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Hardware

Wireless Pedal Power Computing in Laos 140

Posted by Hemos from the power-of-the-body dept.
An anonymous reader writes "'An innovative, pedal powered, wireless network provides Internet access to off-grid villages in Laos,' using LINUX-based software which is being localised into the Lao language. The 'Jhai Foundation's makes the Jhari computer, which consists of a single-board PC (the MZ-104 based upon the Mach-Z single-chip computer - equivalent to a 133 MHz 486 system), uses "embedded" circuit boards, the sort that are used in industrial equipment, and is devoid of moving parts such as fans or disc drives, made to operate for long periods of time without service or attention.'"
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Wireless Pedal Power Computing in Laos More

Wireless Pedal Power Computing in Laos

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  • This reminds me... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Whelkman ( 58482 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @04:11AM (#4187515)
    ...of the episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where Rocksteady and Bebop have to pedal to keep the Technodrome's power running. Yes it does.
  • a pedal powered UPS.. would certainly make a sensible option for long blackouts, if the battery from the UPS is dying you can just jump on the excercise bike and throw a few hundred amps through it.

    And better yet, you could employ a school leaver to do it so no need to tire yourself out! :)
  • ...how much pedaling must be done to power a computer? Admittedly they mentioned they were using low power parts and all, but it seems like you would need to pedal for a while to store up enough charge in the battery to use the computer for even a short while.
    • not exactly. Consider the amount of calories burnt by human body. Lets say the efficency of the system is even 20%. Now we did such a thing as a school project. We lit a 100 W bulb. At leasurly pace pedaling we were able to generate 100 Watts., Now we had cheap local heavy equipment and efficeny must have been 5-10 % Safely we can assume with modern gearing and stuff you can generate 400 W easily. So cycling leasurly for half an hour will give you an hour of backup and having wheels under your table and doing it leasurly can provide just enough power for constant use! (200 Watts). So this is not really unfeasible.

      In developing countries of you get people to pedal 10 hours a day. Lets say 2 ppl working you can get 400W * 10 hours = 4KwH of energy... guess the cost, well about 8 dollars!
      Of course this is much higher than electrical power this can be real useful for reseach installations in remote areas.

      It may be argued that hiring people to do it is inhuman, but the fact is that in developing countries, including my own ie india, human powered transport vehicals are still in existance and source of livelyhood of many people.So this wont really start any new trend in exploitation.
      • Oh, for gosh sake...hiring people to do a job is "inhuman"? Much better for the people to be without both internet access and jobs. Sigh...liberals...
      • Safely we can assume with modern gearing and stuff you can generate 400 W easily.

        Um... No. This is like saying "well, I've got this bike and I can do 15 mph on it for hours and hours. So, if I get bigger gears, I can do 60 mph for hours and hours." 400 W is professional cyclist territory. And even then, I'd dare you to demand that output of them for much more than an hour. 200 W/person might be more reasonable but still a bit much. If you want more watts, you'd want to got with more people.

        You do know that you can "light" a 100 Watt bulb with less than 100 Watts, right?
      • In developing countries of you get people to pedal 10 hours a day.

        You do know that there's only one Lance Armstrong [akamai.net], right?

        And at the rate he's going, there won't be too many more ;-).

    • I am not sure if you can produce 100 W that easily, but the 15 W that my Netwinder consumes should be easily achievable. Lets say the circumference of the pedals are about 1 meter. You would have to push against a force of 30 Newton achieving one full revolution every 2 seconds to put out 15 Watt = (30 x 1)Nm / 1s

      Now if you assume that you loose 20 % upon conversion into electrical current you will have to pedal a little bit harder agaisnat a force of 150 Newton. That's equivalent to the weight of 15 Kg. Sounds doable to me.

    • YES (Score:1)

      by g00bd0g ( 255836 )
      I work for Easy Racers (www.easyracers.com)
      It is my job to know how much power, average and athletic, people can produce. The answer is this:
      about 100 watts average sustainable (as in more than one hour) output for an average person.
      Anyone who can put more than 200 watts for an hour can pat themselves on the back. 300 watts or more for an hour and maybe you should be looking at racing bikes for a living! So assuming you have an average generator of say 80-90% efficiency, producing 100 watts on hour is probably about the max for the "general population". Which is still plenty to run an efficient laptop.
  • It seems to me the project isn't finished by far. But I feel envious, here are people doing good for a large group of people that need it the most. Other goups come to mind. Why don't *I* do something like this? It would make the world a better place and I would have fun doning it. Infact, why are we not all do something like this?
    • Because using a 486 would suck. Plus, shipping the Jhari computer to where you live would be prohibitively expensive.

      But hey, none of this matters...what matters is appealing to one's own sense of political correctness, yes?

    • [..] Why don't *I* do something like this? It would make the world a better place and I would have fun doing it. Infact, why are we not all do something like this?

      Well, some people do. Most people don't. Moving from don't to do is the hardest thing.
    • Why don't *I* do something like this?

      Well, why don't you? This project is not finished, as you said so yourself. Just go to the Jhai Foundation's [jhai.org] webpage and start asking questions and volunteer! Thats the best part about this line of work: unless you're working on the hardware, you can work from basically any corner of the world!

    • Hey, if you're like me and you don't have the skillz to hack a laotian l10n or the time/committment to travel to Laos (though this is incredibly appealing), you can always just give some of your hrrible corpulent filty soul-polluting lucre to their cause. I spend $5 on lunch without thinking about it. This is cooler than lunch.

      Two days this week I eat home-make mac'n'cheeze and the project gets the $5 I save. It's that simple. For us consumer-americans, realizing the power of our spending choices is the first step to re-taking a position of active relavence in society.
    • I for one am not doing this because hill-tribe Laotians are not, as you suggest "a large group of people that need it the most." Too often, these technology projects don't think about the social implications of introducing, no, forcing computers into communities where the most advanced technology in use is an hydraulic rice-thresher. How are computers and KDE going to help them with their swidden agriculture, or the growing problem of opium addiction? What about prostitution, or the road infrastructure?

      Yes, self-advocacy is a Good Thing(tm), but how useful is communicating with the outside world if the outside world doesn't speak your language? The highland groups that are being involved with this project don't even speak Lao, let alone Thai or English! When dam construction starts in one of their villages, they might start talking, but no-one will be able to listen.

      So much good could be done with technology, but it really seems like the people out there implementing it don't think much further than the gadget factor, and certainly don't think of the real implications for the people on whom they're imposing these technologies.
  • "The team in Rochester is hard at work localising Linux and the KDE environment for the Lao language"

    I like using KDE, but I don't think it would be useable on a 486...good luck to them regardless.
    • Well, I guess that depends.

      A 133MHz 486? Let's say that the Pentium chips are more efficient so that this translates to a 100MHz Pentium II. KDE2 ran on my Pentium 133MHz laptop and it was useable.

      Remember that window managers are event driven, so it might take a while to open a window, but eventually it will be there, and then you can use it almost normally.

      A bigger problem will be memory and disk space.

      I you strip out enough stuff from KDE3, and go easy on the theming, I guess you could keep the memory consumption low. These systems will have 96MB flash disks, so I guess swap space is out :)

      Qt-3.0.5 is 13MB worth of libs on my system. My full installation of KDE3 has 86MB of libs, and 230MB total. I think that the 96MB will be cramped. Maybe with network mounting? Put a normal pc on the mountaintop, work from that? 11Mbps will be good, I guess.

      But all in all, I think it will be doable. Even the voice stuff they want to do will work. My Pentium 133 can play mp3s with 6% cpu (and realvideo at 2 frames per second :-) )

      Browsing the web will suck bigtime, though. And in 10 years, who knows what technology will be predominant on the web?
  • This is one of the best projects I have seen in many years. They use extremely simple but still very innovative solutions - which are based on technologies that have already proved working - put the together and voila!

    Basically, this system could work without maintenance or electricity in any of it's elements for many years. And that is just amazing.

    "The equipment will be powered by electricity stored in a car battery charged by "foot cranks" which are essentially bicycle wheels and pedals hooked to a small generator. The generator is connected to a car battery and the car battery is connected to the computer. Connection with each computer to the others will be by radio local area network (LAN). Each village will connect to one repeater station powered by a solar means on the ridge near the river valley. That station will then send the radio signal to the microwave tower nearby and eventually to a server in Vientiane that will connect the villages to the internet."

    • Yeah - I can't wait until the most remote, hitherto untouched by technology regions of the world get internet access. Yes, life is not complete until they have access to receive (and send) spam, access to online gambling, addictive online games (imagine mom putting her kids to work on the cycle so she can play a MUD all day instead of harvesting crops), racist propaganda, intolerant flame wars in forums, and access to as many transvestite tearoom webcams as possible.

      Oh, and a credit card to pay for it all. Or at least someone else's credit card number.

      • Is this not a rather narrow minded and arrogant view - that only people in first world countries have the maturity to handle Internet access?
        • No, it means a heretofore unspoiled area will be polluted by the Western world's cultural waste. You can't be expected to have a fulfilling life without popup ads, spyware, and KDE crashes, yes? What happens the first time the Laotians fall for an online pyramid scheme, and mail off a year's wages to a mail drop in Singapore? More technology creates problems, it never solves them.
          • You're making out technology to be this evil demon that is the single most important reaon life sucks or something like that. The fact is, almost everything has a good and bad side. Sure, the Internet has given us porn and popup ads, but it has only caused webblogs, increased communications, Google, Slashdot, etc. etc.

            And another thing, pyramid schemes do not only exist online...
            • But door to door salesmen and junk-mail posters are less likely to succeed in delivering their message anyway.. So this would be the pyramid schemes opportunity to buttin there. I dont think technology is an evil demon. Like I said- everyone should have access to it- but also the choice not to access it if that is their way.
        • I think its great to open up the opportunity for any walk of life to have access to this technology- but I think the guy is trying to say not to force it upon them. There are still areas of Africa where there are tribes who have a life, with although it may seem terrible to us, they are very happy with-they find food, have shelter, have kids and sing and dance. Their biggest issue is that farms are destroying and fencing off the land which they use and ruining this lifestyle. If they are so happy with there lifestyle- then who are we to decide it needs to change. Offer them the intenet yes- but dont discount anyone not taking that offer as simple. You know-in many ways I envied how happy and carefree those people appeared to be. The life was tough but much more rewarding than the mundane cube-life most of us over here(including me) live. Not everyone lives for technology. I certainly do-but there have been times I have wondered...
      • > racist propaganda

        I believe your expertize in this area is enough for the whole world.

  • pedaling power? (Score:2, Funny)

    by drendite ( 3 )
    When will my hamster be able to lose fat and power my linux box at the same time?
    • Must... resist... comment! Can't resist! Sigh...

      Depending on your power requirements, you may want to look into a beowulf cluster of hamsters.

      (Actually, I remember seeing an episode of Dexter's Lab with a massive hamster-array power source....)

  • Why they (Score:1, Redundant)

    by af_robot ( 553885 )
    just can't buy a simple generator which will be working on coal or some other sort of energy?!
    But * pedals *?!!! Come one! It is the new millenium already!
    • Perhaps they think that it would be better to use renewable energy?

      Thousands of people in the West use stationary bicycles several times a week. The only difference is that in gyms the energy is wasted as heat rather than converted into something useful.
    • Because they don't have lots of manufactured infrastructure.

      Wheras I'm sure they have lots of folks to turn the crank.

      Infrastructure = expensive
      People = cheap
      (at least in Laos)
    • coal or some other sort of energy

      I guess this is why the US is against renewable energy - they just haven't a clue!

      Tom.

  • From the article:
    The system is being configured to provide a 'telegraph' (email) and telephone (VOIP communication) among the villages, via the Lao phone system, and worldwide through Internet telephony.
    And this leads to:
    (ring, ring) Hello. I am calling from a small Laotian village to tell you about the great savings you can get by subscribing to Time magazine for only pennies a day...(hangup)

    Or this:
    ("You have mail") These small village Laotian girls are waiting for you! Just click here to see hot wild natives going crazy for you live!

    • That's the it goes, honey. Some sick brains in the US are able to do this.

      Some sick brains in Laos are able to do this.... so what?

      Freedom and equality... eeer, hold on, has there been something going on in the last centuries... eeeer...

      I don't want to protect spam. But it's just a fact to deal with... from Laos or anywhere.

      cheers
      • Spam is not a "fact of life", nor any kind of "natural" force. It is an anomaly, an effect of the fact that the recipient pays the cost of the message, nothing more. Buh.
        • Ok. I agree :-P

          1. to protect recipients of e-mail, Third World shouldn't be connected to the Internet.

          2. When I'll be reborn with English as my mothertongue, I will join your discussion again. :-P Thanks for pointing out my errors to get myself smarter.

          but please:
          spam exists. I want to attack spam. But still I don't get the clue with "Laos Village has more evil teenagers than US/European teenagers who wants to earn quick money"?

          cheers to tolerance and reality ;)
  • Hans: dat compudah is for da girly-man.
    Franz: ya, mine is a beowulf cluster.
    Hans: ya, of Crays.
    Franz: ya, und they are overclocked.

  • Not just pedal power operations (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neksys ( 87486 ) <grphillips AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @04:34AM (#4187566)
    I can see other uses for lower power consumption computer devices. The fact of the matter is that computers and their associated equipment suck up a lot of power - people or groups interested in limiting their power usage could utilize these to great benefit. Public schools are always interested in lowering their costs - our local high school, for example, has hundreds of computers running at any given time. The electricity costs to the district as a whole must be astronomical. For basic websurfing and word processing, which is the primary function of most school computers, these would be ideal, and I can imagine that the cost savings in terms of the power bill would quickly pay off the initial investment. *shrug* Just a thought.

    • perhaps, finally Physical Ed and web surfing come together. One class pedals on the machine for the exercise while another class uses the computer technology.
    • Public schools are always interested in lowering their costs - our local high school, for example, has hundreds of computers running at any given time. The electricity costs to the district as a whole must be astronomical.

      Don't even think about it. (:

      Kids these^UAmericans these days. All it would take is for one lazy slob to come crying home after the "hard" gym class workout and his yuppie mom sics her sleazy lawyer on the school board to hyperventilate about "slave labor" and "exploiting our children".

      • Hey but it would be a cure for fat-kids. If they want to surf, watch tv/movies or phone their freinds- they gotta pedal... I like it... We could do with more ideas like that....

        AS for mothers- someone should explain to them that there kids wasteline doesnt need to compete with the girth of the channel tunnel anyway....

  • Hmmmmm (Score:1, Troll)

    by phunhippy ( 86447 )
    Hmmmm Equiv to a 133mhz 486..probably486sx no damn fpu!!.... while this is noble and all none of these "computers" as they call them.... can not be used for all the MMORPG now out there.. how can we expect our economy to survive if we can't hook people living in huts in 3rd world countries on money makers like evercrack and DAoC..

    they should really have more modern pc's and ahve the pedal power hooked up to teams of 10 kids at a time!!!

  • in my experience computer geeks have pretty bad bo (body odour).

    Can you imagine how much this would compound the problem?

    -- james
  • equivalent to a 133 MHz 486 system
    lessee.. 133MHz. That's over a million cycles a second. Damn, they can move fast over there.
  • Wow, a group of individuals who actually get in better shape the more they surf the internet. With this level of constant exercise and limitless access to knowledge, who knows?--The Laotians may soon be our superiors! Almost like puling a rickshaw down the information superhighway...

  • This is nothing new... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Polo ( 30659 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @05:20AM (#4187653) Homepage

    This is nothing new...

    Gilligan did this years ago for the Professor.

  • Report from Laos (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been there twice over the past few years, including some visits to the remote regions. They would definitely use this. Some of the villages have generators which they run for a few hours in the evening so they can watch Thai TV. They definitely would use email if they had it. Right now they use something called a "bush telegraph" which is astonishingly effective. It would be even more effective if it were wireless. Most of them are not literate but there are literate people (monks especially) in every village. Also the Lao writing system does not take long to learn, unlike other Asian languages such as Chinese.

    One thing that would be awesome is if there were some form of e-banking available through this sytem. Right now all their "savings" are in Lao kip, which is about as worthless as a third world currency can be. They would be very happy if they could save in dollars.

    Some of you may laugh at the idea of using 486s, but I can tell you I saw a lot of Lao hunters out using muzzle loader muskets that must have been 150 years old. If the technology works and it's available, it doesn't matter how outdated it is.

  • Imagine if we would add generators to all those useless stationary bikes, stair masters, and treadmills at the health clubs. Why, a couple thousand alone could power all the tofu makers in California.
  • Sure, a 486-class system will be sluggish with KDE, but as long as it has a healthy dose of RAM, it'll do fine.

    As for the banal comments about Laotian/third-world intelligence, the fact is that these people are human beings with the very same potential that we all have. The difference is that many of them have simply not had the same opportunities. This project aims to rectify that problem. A Cisco and Dilbert 2-thumbs up!

    While watching Discovery Channel here in Tokyo a month ago or so (I admit it, I'm a Discovery junkie), an interesting comment regarding mammoth-hunting early homo sapiens was made. The jist of it was that if you took one of these early homo sapiens and raised them in our world, they'd have just as much potential for success as any of us.

    I would hope that might make folks who spew "third-world-stupid" comments think twice before doing so. Opportunistically challenged does not equate with stupid. Unless, of course, you're married to your sister and live in a trailor park somewhere in the South. :-P
    • You realize, of course, that the trailer park comment completely negated your entire argument? I would say that rural trailer trash are pretty darn "opportunistically challenged", as much so as any rural Laotian. Of course, I forget it's completely acceptable among the university-educated to make such bigoted comments.
      • > You realize, of course, that the trailer park
        > comment completely negated your entire argument?

        I apologize for the comment. It was uncalled for.

        That said, I disagree that truth is negated by stupidity. While *my* credibility may have been compromised, the meat of the original post stands up to scrutiny on its own merit.
        • It really screws up a comment to say with one breath that these people are human beings with the very same potential that we all have, and turn right around and say, no, I'm kidding, these people are NOT in fact equal humans, but subhumans who practice incest and do not have any potential whatsoever. As long as you're ridiculing American Southerners, it's OK though. Taking cheap shots at the expense of the white underclass has been socially acceptable for centuries, and such people are certainly unprotected by politically correct thought.
  • .. this means the lao's hackers are not into pizza while coding...
  • Some simpler X11-based toolkits should run fine on that kind of machine, but KDE and Gnome are both pretty resource hungry.
  • It won't be long before we see:
    Frist post fro m a pedelpowerd pc in Laos! (sic)


    Hmm, pedal-powered computers you say? And you thought you got upset that a file was taking so long to download!
    Come on. This naked picture of Natalie Portman is taking forever. Can't go on... pedaling.... much.... longer... THUD!


    But seriously. Why not use a $200 800MHz PC from Walmart, and just swap the hard drive with some solid-state storage? I'm sure it would be a much lower-cost solution, and shouldn't use up signficantly more power (especially if you underclocked the CPU).

  • How about an army of mice? (Score:3, Informative)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @06:29AM (#4187766) Homepage Journal
    Here [man.ac.uk] is how I used a mouse to power an ARM based CPU. I cant see it taking a whole human to power a PC.
    Maybe they should use lower power chips?

  • the mean machine (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BritInParis ( 569522 )
    Wouldn't it be interesting to have a race for the "most usable minimalist machine for daily use", instead of the biggest, brightest, prettiest, etc.

    I mean, what does it take to browse the internet, receive email, write a letter, do kitchen maths, and some coding ?
    It would make a change from hyping the latest graphics card and fastest cpu and prettiest casings....
  • ZFMicro (maker of the MachZ - now called the ZFx86 CPU) is currently involved in a lawsuit with National Semiconductor over National's commitment to act as silicon foundry for the ZF design. See http://www.zfmicro.com/pdf/InvBusDailyZFvsNSC.pdf

    From the article: "National had sales of $1.5 billion for the year ended May 27. ZF's Sales peaked at about $4 million in 2001 and have virtually ceased as a result of the dispute with National."

    Use of an embedded board based on this chip may prove to be less than prudent. Of course there are plenty of other embedded boards that will run Linux...
  • I hope that's just a mistake made by the news reporter and not the actual team behind this project. A car battery isn't designed to survive deep discharges and will end up unable to hold a charge rather quickly. They should have checked out the car and deep cycle battery FAQ at: http://www.uuhome.de/william.darden/ [uuhome.de]. A deep cycle battery is what really needs to be used.

    While it would also make this project more expensive, a solar cell would be a worthwhile investment to keep the battery fully charged during periods of non-use, and to make up for people who cheat the system by using the computer but not contributing pedal power (obviously if there is a battery, this is possible).

    The other concern I'd have is what happens to these batteries after their service life is exhausted? Hopefully the members of this project will collect and recycle them. Toxic lead and acid is the last thing we need to be making these people deal with.
  • Dont know if someone had posted this before, but,India, which has a much larger rural population is also experimenting something innovative. They are trying out motorbike riders who take laptops to rural areas ! More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2 124000/2124712.stm
  • After a long, back breaking day at work, the farmers return home to pedal up some power for a relaxing evening of web surfing.
  • Read this story months ago.
  • ...seriously. Given the amount of time I spend working on my computer each day, it'd be great to combine it with some exercise as well. Burn calories and get your work done at the same time.

  • As soon as the computer was booted up the people started downloading movie trailers -- unfortunately they were all in Commodore 64 format!
  • This would be great for all of those fat, donut eating programmers in the US who sorely need some exercise while they work (I am one of them.)
  • Laos is a fantastic place, with great people. While I appreciate that it is cool to do this from a technical perspective, I would think that providing water filtration (or even running water!) to these villiages would be a more worthwhile endeavour.

    One of the most striking features of these towns (aside from the baling wire power grid) is how isolated they are. I predicted (two years ago) that I had found one spot where I could be saved from e-mail for at least another decade. Guess I was wrong.

    If anybody makes it to Xam Nua, let me know if one of my favorite places is still as beautiful with telephones and internet access! (Vang Vieng surely is not!)
  • Can you imagine the weight you'd lose running FSCK on a 120 gig drive?
  • They are the ones with enormous thighs.

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