Expect to see local government force data centers to get more efficient. Right new there are many moves afoot to reduce the amount of AC (that is air conditioning, not alternating current) that can be provided to buildings. It will not take much of a push in this direction to make us start talking about "cooling bound' data centers. For example, in Washington State and other states there are already limits on the amount of heating capacity (BTUs) per square foot so this is a logical extension.
IIRC, it is expected to land in Piedmont, Arizona.
A man with binoculars. That is how it began: with a man standing by the side of the road, on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town, on a winter night. Lieutenant Roger Shawn must have found the binoculars difficult. The metal would be cold, and he would be clumsy in his fur parka and heavy gloves.
Another major problem in Not Invented Here (NIH). Why does every organization seem to feel the need to invent their own solutions to standard problems? Why does every small shop seem to write their own inventory or accounting program? The needs are not that different from the "standard" solutions. Some places have seen a good acceptance of standard products, such as work processors and spreadsheet - imagine telling your company CFO that you don't like how Excel/OO-Calc works and you want to create a custom spreadsheet just for you company. Sure, most businesses can make good use of a few custom macros, but a custom spreadsheet for the MBAs? All of the outsourcing brouhaha a few years ago was the first step in this process: 1) Create innovative custom software, 2) other companies make simular programs, 3) outsource net revisions - creating a specialized knowledge base about that type of program, and soon, 4) somebody creates a standard product, 5) profit!
Really, office desktops should be more like the N64 A ROM cartridge with all of your apps that only get the new generation every 5 years. And the server side is even less interesting.
All your points are well taken, but you assume that the reports are true. This is the black world we are talking about. Sure, you have typical DoD contractor screw-ups and everything will go wrong on a space launch, but is what is being reported what really happened. Is the bird really DOA or is that just good cover to get every one to ignore it? Are those orbits really not changing? Perhaps it is not a sensor test, but a weapons test so who cares where it drifts. (Anybody know if Kent has been working on his phase conjugate mirror lately?). I assume that this low of orbit will not last long, so what can you do with a something in space for a short time?
The OP is correct. Heat is much simpler to handle than the EMC issues you might see here. If there is, for example, inductive heating going on then you could be looking at some EMC of mind bending levels. You would need to pay special attention to near field effects as most RF enclosure only focus on containing the minor RF originating from what is in the enclosure, not from some massive magnetic field coming from a ziga-watt inductive heater, transformer, etc. And ESD in industrial environments can look like the big bang. You need an EE who has worked in this type of environment before. Not just an EE who designs chips or audio amps. You need someone who has done this a lot. Because much of your intuition will be wrong because the physics will be different. Think in 3D; is there a massive power line just under the floor?
Also, while your plant team, electricians, MEs, etc will be able to help a lot but, your equipment has requirements (higher clock speeds, greater number of I/O lines, etc) that are different then they have seen before. Get experienced help.
You are designing a product so you will need to test your product so expect to use recording thermometer, ESD guns or even take your enclosure to an EMC test lab before you go live. A quick 2 day field test may not find worst case conditions so you need to design and test your system with enough margin. If you just turn this over to a couple of Bubbas expect random and non-reproducible failures - including your career.
Oh, and don't forget to do your heat stress test with max stress on the equipment as modern digital equipment produces very different heat levels depending on what it is doing.
Just a thought for all you Puget Sound geeks in the dark, Kittitas county was able to get their power back on line right away even though the main lines to the county were out because they have their own wind farm. Distributed and micro generation make for a much more resilient power system.
There are a number of occupancy detectors besides just the PIR (pyroelectric) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_infrared_sens ors motion sensor you see on a typical driveway motion sensor. These include "standard" IR and CO2 sensors. The cool thing about C02 sensors is that it can give you an idea about how many people are in a room and increase ventilation as needed.
Seriously, the subject MUST have full galvanic isolation from the power lines. The reason for this is that in every day life your skin provides a surprising amount of resistance and thus protection from shock. What is safe, 48 VDC, can kill an electrically compromised subject. When you put electrodes on the skin you create a low impedance path into the body. The typical solution for this is to use optical isolation. Check out Dallas/Maxim Semi and others for off the shelf solutions. DO NOT hook someone up to an oscilloscope - one leak in a transformer and they are dead. The other solution is to use batteries, but you have to be careful to limit the available voltage and current from a battery source.
Most PC are not OFF when you turn them off. If you look at the switch you will see that it lead to the motherboard not the power supply. These power vampires keep using a small amount of power even when off. Here is a starting point http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2000/10/23/your/in dex.html . Sure, it is vastly less power than even when a PC is in low clock mode, but add house full of appliances in trickle mode and you end up with a surprising amount of power usage over the course of a day. A few mW per appliance is one thing, but some appliances use as much power in stand by, as in active mode.
Go figure, Dave Reichert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Reichert who represents Redmond and the suburbs east of Seattle, where many 'softies live, scored near the very bottom at 14.29% Come on Microsoft, get out and vote this troglogyte out. A former Microsoft Lead Product Manager, Darcey Burner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcy_Burner, who worked on the.NET Framework is running against him. Should be interesting.
PIRs use pyroelectric sensors that are made from tri-glycine sulphate or lithium tantalite and change polarization with temperature change. They really measure the change in heat hitting the sensor. If things change slowly enough they will miss any change. Conversely, if there is a sudden change in heat you can get a false positive. An example of something that can cause a false positive is a warm background with cool trees waving in the breeze.
Some manufactures of modules are http://www.napion.com/ and http://irtec.com/ . MuRata makes the IRA-E700, Global makes the RE200B and good ol' Hotek makes a controller for the sensors, HT761X.
AC power and a polarized cap - bad mix. If you'd rectified the AC you 'd have been in good shape to kill yourself - remember those medical shows where the the doc yells clear and the patient bounces off the table?
RTOS are very much over kill for most RT embedded applications. A good ol' main with an idle loop and interrupts will cover a big chunk of the reeal world. I miss the 6502 - nice hard and clean deterministic interrupts (Thanks Chuck Peddle). OK, there was that issue with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502#D ubious_features simultaneous IRQ and NMI...
Re: GSM text messaging while flying
on
Space On a Shoestring
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I've seen very simular problems on mountain top. On top of South Sister in Centeral Oregon (Western US) at 10,350 feet I've seen hapless users try to use their cell phones to no avail. As much as some twit on cell phones in a wilderness area chokes me I told him to just drop off the summit - any direction - and sure enough he was able to connect. His problem was too many cells. Dropping even a few meter below the summit limited his line of sight to a reasonable (and planned for) number of cells.
As far as you go you are correct, but one of the the British interest in the middle east was oil for their warships. As diesel engines be came effective, around the turn of the century warships became much faster and thus a stretigic advantage. Oil was still is short supply in europe at the time. True demand was low for other than lubicants or heating uses, but the British empire was a global enterprise and they saw the long term need for vast quantities of cheap crude to supply their merchant and military fleets. Much the same with France, Germany, etc.
This all came about because Metcalf was trying to make a case for networking (e.g., ethernet). Back then the ethernet cards he was selling were expensive. The decision maker would go, "gee, if it cost $x to network two people why can't Bob just walk down the hall to Jan's office?" If X is greater then the cost of Bob "walking down the hall" (or snail mailing or flying...) then there is no busines case for installing a network. More to the point:
If the node cost, x, is $100 and there are 100 users, n, then the cost for the network is $10,000.
If the single user business value, v, of the network is $10 for one user then the ROI for different valuation methods is:
Linear: vn = $1,000 -- no business case, don't even think about it
Metcalf's Law: (n(n-1)=2)v = 49,500 -- winner
Metcalf's Law as misused by dot-bombers: N^2 * V = 100,000 -- "Proves" selling frozen mud on the net is a winner
As restated by the authors: n long (n) * v = 2000 -- no business case, but better than a flat linear
There really are two problems here. The scaling formula and setting the business value. If you set the business value for a single connection greater than the cost of the network then it is a no brainer, but back when Metcalf as pushing networking that was a hard case to make and given how many people use/. at work that may still be the case.
It is worth remembering that analog methods were invented around WWII that were very effective. Including an invention by Hedy Lamarr (yes the film star) that used frequency hopping spread spectrum. So we own WiFi to a very smart woman.
Slashdot Mirror
Expect to see local government force data centers to get more efficient. Right new there are many moves afoot to reduce the amount of AC (that is air conditioning, not alternating current) that can be provided to buildings. It will not take much of a push in this direction to make us start talking about "cooling bound' data centers. For example, in Washington State and other states there are already limits on the amount of heating capacity (BTUs) per square foot so this is a logical extension.
If all else fails try the Sterno
A man with binoculars. That is how it began: with a man standing by the side of the road, on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town, on a winter night. Lieutenant Roger Shawn must have found the binoculars difficult. The metal would be cold, and he would be clumsy in his fur parka and heavy gloves.
Just be very glad that Richard Reed tried to blow up his shoes and not his underwear
Another major problem in Not Invented Here (NIH). Why does every organization seem to feel the need to invent their own solutions to standard problems? Why does every small shop seem to write their own inventory or accounting program? The needs are not that different from the "standard" solutions. Some places have seen a good acceptance of standard products, such as work processors and spreadsheet - imagine telling your company CFO that you don't like how Excel/OO-Calc works and you want to create a custom spreadsheet just for you company. Sure, most businesses can make good use of a few custom macros, but a custom spreadsheet for the MBAs? All of the outsourcing brouhaha a few years ago was the first step in this process: 1) Create innovative custom software, 2) other companies make simular programs, 3) outsource net revisions - creating a specialized knowledge base about that type of program, and soon, 4) somebody creates a standard product, 5) profit!
Really, office desktops should be more like the N64 A ROM cartridge with all of your apps that only get the new generation every 5 years. And the server side is even less interesting.
All your points are well taken, but you assume that the reports are true. This is the black world we are talking about. Sure, you have typical DoD contractor screw-ups and everything will go wrong on a space launch, but is what is being reported what really happened. Is the bird really DOA or is that just good cover to get every one to ignore it? Are those orbits really not changing? Perhaps it is not a sensor test, but a weapons test so who cares where it drifts. (Anybody know if Kent has been working on his phase conjugate mirror lately?). I assume that this low of orbit will not last long, so what can you do with a something in space for a short time?
Also, while your plant team, electricians, MEs, etc will be able to help a lot but, your equipment has requirements (higher clock speeds, greater number of I/O lines, etc) that are different then they have seen before. Get experienced help.
You are designing a product so you will need to test your product so expect to use recording thermometer, ESD guns or even take your enclosure to an EMC test lab before you go live. A quick 2 day field test may not find worst case conditions so you need to design and test your system with enough margin. If you just turn this over to a couple of Bubbas expect random and non-reproducible failures - including your career.
Oh, and don't forget to do your heat stress test with max stress on the equipment as modern digital equipment produces very different heat levels depending on what it is doing.
Just a thought for all you Puget Sound geeks in the dark, Kittitas county was able to get their power back on line right away even though the main lines to the county were out because they have their own wind farm. Distributed and micro generation make for a much more resilient power system.
There are a number of occupancy detectors besides just the PIR (pyroelectric) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_infrared_sens ors motion sensor you see on a typical driveway motion sensor. These include "standard" IR and CO2 sensors. The cool thing about C02 sensors is that it can give you an idea about how many people are in a room and increase ventilation as needed.
Or should that be base 256?
No. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Terminology
Seriously, the subject MUST have full galvanic isolation from the power lines. The reason for this is that in every day life your skin provides a surprising amount of resistance and thus protection from shock. What is safe, 48 VDC, can kill an electrically compromised subject. When you put electrodes on the skin you create a low impedance path into the body. The typical solution for this is to use optical isolation. Check out Dallas/Maxim Semi and others for off the shelf solutions. DO NOT hook someone up to an oscilloscope - one leak in a transformer and they are dead. The other solution is to use batteries, but you have to be careful to limit the available voltage and current from a battery source.
Most PC are not OFF when you turn them off. If you look at the switch you will see that it lead to the motherboard not the power supply. These power vampires keep using a small amount of power even when off. Here is a starting point http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2000/10/23/your/in dex.html . Sure, it is vastly less power than even when a PC is in low clock mode, but add house full of appliances in trickle mode and you end up with a surprising amount of power usage over the course of a day. A few mW per appliance is one thing, but some appliances use as much power in stand by, as in active mode.
Go figure, Dave Reichert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Reichert who represents Redmond and the suburbs east of Seattle, where many 'softies live, scored near the very bottom at 14.29% Come on Microsoft, get out and vote this troglogyte out. A former Microsoft Lead Product Manager, Darcey Burner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcy_Burner, who worked on the .NET Framework is running against him. Should be interesting.
http://www.sensorsmag.com/ is often a good starting point for sources of this type of technology.
Some manufactures of modules are http://www.napion.com/ and http://irtec.com/ . MuRata makes the IRA-E700, Global makes the RE200B and good ol' Hotek makes a controller for the sensors, HT761X.
Here is the NEMA spec for motion sensing http://www.nema.org/stds/wd7.cfm
As a guess as to why RFID? THey were sold a bill of goods that this will make counterfiting harder.
AC power and a polarized cap - bad mix. If you'd rectified the AC you 'd have been in good shape to kill yourself - remember those medical shows where the the doc yells clear and the patient bounces off the table?
RTOS are very much over kill for most RT embedded applications. A good ol' main with an idle loop and interrupts will cover a big chunk of the reeal world. I miss the 6502 - nice hard and clean deterministic interrupts (Thanks Chuck Peddle). OK, there was that issue with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502#D ubious_features simultaneous IRQ and NMI...
I've seen very simular problems on mountain top. On top of South Sister in Centeral Oregon (Western US) at 10,350 feet I've seen hapless users try to use their cell phones to no avail. As much as some twit on cell phones in a wilderness area chokes me I told him to just drop off the summit - any direction - and sure enough he was able to connect. His problem was too many cells. Dropping even a few meter below the summit limited his line of sight to a reasonable (and planned for) number of cells.
As far as you go you are correct, but one of the the British interest in the middle east was oil for their warships. As diesel engines be came effective, around the turn of the century warships became much faster and thus a stretigic advantage. Oil was still is short supply in europe at the time. True demand was low for other than lubicants or heating uses, but the British empire was a global enterprise and they saw the long term need for vast quantities of cheap crude to supply their merchant and military fleets. Much the same with France, Germany, etc.
Great news! For sometime I've needed a replacement 2nd order reduction gear for my Ohio class battlesip. Too bad I have to wait until November 12th
Better get a receipt every time you go to the bathroom
If the node cost, x, is $100 and there are 100 users, n, then the cost for the network is $10,000.
If the single user business value, v, of the network is $10 for one user then the ROI for different valuation methods is:
Linear: vn = $1,000 -- no business case, don't even think about it
Metcalf's Law: (n(n-1)=2)v = 49,500 -- winner
Metcalf's Law as misused by dot-bombers: N^2 * V = 100,000 -- "Proves" selling frozen mud on the net is a winner
As restated by the authors: n long (n) * v = 2000 -- no business case, but better than a flat linear
There really are two problems here. The scaling formula and setting the business value. If you set the business value for a single connection greater than the cost of the network then it is a no brainer, but back when Metcalf as pushing networking that was a hard case to make and given how many people use /. at work that may still be the case.
I live in a low signal area due to mountains. Is there enough error correction to improve reception or will I just hear different artifacts?
It is worth remembering that analog methods were invented around WWII that were very effective. Including an invention by Hedy Lamarr (yes the film star) that used frequency hopping spread spectrum. So we own WiFi to a very smart woman.