Can residential installs actually get set up as a cogeneration facility? That's the only rate plan I found that actually pays for kWh produced. The one I thought residential customers could get is the net-billing plan, which only credits kWh-for-kWh down to zero. You don't get paid for excess production and you still pay the monthly base fees and taxes.
Also, the off-peak rate is 2.7 cents, not 0.27 cents!
Adding a battery definitely runs the cost of the system up. Mine has the battery bank because my primary purpose was backup when the grid goes down. Being able to pull critical loads off-grid during the day (and just barely 24x7 in summertime) helps reduce the utility bill some but will never come anywhere close to paying for the system.
Why is it not "useful" to supply the grid during the early afternoon? The house is unoccupied, perhaps they even have a programmable thermostat so the AC isn't running hard. Their surplus feeds back to the grid and helps to supply the business down the road that *is* running their AC hard - or just to run the lights or computers or machinery. Or since there are so few installations here it feeds the neighbor's house where the retired couple have the AC going all day long. I assure you, there's plenty of demand in Oklahoma from noon on. (Peak TOU rates for OG&E run 2PM - 7PM.) Yes, the houses will be pulling from the grid after 5PM when people start getting home but then some businesses will be shutting down about then as well - since everyone just went home.
I'm not sure why the utilities pushed for this at this time. Solar installations here are almost nonexistent. I have 2kW on the roof, but I'm not grid-tied because it isn't worth the hassle. Power is cheap here - less than 10 cents / kWh on the flat-rate program - and it takes a fairly large installation to break even after the small fee they tack on (or they did back when I first looked into it). They also won't pay for any surplus, the most you can do is get your net yearly usage to 0 kWh - and still pay the base fees. If you put in a really large system and generate more than you use in a year you're just giving the power company free electricity.
I also wanted backup power, so my system is semi-offgrid. The critical loads are on a subpanel, the inverter switches to grid at night and solar during the day. I can just manage off-grid 24x7 in the summertime, but can't make it in winter with all my computers going. If the power goes out for an extended period I'll turn some off. This helps reduce my utility consumption, but it'll never pay for itself thanks to battery replacement costs. It's sure nice not even noticing most power bumps and outages, though!
Good grief, where?!? Or perhaps that's to an actual business?
I have Cox Business at home, started out at 8/1 but they've since upgraded me to 15/3 - and my actual speed tests always give me more like 30/15! With 5 static IPs I pay $105/month. The breakdown shows the base service is $85/mo with one IP, each additional IP is $5/mo.
I had the residential service before, at the time (a few years ago) I paid $44/mo for the "standard" speed (can't remember what it was). Both of these are Internet-only, no TV or phone.
Can't say whether it's more reliable than the residential service, I never really had trouble with it either.
Ready for power cuts, but since I put the system in I haven't had any major ones. A few winters ago I froze through a few days without power after an ice storm and decided not to do that again. I now have 2kW of solar panels on the roof, a battery bank in the garage, and an inverter and sub panel feeding the primary circuits in the house. If I happen to be using grid power when there is an outage, the inverter switches over so quickly the lights don't even blink. During the day I switch off-grid anyway to make use of the system and reduce the electric bill.
The system isn't large, it won't run the house AC (nor will the little Honda generator I bought) but I can run the 9000 BTU mini-split in the back room. Originally installed for all the hot computers I was running a few years back, now it lets me cool down off-grid! In winter I can run the natural gas furnace as well. Everything else that's "essential" can be run indefinitely long as there is some sun or I have gas for the generator. My ISP (Cox) lets me down after 2-3 hours though, apparently that's all the battery the local nodes carry.
Re:That's why I like the basic Kindle
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At least for the iOS devices, you can certainly disable automatic checking of mail. I have mine set so they only check when I manually open the mail app. Settings -> Mail -> Fetch New Data. Turn off Push, set Fetch to Manual.
The only items I can't easily avoid on the phone are texts and phone calls, but I don't generally get deep in a book when using the phone - it's for filling a few minutes here and there while waiting on something / someone else. The iPad doesn't have messaging set up, so no annoyances there.
But then having the occasional notification pop up wouldn't bother me. I can even happily ignore a ringing phone, it's funny how hard it is for most people to do that. (In public I'd silence the phone, of course. The office desk phone doesn't have that feature.)
Doesn't really matter. The iPad isn't the book. It will probably be replaced with a newer model at least once within that time. Even if it gets destroyed, I can get another and as soon as I sync it to my computer or the cloud the entire library is back in place, ready to read.
For only a few titles, that's ridiculously expensive (but then I have other uses for it so the cost isn't limited just to the books). For an entire library? If I were to have a fire in my house, there's considerably more money to be lost in printed pages than an iPad or whatever reader I'm using.
The main issue I have with growing a large ebook library is getting locked into a platform. Will I be able to take my books with me to another brand reader if/when I decide to switch? If I'm not able to move the books, I'm not about to buy large quantities of them.
Not at all uncommon. Where I live (Oklahoma City) a significant number of commuters live well outside the main metropolitan area and 40 miles would be easy. The baffling part to me is they usually live in subdivisions that look no different from the ones right in town, very few actually do "country living" in spite of their long commute.
Even for those of us who live in the metro area 20 miles is fairly easy, my dad spent 35 years at the same job with a 20 mile (40 mile round trip) commute. In some cases it can take 5-10 miles just to get to the grocery store. You can usually find a "convenience store" on every corner, but you'll pay a ridiculous premium for anything you buy there.
It isn't like that in all areas, the older parts of the city usually have stores closer by. I have two grocery stores 1/2 mile from my house, and several restaurants. My office is only 2 miles away, a previous one was 5. Unfortunately the newer housing developments only reinforce the car requirement. Mile after mile of nothing-but-homes built behind stockade fences or brick walls with only one or two exits onto the main road. The stores and jobs are miles away "somewhere else".
No. When I viewed the textbooks on my ipad there was a note "only for ipad". The sample I downloaded wouldn't transfer to the phone on sync and when I tried searching for the textbooks on the phone they don't even show up.
Actually, I've seen, and occasionally used, some prototype software that let users scribble random junk on a "document". Such things existed back in the 1990s. But they don't seem to be available on commercial products. Or rather, they are available, but the apps only let you scribble on their own "documents", not on the documents used by other apps. If I can't scribble on, say, a PDF or PNG or SVG music score, but only on the scribble app's blank pages, it isn't of much use to me when I'm working on a piece of music.
I have an app on my ipad that lets me do this with PDFs, called Note Taker HD. Pretty nice program, also has a "zoom" mode - a boxed area in the doc is show zoomed in at the bottom of the screen so you can make more detailed notes / drawings than is otherwise possible. Input is still a little clumsy thanks to the capacitive screen, you can't get very precise except by using the zoom mode. The annotated PDFs and any docs you create yourself can then be exported and emailed, put into ibooks as a PDF, or printed.
Still isn't what I *really* want - accurate and detailed free-form input in any app or document. Not to mention (in the case of my ipad) I'm carrying around a fragile $600 tablet instead of a $1 spiral notebook that still "works" fine after being dropped, cut, torn, gets wet, so on... I'm fine with it at home or in the office, but in the field at work that's more financial risk than it's worth. It isn't that inconvenient to scan in a page of the paper notebook when I get back to the office, or worst case take a picture of it and email in the field.
The one thing a tablet does do better than paper, I can carry an entire room full of documentation and manuals with ease. Of course my laptop can do the same thing, but it's handy to have the docs to the side on another device while working on the laptop.
I install HVAC control systems for a living. Almost all of them rely on Windows at some point along the way anymore, either for setup software or the user interface software (if it doesn't use a web interface).
However, most do NOT require the Windows computer in order to function properly. The systems either have a dedicated embedded-style building controller, or use a peer-to-peer arrangement with each device handling its own schedules and talking to each other directly to integrate. It's entirely possible that the most he could actually do from that computer is look at a few temperatures.
Not that I expect that's reality. Unfortunately, we're typically talking about people with very little computer / networking skills, and security is dead last on anyone's mind when setting these systems up. They wouldn't even talk to IT at all if they didn't need an IP or LAN drop somewhere. I try to caution people about the need for at least rudimentary security, but all too often ease-of-use wins the day. Some even have their HVAC systems exposed directly to the net so they can more easily use their smartphones or check on things from home. Combine with braindead username/password selection and I'm surprised many haven't been hacked.
One way I try to prevent total disaster is by careful programming - make it so the user front-end doesn't allow them to do stupid stuff, and sanity-check user input. But there's a limit to what can be done with most of these systems, and in the end if the customer says he wants to be able to do something stupid - well, it's his building. Just don't expect me to cover it under warranty!
Climate control (at least for commercial HVAC) is a relative non-issue as well. Every motor I've seen installed lately is happy at either frequency - for that matter, we put lots of them on variable-speed drives which varies the frequency and voltage all over the place. Only extremely old motors might have issues.
So all that really happens is the motor speeds up/down a bit (depending on who converts their system) which is handily fixed - if you even need to - as most large air handling equipment is belt-driven. Pull the sheaves off, put on a slightly-different size, fire it back up. Some equipment has adjustable sheaves already, so just screw the assembly in/out a bit to change the diameter.
Water pumps aren't so readily adjusted, but most have balancing valves after the pumps anyway to set the desired flow - just tweak it open/closed a bit and again you're done.
Some of the really old building automation systems I've seen used to use "line time clocks" - referencing the AC frequency for their clock. I expect some of those wouldn't keep proper time, and one particular panel simply quit functioning if the frequency fell outside 60 Hz +/- a few tenths (found that out when they stopped running every time the emergency generators were tested). Those panels were obsoleted by the manufacturer quite a few years ago, but there are still a LOT of them installed and operating (in the US anyway). They would have to be upgraded, but it's an easy retrofit to something newer - the new stuff is so much smaller than those old panels you can just gut the old cans and install new with room to spare.
Who says they're "on hold"? With a bluetooth headset, or with the iPhone just plug in the earphones w/mic provided with the phone, and you can tap away while continuing the conversation. They certainly won't hear your fingers unless you're trying to bash a hole in the screen.
I never even thought about simultaneous voice/data, until I realized one day that was exactly what I was doing. Talking with a friend, some topic came up and I pulled up the browser to do a search. Sure, if I'm sitting in the office or at home, the computer might be handier but if I'm - say - waiting on someone at a restaurant or client site, the computer isn't convenient and wifi is normally not available. (Few have "free wifi" around here, if they have it at all they have it locked down.)
Now that I'm aware of it, I realized I use that "feature" all the time - it would be annoying not to have it.
Well, you *could* also pass data while in the "digital voice" mode, even alongside a voice conversation. Just at an abysmally slow data rate (~960 bps). So in theory you could "access the net" even with a VHF/UHF rig if the other end was set up appropriately.
I did this once, set up a PPP link between two ID-800s attached to Linux machines. Just for giggles - the data rate is so horribly slow you almost have time to think between keypresses!:)
Normally the data "side channel" is only used for position reporting like APRS, but there are some apps available that let you do a sort of text-messaging with it. Perhaps that's what has them up in arms, don't want to lose any lucrative text-messaging money from the phone company... (Although then again I'm under the impression France / Europe didn't have insane pricing for texting like we do in the US.)
I'm waiting for a couple of ID-1s to show up right now, be interesting to see what sort of range I'll get from 1.2GHz. Never used that band before...
A nifty trick I've seen electricians using on jobsites is to suck on one end of the conduit with a Shop-Vac, tie a piece of paper (or wad of electrical tape) to the end of the pull string, then feed into the other end of the conduit. With any luck, the vacuum will suck your string right on down to the other end in no time!
I can't say I've had NONE fail, but the only piece I remember failing was an oddball Toshiba laptop memory card that they happily replaced years after the fact for free. That replacement worked just fine until the laptop was replaced.
More recently I've been buying Kingston USB drives and SDHC cards because they seemed to have the best balance of reviews on Newegg, so obviously not everyone there has had problems. So far all devices have been working just fine.
Now watch, I've probably jinxed myself - I have two Kingston 16GB SDHC cards arriving *today* for my Sheeva Plugs. They'll probably both die fiery deaths, taking the rest of the kit along with them!;)
Are there actually cell phones out there that behave this way?!? (Just checked mine, it doesn't have anything like that that I could find.) Why in the world would there be a setting where the phone's response to dialing 911 would be such that you couldn't actually use it as a phone and communicate with the call-taker when they answered? That isn't a double-edged sword, that's just plain brain-dead.
You lost me with the far-fetched scenario after that...
This is exactly why I bought my laser printer. Most months I only print 2-3 pages. On rare occasion I'll print a manual or PDF book.
Bought a Brother HL-5040 for $220 back in October 2003, and I'm *still* using the original toner cartridge!:p Six years now, and I was lucky if inkjet cartridges would last six *months*.
If he wants the thing to run 24x7, he's also going to need a battery, charge controller to keep the battery from getting overcharged, and an inverter to power the PSU (or change out - if possible - to a DC fed PSU). Adding the battery means ongoing maintenance, at the very least replacement every few years.
Unless he's in a very expensive area for electricity, or where he gets huge rebates from the government (like southern California), electric rates are generally so cheap that you will *never* achieve payback on an off-grid solar system.
I know, because I have one! My intent was for power outages, to keep a few things going, so payback wasn't an issue to me. But I calculated it out anyway, and it would take in the neighborhood of 64 years for my system (bought and installed by me, so no labor costs, and catching pretty decent sales as well) to achieve financial payback. That's if *nothing* goes bad, and somehow I doubt the batteries will last that long...
Still a nifty and fun project, though. I now have 540W in solar panels, a 660AH 12V battery bank, and keep my ham shack off-grid along with the office desk (computer, light), cablemodem, router and VoIP adapter. In an outage, I can switch on the Big Inverter and run the fridge. I've had a couple short outages since getting it all put in, and only noticed because some other lights went off.
Or even a nicer one - I have the 1000HE (Atom processor, 160GB HDD) and it runs 10-12W with the screen on. Performs comparably to the Atom "fanless" desktop machine I also have (which won't run more than 1/2 hour without getting hot as a pistol thanks to the lousy chipset, so it now has a fan on the heatsink!) which pulls 25W at idle with NO screen. Both running Ubuntu 9.04. (Of course, the Eee pulls more when it needs to charge the battery - I don't remember what that tops out at.)
I use the Eee as a laptop, but have considered getting another to replace the desktop. It is a server, running on my off-grid solar system, so more than halving my 24x7 power consumption is a tempting idea...
The wattages above are actually DC measurements off my battery bank - the desktop has a DC PSU, the Eee was running through a small inverter.
When I bought the Eee, I thought it was interesting that the unit with solid-state disk listed a *shorter* battery life than the one with the 160GB HDD... I wanted the space anyway, so went with the HDD.
Hey, wow. I stumbled across the SciFi TV show version one night while sitting in a hotel room on a business trip, never saw it again but remember the story well. Didn't know it was based on a book, I'll have to get it now.
Sure the temperature means something. You don't get steam above 212F without increasing the pressure. So the temp tells you roughly the pressure. I did a quick search for a chart, and it says 400 degrees would be around 235 PSIG. In comparison, your 600 PSIG boiler ran about 489 degrees and the 1000 PSIG ran about 546 degrees.
Actually, most solar systems being installed today are batteryless grid-tie systems. If the grid goes down, the owner still has no power! Baffles me... It does make the system cheaper and more efficient, though. Less maintenance too.
I put in an off-grid system to run my ham shack and a few other things, and contemplated doing just what you suggest. I could have gone for a grid-tied battery-backed system, but that was a lot of cost for not much benefit. So I looked into going on the electric company's time-of-use plan, and found that if I were to switch everything to run off the battery bank during the day and pull nothing from the grid, then recharge the battery bank at night (other than what the solar system was able to do) I would *just*barely* come out net positive over the course of a year.
Problem is, that didn't factor in maintenance. If I had to replace or repair a single item in my system, there went the savings. Payback is also basically nonexistant - on the order of 70-80 years with no failures!
And it meant no AC during the afternoon. Normally not a big issue, as I'm gone during the day, but my work day starts/ends early, so I'd get home a few hours before the end of peak rates. I would either have to pay the high rates to run the AC then, significantly subcool the house in the morning to ride-through the afternoon (seems wasteful too), or just sit and swelter a bit... I don't have enough room for a battery bank large enough to run the AC.
The tech is already available, though. And the cost factors are *almost* there to make it worthwhile. In some areas, like southern California, it may already be economically feasible, but here (Oklahoma is a net exporter of power) the per-kWh rates are just too low.
Keep in mind, however, that this is not an *energy* efficient way to do it. The only reason it is economical to use ice storage systems for HVAC is because off-peak rates for electricity are sufficiently lower than on-peak. The system actually winds up using more kWh to do the same cooling job than simply cooling the building directly. As a result, in the winter when the electric company doesn't charge peak-demand rates, the ice systems are left disabled and the buildings are cooled directly.
If your goal is just to smooth out consumption over time, and are willing to see increased total consumption, then it's fine. But many are hoping to get people to also reduce total consumption.
At least with the large building installations, the freeze cycle is not just an hour or two unless the chillers and associated equipment are grossly oversized for the building. Most of the systems I have worked on will start building ice minutes after peak-demand rates are switched off (8PM here), and will continue to run full-tilt all night long. The usual finish time is around 6-7AM.
Well, the bit about SAME didn't make much sense... Yeah, storm systems can often easily affect multiple counties, not just one. I was thinking about a specific event - tornado warnings. They are often quite small in area, frequently including just a small piece of any given county. But everyone in the county gets to hear the warning, and - even better - the municipalities then set off their sirens because the county is in an issued warning.
I've had clear blue skies where a tight, fast-moving storm has already passed over, with tornado sirens sounding because the very far corner of the county was included in a warning area! Unfortunately that makes a lot of people just ignore the sirens and warnings after a while...
NOAA transmitters are typical of heavy government, by time a weather event is verified enough to get into the update cycle, it has probably passed you. NOAA transmitters are pathetically weak and placed in locations where their line of sight coverage is abysmal. Cross any great lake and you're likely to pick up TV stations the whole way across but you won't pick up any NOAA station more than 10 miles offshore. (In my case not even this far because the nearest station was about 15 miles inland!) Try this, get one of those TV/weather radios (before tomorrow morning!) scan through the T.V. channels and if you are within 25 miles of a big city, you'll probably get some TV stations and if you hear a NOAA station at all, it will be very weak.
Damn. Obviously, different areas of the country are very different! Here in Oklahoma, the NOAA transmitters are in VERY good locations. From my house, I can pick up two or three indoors, on one of my ham radio antennas I can pick up seven or eight from across the state and even into Texas. Just the other day I was in my car listening to the one that is located in the OKC metro area while I was over 100 miles away.
And the updates seem to happen very quickly here. Indeed, I'll hear the NWS discussing something with the spotters over the radio, then within just a few minutes the weather radio goes off with the new updates. If I had any complaints, I wish they would make more fine-grain use of the SAME codes, our storms aren't usually large enough to affect an entire county at once, but even if their alert specifically says "northeast corner of Oklahoma county" I (on the far west side) still get the alert because they only break things down to county level with the codes.
I do agree about using TV during weather events. The one thing I really liked about the switch to DTV was two of the local stations (NBC and ABC) set up a secondary channel that was nothing but weather. They've ruined it a bit already, with advertising and insets and such, but for a while one of them just had a live feed of their radar up with NOAA weather radio audio. I usually just tune to someone who has radar up and turn the audio down, living here all my life I can read the radar about as well as they can for stuff that matters to me, so don't need the chatter.
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Can residential installs actually get set up as a cogeneration facility? That's the only rate plan I found that actually pays for kWh produced. The one I thought residential customers could get is the net-billing plan, which only credits kWh-for-kWh down to zero. You don't get paid for excess production and you still pay the monthly base fees and taxes.
Also, the off-peak rate is 2.7 cents, not 0.27 cents!
Adding a battery definitely runs the cost of the system up. Mine has the battery bank because my primary purpose was backup when the grid goes down. Being able to pull critical loads off-grid during the day (and just barely 24x7 in summertime) helps reduce the utility bill some but will never come anywhere close to paying for the system.
Why is it not "useful" to supply the grid during the early afternoon? The house is unoccupied, perhaps they even have a programmable thermostat so the AC isn't running hard. Their surplus feeds back to the grid and helps to supply the business down the road that *is* running their AC hard - or just to run the lights or computers or machinery. Or since there are so few installations here it feeds the neighbor's house where the retired couple have the AC going all day long. I assure you, there's plenty of demand in Oklahoma from noon on. (Peak TOU rates for OG&E run 2PM - 7PM.) Yes, the houses will be pulling from the grid after 5PM when people start getting home but then some businesses will be shutting down about then as well - since everyone just went home.
I'm not sure why the utilities pushed for this at this time. Solar installations here are almost nonexistent. I have 2kW on the roof, but I'm not grid-tied because it isn't worth the hassle. Power is cheap here - less than 10 cents / kWh on the flat-rate program - and it takes a fairly large installation to break even after the small fee they tack on (or they did back when I first looked into it). They also won't pay for any surplus, the most you can do is get your net yearly usage to 0 kWh - and still pay the base fees. If you put in a really large system and generate more than you use in a year you're just giving the power company free electricity.
I also wanted backup power, so my system is semi-offgrid. The critical loads are on a subpanel, the inverter switches to grid at night and solar during the day. I can just manage off-grid 24x7 in the summertime, but can't make it in winter with all my computers going. If the power goes out for an extended period I'll turn some off. This helps reduce my utility consumption, but it'll never pay for itself thanks to battery replacement costs. It's sure nice not even noticing most power bumps and outages, though!
Good grief, where?!? Or perhaps that's to an actual business?
I have Cox Business at home, started out at 8/1 but they've since upgraded me to 15/3 - and my actual speed tests always give me more like 30/15! With 5 static IPs I pay $105/month. The breakdown shows the base service is $85/mo with one IP, each additional IP is $5/mo.
I had the residential service before, at the time (a few years ago) I paid $44/mo for the "standard" speed (can't remember what it was). Both of these are Internet-only, no TV or phone.
Can't say whether it's more reliable than the residential service, I never really had trouble with it either.
Ready for power cuts, but since I put the system in I haven't had any major ones. A few winters ago I froze through a few days without power after an ice storm and decided not to do that again. I now have 2kW of solar panels on the roof, a battery bank in the garage, and an inverter and sub panel feeding the primary circuits in the house. If I happen to be using grid power when there is an outage, the inverter switches over so quickly the lights don't even blink. During the day I switch off-grid anyway to make use of the system and reduce the electric bill.
The system isn't large, it won't run the house AC (nor will the little Honda generator I bought) but I can run the 9000 BTU mini-split in the back room. Originally installed for all the hot computers I was running a few years back, now it lets me cool down off-grid! In winter I can run the natural gas furnace as well. Everything else that's "essential" can be run indefinitely long as there is some sun or I have gas for the generator. My ISP (Cox) lets me down after 2-3 hours though, apparently that's all the battery the local nodes carry.
At least for the iOS devices, you can certainly disable automatic checking of mail. I have mine set so they only check when I manually open the mail app. Settings -> Mail -> Fetch New Data. Turn off Push, set Fetch to Manual.
The only items I can't easily avoid on the phone are texts and phone calls, but I don't generally get deep in a book when using the phone - it's for filling a few minutes here and there while waiting on something / someone else. The iPad doesn't have messaging set up, so no annoyances there.
But then having the occasional notification pop up wouldn't bother me. I can even happily ignore a ringing phone, it's funny how hard it is for most people to do that. (In public I'd silence the phone, of course. The office desk phone doesn't have that feature.)
Doesn't really matter. The iPad isn't the book. It will probably be replaced with a newer model at least once within that time. Even if it gets destroyed, I can get another and as soon as I sync it to my computer or the cloud the entire library is back in place, ready to read.
For only a few titles, that's ridiculously expensive (but then I have other uses for it so the cost isn't limited just to the books). For an entire library? If I were to have a fire in my house, there's considerably more money to be lost in printed pages than an iPad or whatever reader I'm using.
The main issue I have with growing a large ebook library is getting locked into a platform. Will I be able to take my books with me to another brand reader if/when I decide to switch? If I'm not able to move the books, I'm not about to buy large quantities of them.
Not at all uncommon. Where I live (Oklahoma City) a significant number of commuters live well outside the main metropolitan area and 40 miles would be easy. The baffling part to me is they usually live in subdivisions that look no different from the ones right in town, very few actually do "country living" in spite of their long commute.
Even for those of us who live in the metro area 20 miles is fairly easy, my dad spent 35 years at the same job with a 20 mile (40 mile round trip) commute. In some cases it can take 5-10 miles just to get to the grocery store. You can usually find a "convenience store" on every corner, but you'll pay a ridiculous premium for anything you buy there.
It isn't like that in all areas, the older parts of the city usually have stores closer by. I have two grocery stores 1/2 mile from my house, and several restaurants. My office is only 2 miles away, a previous one was 5. Unfortunately the newer housing developments only reinforce the car requirement. Mile after mile of nothing-but-homes built behind stockade fences or brick walls with only one or two exits onto the main road. The stores and jobs are miles away "somewhere else".
No. When I viewed the textbooks on my ipad there was a note "only for ipad". The sample I downloaded wouldn't transfer to the phone on sync and when I tried searching for the textbooks on the phone they don't even show up.
Actually, I've seen, and occasionally used, some prototype software that let users scribble random junk on a "document". Such things existed back in the 1990s. But they don't seem to be available on commercial products. Or rather, they are available, but the apps only let you scribble on their own "documents", not on the documents used by other apps. If I can't scribble on, say, a PDF or PNG or SVG music score, but only on the scribble app's blank pages, it isn't of much use to me when I'm working on a piece of music.
I have an app on my ipad that lets me do this with PDFs, called Note Taker HD. Pretty nice program, also has a "zoom" mode - a boxed area in the doc is show zoomed in at the bottom of the screen so you can make more detailed notes / drawings than is otherwise possible. Input is still a little clumsy thanks to the capacitive screen, you can't get very precise except by using the zoom mode. The annotated PDFs and any docs you create yourself can then be exported and emailed, put into ibooks as a PDF, or printed.
Still isn't what I *really* want - accurate and detailed free-form input in any app or document. Not to mention (in the case of my ipad) I'm carrying around a fragile $600 tablet instead of a $1 spiral notebook that still "works" fine after being dropped, cut, torn, gets wet, so on... I'm fine with it at home or in the office, but in the field at work that's more financial risk than it's worth. It isn't that inconvenient to scan in a page of the paper notebook when I get back to the office, or worst case take a picture of it and email in the field.
The one thing a tablet does do better than paper, I can carry an entire room full of documentation and manuals with ease. Of course my laptop can do the same thing, but it's handy to have the docs to the side on another device while working on the laptop.
I install HVAC control systems for a living. Almost all of them rely on Windows at some point along the way anymore, either for setup software or the user interface software (if it doesn't use a web interface).
However, most do NOT require the Windows computer in order to function properly. The systems either have a dedicated embedded-style building controller, or use a peer-to-peer arrangement with each device handling its own schedules and talking to each other directly to integrate. It's entirely possible that the most he could actually do from that computer is look at a few temperatures.
Not that I expect that's reality. Unfortunately, we're typically talking about people with very little computer / networking skills, and security is dead last on anyone's mind when setting these systems up. They wouldn't even talk to IT at all if they didn't need an IP or LAN drop somewhere. I try to caution people about the need for at least rudimentary security, but all too often ease-of-use wins the day. Some even have their HVAC systems exposed directly to the net so they can more easily use their smartphones or check on things from home. Combine with braindead username/password selection and I'm surprised many haven't been hacked.
One way I try to prevent total disaster is by careful programming - make it so the user front-end doesn't allow them to do stupid stuff, and sanity-check user input. But there's a limit to what can be done with most of these systems, and in the end if the customer says he wants to be able to do something stupid - well, it's his building. Just don't expect me to cover it under warranty!
Climate control (at least for commercial HVAC) is a relative non-issue as well. Every motor I've seen installed lately is happy at either frequency - for that matter, we put lots of them on variable-speed drives which varies the frequency and voltage all over the place. Only extremely old motors might have issues.
So all that really happens is the motor speeds up/down a bit (depending on who converts their system) which is handily fixed - if you even need to - as most large air handling equipment is belt-driven. Pull the sheaves off, put on a slightly-different size, fire it back up. Some equipment has adjustable sheaves already, so just screw the assembly in/out a bit to change the diameter.
Water pumps aren't so readily adjusted, but most have balancing valves after the pumps anyway to set the desired flow - just tweak it open/closed a bit and again you're done.
Some of the really old building automation systems I've seen used to use "line time clocks" - referencing the AC frequency for their clock. I expect some of those wouldn't keep proper time, and one particular panel simply quit functioning if the frequency fell outside 60 Hz +/- a few tenths (found that out when they stopped running every time the emergency generators were tested). Those panels were obsoleted by the manufacturer quite a few years ago, but there are still a LOT of them installed and operating (in the US anyway). They would have to be upgraded, but it's an easy retrofit to something newer - the new stuff is so much smaller than those old panels you can just gut the old cans and install new with room to spare.
Who says they're "on hold"? With a bluetooth headset, or with the iPhone just plug in the earphones w/mic provided with the phone, and you can tap away while continuing the conversation. They certainly won't hear your fingers unless you're trying to bash a hole in the screen.
I never even thought about simultaneous voice/data, until I realized one day that was exactly what I was doing. Talking with a friend, some topic came up and I pulled up the browser to do a search. Sure, if I'm sitting in the office or at home, the computer might be handier but if I'm - say - waiting on someone at a restaurant or client site, the computer isn't convenient and wifi is normally not available. (Few have "free wifi" around here, if they have it at all they have it locked down.)
Now that I'm aware of it, I realized I use that "feature" all the time - it would be annoying not to have it.
Well, you *could* also pass data while in the "digital voice" mode, even alongside a voice conversation. Just at an abysmally slow data rate (~960 bps). So in theory you could "access the net" even with a VHF/UHF rig if the other end was set up appropriately.
I did this once, set up a PPP link between two ID-800s attached to Linux machines. Just for giggles - the data rate is so horribly slow you almost have time to think between keypresses! :)
Normally the data "side channel" is only used for position reporting like APRS, but there are some apps available that let you do a sort of text-messaging with it. Perhaps that's what has them up in arms, don't want to lose any lucrative text-messaging money from the phone company... (Although then again I'm under the impression France / Europe didn't have insane pricing for texting like we do in the US.)
I'm waiting for a couple of ID-1s to show up right now, be interesting to see what sort of range I'll get from 1.2GHz. Never used that band before...
A nifty trick I've seen electricians using on jobsites is to suck on one end of the conduit with a Shop-Vac, tie a piece of paper (or wad of electrical tape) to the end of the pull string, then feed into the other end of the conduit. With any luck, the vacuum will suck your string right on down to the other end in no time!
I was thinking the same thing.
I can't say I've had NONE fail, but the only piece I remember failing was an oddball Toshiba laptop memory card that they happily replaced years after the fact for free. That replacement worked just fine until the laptop was replaced.
More recently I've been buying Kingston USB drives and SDHC cards because they seemed to have the best balance of reviews on Newegg, so obviously not everyone there has had problems. So far all devices have been working just fine.
Now watch, I've probably jinxed myself - I have two Kingston 16GB SDHC cards arriving *today* for my Sheeva Plugs. They'll probably both die fiery deaths, taking the rest of the kit along with them! ;)
Are there actually cell phones out there that behave this way?!? (Just checked mine, it doesn't have anything like that that I could find.) Why in the world would there be a setting where the phone's response to dialing 911 would be such that you couldn't actually use it as a phone and communicate with the call-taker when they answered? That isn't a double-edged sword, that's just plain brain-dead.
You lost me with the far-fetched scenario after that...
This is exactly why I bought my laser printer. Most months I only print 2-3 pages. On rare occasion I'll print a manual or PDF book.
Bought a Brother HL-5040 for $220 back in October 2003, and I'm *still* using the original toner cartridge! :p Six years now, and I was lucky if inkjet cartridges would last six *months*.
If he wants the thing to run 24x7, he's also going to need a battery, charge controller to keep the battery from getting overcharged, and an inverter to power the PSU (or change out - if possible - to a DC fed PSU). Adding the battery means ongoing maintenance, at the very least replacement every few years.
Unless he's in a very expensive area for electricity, or where he gets huge rebates from the government (like southern California), electric rates are generally so cheap that you will *never* achieve payback on an off-grid solar system.
I know, because I have one! My intent was for power outages, to keep a few things going, so payback wasn't an issue to me. But I calculated it out anyway, and it would take in the neighborhood of 64 years for my system (bought and installed by me, so no labor costs, and catching pretty decent sales as well) to achieve financial payback. That's if *nothing* goes bad, and somehow I doubt the batteries will last that long...
Still a nifty and fun project, though. I now have 540W in solar panels, a 660AH 12V battery bank, and keep my ham shack off-grid along with the office desk (computer, light), cablemodem, router and VoIP adapter. In an outage, I can switch on the Big Inverter and run the fridge. I've had a couple short outages since getting it all put in, and only noticed because some other lights went off.
Or even a nicer one - I have the 1000HE (Atom processor, 160GB HDD) and it runs 10-12W with the screen on. Performs comparably to the Atom "fanless" desktop machine I also have (which won't run more than 1/2 hour without getting hot as a pistol thanks to the lousy chipset, so it now has a fan on the heatsink!) which pulls 25W at idle with NO screen. Both running Ubuntu 9.04. (Of course, the Eee pulls more when it needs to charge the battery - I don't remember what that tops out at.)
I use the Eee as a laptop, but have considered getting another to replace the desktop. It is a server, running on my off-grid solar system, so more than halving my 24x7 power consumption is a tempting idea...
The wattages above are actually DC measurements off my battery bank - the desktop has a DC PSU, the Eee was running through a small inverter.
When I bought the Eee, I thought it was interesting that the unit with solid-state disk listed a *shorter* battery life than the one with the 160GB HDD... I wanted the space anyway, so went with the HDD.
Hey, wow. I stumbled across the SciFi TV show version one night while sitting in a hotel room on a business trip, never saw it again but remember the story well. Didn't know it was based on a book, I'll have to get it now.
Sure the temperature means something. You don't get steam above 212F without increasing the pressure. So the temp tells you roughly the pressure. I did a quick search for a chart, and it says 400 degrees would be around 235 PSIG. In comparison, your 600 PSIG boiler ran about 489 degrees and the 1000 PSIG ran about 546 degrees.
http://www.indpipe.com/images/PDF/steam_temperature_pressure_table.pdf
(Just the first link I found.)
Actually, most solar systems being installed today are batteryless grid-tie systems. If the grid goes down, the owner still has no power! Baffles me... It does make the system cheaper and more efficient, though. Less maintenance too.
I put in an off-grid system to run my ham shack and a few other things, and contemplated doing just what you suggest. I could have gone for a grid-tied battery-backed system, but that was a lot of cost for not much benefit. So I looked into going on the electric company's time-of-use plan, and found that if I were to switch everything to run off the battery bank during the day and pull nothing from the grid, then recharge the battery bank at night (other than what the solar system was able to do) I would *just*barely* come out net positive over the course of a year.
Problem is, that didn't factor in maintenance. If I had to replace or repair a single item in my system, there went the savings. Payback is also basically nonexistant - on the order of 70-80 years with no failures!
And it meant no AC during the afternoon. Normally not a big issue, as I'm gone during the day, but my work day starts/ends early, so I'd get home a few hours before the end of peak rates. I would either have to pay the high rates to run the AC then, significantly subcool the house in the morning to ride-through the afternoon (seems wasteful too), or just sit and swelter a bit... I don't have enough room for a battery bank large enough to run the AC.
The tech is already available, though. And the cost factors are *almost* there to make it worthwhile. In some areas, like southern California, it may already be economically feasible, but here (Oklahoma is a net exporter of power) the per-kWh rates are just too low.
Keep in mind, however, that this is not an *energy* efficient way to do it. The only reason it is economical to use ice storage systems for HVAC is because off-peak rates for electricity are sufficiently lower than on-peak. The system actually winds up using more kWh to do the same cooling job than simply cooling the building directly. As a result, in the winter when the electric company doesn't charge peak-demand rates, the ice systems are left disabled and the buildings are cooled directly.
If your goal is just to smooth out consumption over time, and are willing to see increased total consumption, then it's fine. But many are hoping to get people to also reduce total consumption.
At least with the large building installations, the freeze cycle is not just an hour or two unless the chillers and associated equipment are grossly oversized for the building. Most of the systems I have worked on will start building ice minutes after peak-demand rates are switched off (8PM here), and will continue to run full-tilt all night long. The usual finish time is around 6-7AM.
Well, the bit about SAME didn't make much sense... Yeah, storm systems can often easily affect multiple counties, not just one. I was thinking about a specific event - tornado warnings. They are often quite small in area, frequently including just a small piece of any given county. But everyone in the county gets to hear the warning, and - even better - the municipalities then set off their sirens because the county is in an issued warning.
I've had clear blue skies where a tight, fast-moving storm has already passed over, with tornado sirens sounding because the very far corner of the county was included in a warning area! Unfortunately that makes a lot of people just ignore the sirens and warnings after a while...
Damn. Obviously, different areas of the country are very different! Here in Oklahoma, the NOAA transmitters are in VERY good locations. From my house, I can pick up two or three indoors, on one of my ham radio antennas I can pick up seven or eight from across the state and even into Texas. Just the other day I was in my car listening to the one that is located in the OKC metro area while I was over 100 miles away.
And the updates seem to happen very quickly here. Indeed, I'll hear the NWS discussing something with the spotters over the radio, then within just a few minutes the weather radio goes off with the new updates. If I had any complaints, I wish they would make more fine-grain use of the SAME codes, our storms aren't usually large enough to affect an entire county at once, but even if their alert specifically says "northeast corner of Oklahoma county" I (on the far west side) still get the alert because they only break things down to county level with the codes.
I do agree about using TV during weather events. The one thing I really liked about the switch to DTV was two of the local stations (NBC and ABC) set up a secondary channel that was nothing but weather. They've ruined it a bit already, with advertising and insets and such, but for a while one of them just had a live feed of their radar up with NOAA weather radio audio. I usually just tune to someone who has radar up and turn the audio down, living here all my life I can read the radar about as well as they can for stuff that matters to me, so don't need the chatter.