T&L Publications

arduino seems like a decent choice. did you find the schematics for the USB version that SFE us selling? What I don't think I'd use is the language. I like to control what goes on under the hood so I'd just write in C. Phil, it looks like it is C. All the examples I saw were C. I thought at first t...

Anyone played with the arduino dev board yet? I like the fact that it's relatively cheap ($32), usb, cross platform (Linux, Mac, Windows), C based and completely open source. Its apparently built on an atmel Atmega8 chip. Sparkfun sells the usb devboard , or you can build/design your own via the spe...

Yes, I was kidding.

"... then drive 500 miles." and "Energy stored = 52 KwH" 500mi / 50mph = 10Hr 52KWHr / 10Hr = 5.2KW = 5200W 5200W / 746WperHp = 6.97Hp Roughly equivilent to putting the engine from a small riding lawn mower in a car. What they probably do is hook an alternator up to the car moto...

jwax wrote:Now there's a kickass battery, oops, capacitor charger-
3500 volts @ about 200 amps, if I figured right.

Yeah, but look at the size/weight... Am I visualizing this right? Just a bit bigger than a car battery, but 336 lbs! My whole family (all three of us) combined weigh that much.

OK, there is obviously some problems with this, and I know that when ever we talk about alternative fuel/power vehicles we get > 60 posts, but this is just too ripe. Found it on slashdot , the article mentioned says: In the wake of rising gasoline costs there have been plenty of alternatives seen on...

250 watt power supply consuming 30 watts. Always. That has got to be the most over-designed piece of consumer electronics on the planet. Or measurement error. I'm sure extra hard drives, high end video cards, killer sounds, DVD burners and multitudes of USB devices would consume more of that power....

stevech wrote:I have a cheap DVM with AC amps.
I wired it so I can measure PC current consumption.

AMD 1800, one hard disk. 250W power supply. 30 watts. Doesn't vary.

Thanks for the info. That sets my mind at ease. For the pair that brings it down to $3.67 /mo.

I have two servers in my house (plus an always on PC and two laptops :grin: ) I was wondering if I replaced these two noisy old servers with one, newer, lower power consumption model, how much I'd save. One PC has two hard drives, 700MHz AMD k7, 256MB RAM and a 350w power supply, no monitor. Runs My...

I think it would be easier with a dedicated pc running as a Linux server to do this. It takes some playing around also with router tcp/ip settings and addresses. I tried this in the winter of '04. It wasn't easy, that's for sure. The only way I can think to do it that would come anywhere near the d...

Just to be clear, I don't think this is a good thing. I'm not usually quick to call a technology bad, because technology is agnostic - its how people use it that makes it good or bad. But this doesn't sound good to me.

So, apparently every bluetooth device has a unique ID that it broadcasts. Other bluetooth devices within several dozen feet (some hackers have extended this to hundreds of feet) can detect this unique ID. (this is all 2nd hand info, I don't have personal experience with this personally) Apparently, ...

See http://www.servomagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1671 for my comments and suggestion for an even better contest.

I think this thread is starting to get out of control. Someone is going to have to volunteer to be the better man/woman and refuse to get offended and let this blow by.

However, CFLs are worthless as outdoor lighting in northerly winter temperatures. ... And aren't all those "dollars saved" and "KWH" saved based upon an inflated useage of lamps 24/7 vs. just when you typically need them? Dean, my numbers were based on either 6 or 8 hours of usa...