Solar Powered Wi-Fi

inkslinger77 writes "A small US startup has announced it has created a system for running Wi-Fi routers in remote places using only the power of the sun. Among the first round of products from Solis Energy is the Solar Power Plant, touted as being capable of supplying 12, 24 and 48 Volts DC for use in stand-alone applications such as surveillance cameras and outdoor Wi-Fi."

This is old old old

[Anonymous Coward]

We have been doing this in ham radio for better than 20 years! There are several repeaters in the porltand area that run only on wind and solar, one entire repeater network (AB7F) runs only on wind and solar. Even more impressive when you consider the fact the transmit power can range from 20 to 100watts. They also usually have computers and RF based internet links at these sites to provide IRLP access, which is used to connect repeaters via voip. If anyone thinks this technology is new, and cutting edge, they should have the shit slapped out of them!

Ben 'Polyhead' Smith
KE7GAL

Re:Bright idea

[Eivind]

Yeah. Why not ? A mesh-network is ideal in many parts of the world with poor infrastructure. Sure, the mesh needs to connect to the internet at *some* point, if internet-access is desired, but it's sufficient for a small portion of the nodes in the mesh to have internet-connection that can then be shared with the others.

Anonymous reflectors

[Chapter80]

One day, very soon, it will become economical to buy a solar-powered wi-fi router, with a built-in software chip (think bit-torrent), and drop it on the ground near Starbucks (or some other open Wi-fi).

This clever, patent-pending device will act as a distributor/reflector of music and warez (does anyone use that term anymore), and will add to the misery of the mafIAA.

I can just see hoards of people willing to go spend $69 to buy one of these, and drop it into a remote location... the same people who aren't willing to license all their music.

What do you think?

(PS I'm kidding on the patent pending... you want to take this idea and run with it, go for it! I have 5000 more, that are just as bad!)

Re:Bright idea

[nmg196]

> Solar panels don't need high temperatures/direct sunlight to work
> they just need light and they work perfectly well in the UK.

No they don't. They can *just* provide enough power to power a calculator if you're sat near a window. In the UK, photo-voltaic solar panels are almost never used for anything commercial because it just doesn't lack of direct sunlight we have over the winter months. If you go to sunny countries, you'll see solar panels powering phone masts, traffic flow monitors, road sign lighting and even traffic lights.

Re:Bright idea

[BillyBob23]

There is a company called MikroTik(mikrotik.com) that produces incredible long/short range 802.11 equipment, and they have been using solar powered stuff for quite some time(I think it might be third party, but the community has been embracing it for a while). If any of you are looking for some cheap and very powerful linux platform wifi solutions, I suggest you give them a good hard look as my expierence with them has been bliss.

Re:Bright idea

[ppc_digger]

Here, in Israel, about 95% of all houses have such systems, as they are required by law.

not as cutting edge as the neutrino detector....

[jeffstar]

I've put together a few of these beasts. One network has 7 solar powered hops to the end node and a satellite connection to the internet. Skype works just fine from the end node, it is a little surreal to be in this isolated, remote location talking in to a laptop!

The key is having enough battery to get you through a multi day storm when there will be little sun. It doesn't matter how much solar panel you have when it isn't sunny as you are totally relying on the batteries then. Having more panels just gets your full charge back sooner. I believe we ended up with about 50A-hr of battery per radio.

We also had to build a circuit that would cut the power to the 802.11 radios when the volts got below a certain level (~10V) otherwise something in the power supply circuit of the radio would pop. The circuit would then drop the radio back in when the volts got up to 11 or 12V indicating that the batteries were charged again.