you have some form of light, you have a computer.
Palem says the I-slate is the first of a series of electronic notepads being built around a new class of low-energy-consumption microchips under development with Switzerland's Center for Electronics and Microtechnology. The team says the chips will allow the I-slate to run on solar power from panels similar to those used in hand-held calculators.
If you aren't going to read the articles posted to slashdot, may I ask why you are bothering to come here in the first place? Did they run out of rabble at the local Tea Party meeting inside the Chuck-E-Cheese?
Wouldn't that kind of count as an external power supply?
But there's a certain heart-strings appeal to such a computer intended as an educational tool for precisely those kind of places where basic infrastructure (like the provision of electricity) is a stumbling block.
That appeal will remain just that: An appeal, which sadly delivers no results in most cases.
All phones have a motor that is used as an off-balance Vibrator for when Ringtone is unnecessary.
Why not just turn that motor in reverse using a large wheel of transfering energy at differing rations? That would make sense because then someone can turn the motor backwards for 30 minutes to talk for 10 minutes on a modern phone from Apple or Microsoft; while us remaining Motorolla phone owners of a C** could've turned it for an equal amount of talk time. I have my Washing Machine as well as APC UPS tied into my stationary bicycle generator and redundant power station below it's roof-top Solar panels and outside Briggs & Stratton motor, so why not give something redundant for our non-CB network-locked tranceivers? It's bad enough that we are forced to encrypt our Cell Phone transmissions from the SIM Card while the Network allows non-encrypted transmittion as to facilitate both analog and digital Cell Phones.
Given that they might be flooded with used phones and probably first-gen smartphones soon, perhaps something that can charge USB phones would be in order...
http://www.google.com/search?q=bicycle+USB+dynamo&hl=en&tbs=shop%3A1&aq=f
Would love to play with some of that stuff, but those currently cost more than my cheap-ass bike :-P Should be neat if they could develop some cheap dynamos to distribute where they would need it, though. They also have bikes with full kickstands that elevate the rear wheel so you can pedal while stationary... could generate a couple hundred Watts that way...
Etch-a-Sketh.
This perfectly illustrates why the nerd pedantry is lonely, angry, and ignored. People with lives understand "requires no external power supply" to mean "doesn't have to be plugged in." Instead of accepting this, a few people have decided to ignore the hard work of these people to bring revolutionary educational tools into the hands of poor rural children, and quibble about thermodynamics.
From the top and bottom of my heart, please fuck off. The adults are doing useful things. Leave them to it.
It doesn't make much sense to me to embed mechanical / solar / whatever power sources directly into these sorts of products. This is especially true for mechanical power sources, like a crank. That should be in an extremely ergonomic external form factor that a person can operate comfortably, without risking dropping their laptop / tablet, or accidentally flinging it across the room.
Same with solar. That needs to be in a waterproof form factor that can be left laying on the ground or roof in the rain without being destroyed.
A family with two or more devices could get by with just one solar charger, or better yet, one solar and one mechanical, to give them more charging options.
When I was a kid I had one of those little generators that was rotated by my front tire, which powered a little headlight. Something like that could be used with any bicycle to generate relatively massive amounts of power (compared to a hand crank). A very simple stand (home made or otherwise) to get the back tire up off the floor and they're ready to do some serious charging.
Better known as 318230.
I had a solar powered calculator back in the early 90's. You can't tell me we don't have low powered computers today that do more than that on nothing more than the sun. ...so where are they?
Solar power for these laptops sounds spiffy.
That is, until you think about it a bit.
(1) Poor places do not have classrooms with lots of windows. You need direct light perpendicular to the panel to
get any kind of power out.
(2) A 5-watt solar panel, of the cheaper amorphous variety, enough to keep up with the laptop's drain, is considerably larger than the laptop,
so it's not going to be built-into the lid.
(3) The cost of solar-generated electricity is still mighty high. Okay in a rich country, not so ok in a poor one.
(4) The initial capital outlay could easily be 20% of the cost of the laptop.
Were you an Art History major in college, sir?
Did anyone read this as,
"toilet prototype needs no external power supply"?
My father's TRS-80 model 100 ran for about 50 to 100 hours on a set of off the shelf AA batteries.
If you assume the device will be "hopelessly" obsolete in 2 years, or half of them will be destroyed in accidents in 2 years, and maybe it only gets used a couple hours per week, and a modern device with a crude enough display technology might only draw a tenth the power, maybe a very large couple pound lithium battery could power a tablet for its useful life.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch
Lots of devices have no external power supply, you just go out and buy more AA batteries.
I think this is rather typical of the western world. The idea that 3rd world countries do not have any access to electricity is just silly. I've recently been to the heart of Ethiopia to adopt a child and if there's one thing they had plenty of it was electricity. Not a lot of food, or clean water... Gas was $8 a liter and they were living in thatched roof, mud huts. But there was electricity all over the place. The rats nests of electrical wire strung, sometimes, from tree to tree was a testament to this. I have no idea how the entire country hadn't burst into flame already but their electrical grid did fail from time to time... but not nearly as often as you'd expect it to. I have to admit I have a lot of respect for whomever keeps the electricity flowing, they must be a McGuiver style genius.
What they did lack was Linux. Every PC I saw there (and there were very few) had a pirated copy of WinXP on it, with the WGA notice popping up constantly and was filled with Malware. Had their dialup modems been able to connect at any speed greater than 9k I would have fixed it for them but in the end I just gave up.
What about a computer that is powered by inducing current in wires by sliding a set of magnets back and forth?
Configure the magnets and wires such that they resemble an abacus and presto: Computer powered computer.
Up next:
A vehicle powered vehicle (electric bicycle that charges when you pedal),
Toast powered Toaster (burns bread to heat bread),
etc...
Surely someone in a third-world environment could make a hair-powered solar battery?
(ref to previous India-boy-makes-solar-cell)
Perhaps built-in solar makes more sense, in more places, than the hand-cranked power
Perhaps it does, perhaps it does! If, that is, you can build the device such that it can run off of built-in solar. That's the real trick, isn't it.
A simple four-function calculator trivially can run of a little photocell, and this has been true for decades. So why didn't OLPC simply put a little photocell on the XO-1? Because a little cheap photocell doesn't produce anywhere near the needed power needed by an XO-1.
And, the hand-cranked power is a particularly irritating straw man. A long, long, time ago, when OLPC was just an idea, they thought about a hand crank, and even made a mockup of what it might look like. But it was never made. Reasons: 0) some kids live in places with a decent electrical grid, so there is no need to add the cost of a generator to every single laptop; 1) an external generator can be trivially replaced if it breaks, without the laptop itself needing to be repaired; 2) a crank built-in to the laptop adds mechanical cranking strain on the laptop, necessitating the laptop being made sturdy in otherwise-needless ways; and 3) little kids are not known for their arm strength, so a generator that could be operated by leg muscles was deemed better. OLPC announced that a pull-cord generator would be the human powered generator, but as far as I can tell from a few quick Google searches just now, the pull-cord generator is still vapor.
I recently sent my XO-1 to India for use by the Bharti Integrated Rural Development Society
(B.I.R.D.S.) and I looked into a solar array for it. I found one for about $200 that should operate an XO-1 continuously and charge the battery in about an hour. I also found lots of other solar arrays that cost way more than that. So, the most affordable solar array I found cost more than the XO-1. As I understand it, the B.I.R.D.S. school has electrical power only when they run their generator, which is a few hours a day, so my hope is that the XO-1 will be useful just with the generator power. (Conveniently, the power supply on an XO-1 accepts any AC from 100 to 240 Volts, at 50 or 60 Hz, so they should be able to just plug it in with a plug adapter.)
Note that TFA says "...the I-slate is the first of a series of electronic notepads being built around a new class of low-energy-consumption microchips under development...". So, one of the reasons the OLPC XO-1 isn't powered with a little solar array is that it was developed half a decade ago, and the new ultra-low-power chips are, well, new.
Isn't it enough to say "This is a cool new technology and I'm excited about it" rather than talking about how much better it is compared to a half-decade-old technology?
P.S. I put an 8 GB flash card in the SD card slot on the XO-1. On the card I put a copy of Wikipedia for Schools, which takes up about 4 GB; then I put some health and medical books and a bunch of classic fiction books (for students to read when studying English). I updated the OS on the OLPC to the latest build, and installed a typing tutor program (Typing Turtle) from Sugar Labs. I found a public-domain copy of The Elements of Style and a few other free textbooks. Finally, I put a few books on Python Programming. I haven't had any email back from B.I.R.D.S. telling me anything, so I have no idea how it's working out.
I have to say, an XO-1 loading books straight off an SD card is a pretty nice book reading platform! And with the backlight off, to read books in monochrome, battery life should be pretty good. I'm hoping they will find the XO-1 to be useful.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
They put a Grandfather clock on a boat to use a system of bladders so the wake of the rocking motion is uniform to keep accurate time in motion. It even self-rewinds, so I guess that makes it an over-balanced Grandfather clock and the first of it's kind at that, far before Squatloos or whomever of the Mayans and their giant saucer-cog sundial they used to navigate and record waypoint time.
Why isn't the back of the kindle a solar panel?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on