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Hardware Science Technology

Spray-On Computers 155

Posted by timothy from the topical-ointment dept.
Jack William Bell writes "Edinburgh University has funding for a program to create spray on computers. The basic idea is to make thousands of tiny 'silicon specks' or 'smart sand' (a step larger than smart dust) which work together via wireless networking to provide 'ubiquitous computing.' No, the idea itself isn't new. But it is interesting to see someone actually working on it. The initial application is a spray you apply to the chest of heart patients, creating a sensor array to report their health back to the hospital."
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Spray-On Computers

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  • Does this mean (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gyan ( 6853 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:44AM (#6776682)
    that geeks start coding in graffiti?

  • joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:46AM (#6776688)
    [Insert Spray-On Hair-Club-For-Men Joke Here]

    _
    . [paware.com]

  • Might it work with the linux micro kernel? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ratfynk ( 456467 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:50AM (#6776693) Journal
    Then the patient could really be in trouble if some one accidentally sent "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda"
    boy I sure would not give out my root password.

  • Far too advanced (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:53AM (#6776700)
    Most of the geeks I work with can't even figure out how to spray on deodorant.

  • Spray??? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by NeoMoose ( 626691 )
    Does this mean that we can sniff the fumes?

  • This could be dangerous (Score:5, Informative)

    by grug0 ( 696014 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:54AM (#6776703) Journal
    Inhaling small particles of silicon dioxide, which is used as a coating on silicon chips, can lead to silicosis. Silicosis causes damage and scarring of the lungs, and possibly death.

    The idea of spraying silicon chips directly onto patients should be approached with caution.

    • bone's medicalkit (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nounderscores ( 246517 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:47AM (#6776793)
      I'm sure a lot of the grant money is for working out how to encapsulate the sillicon chips with teflon or titanium (or other stuff like exotic carbon) in strategic arrangements so that their outsides are biocompatible and conductive in just the right places, so that one day Bones can wave some strange glowey thing over you, say "Well, i'm just a simple country doctor," and bring you back from the dead.

      On the other hand poisonous smart sand would make a fantastic weapon. Make it be able to hop or crawl by giving it little piezoelectric actuators and you could make an ordinary looking patch of sand suddenly come to life when activated by an enemy soldier's touch, swarming over his body and forcing itself under his gas mask seals and into his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. And then it could hide out in the body, waiting for the next victim.

      lastly, a listening device the size of a grain of sand could be put into your bedroom and you'd never find it. (hands up who regularly even vaccuumes their room? I always forget. I don't even know how to spell the verb properly.) They say that the goal is to computerise objects by simply spraying smart sand onto it: What if somebody decided to (without your knowledge) computerise your pillow stuffing? Do you know how many Americans pray out their deepest darkest secrets on their knees by their bedsides each night?

      If these walls could talk...

      • On the other hand poisonous smart sand would make a fantastic weapon. Make it be able to hop or crawl by giving it little piezoelectric actuators and you could make an ordinary looking patch of sand suddenly come to life when activated by an enemy soldier's touch, swarming over his body and forcing itself under his gas mask seals and into his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. And then it could hide out in the body, waiting for the next victim. many thanks for being the first person to ever make me have sand-rela
      • Do you know how many Americans pray out their deepest darkest secrets on their knees by their bedsides each night?

        In America? This happens? Ooooh, you mean those two wierd guys, yeah I think they are all that're left.
      • Do you know how many Americans pray out their deepest darkest secrets on their knees by their bedsides each night?

        I don't think that many. You can never be sure if your wife's asleep deep enough.
      • a listening device the size of a grain of sand could be put into your bedroom and you'd never find it

        That technology is far.... far....... far off (that is, if it is even POSSIBLE).

        Stop your ranting and raving and just listen to your own words.
      • Well...

        First first he'll have to wave that glowey thing over himself [obits.com] .

        one day Bones can wave some strange glowey thing over you, say "Well, i'm just a simple country doctor," and bring you back from the dead.

    • Re:This could be dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @06:16AM (#6776826)
      Well... this is true... but keep in mind that it takes YEARS / decades of inhalation in order to cause a health hazard. Sandblasting and mining are two professions where silicosis is a serious concern.

      I'd be less concerned for the patient, but rather for the medial personal who have to work with this stuff. Day at the beach level exposure is probally acceptable risk. Everyday exposure I'd agree with you 100%.

    • Silicon is the element, and does not cause silicosis. The silicon used in electronics is extremely pure, constains no silica, and poses no risk of silicosis.

      Even if the spray-on computer particles were made up of hazardous materials I suspect the risk to the patient would be mitigated by two factors: 1)they are "sand-sized" not "dust-sized" and therefore are not respirable, and 2)they will probably be expensive enough that the researchers won't be producing a lot of overspray. I just can't see the doctors

  • whee! (Score:4, Funny)

    by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:54AM (#6776705)
    Great! So I guess in the future, I can look forward to have my daily /. page
    generated by a squadron of albino spray-on paint.

  • I doubt that this ubiquious stuff will ever work. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:55AM (#6776706) Homepage
    While in theory it all seems fun and games, th researchers usually overlook the major problem: communication. The amount of necessary communication to coordinate the data exchange between the sensors increases non-linearily with the number of autonomous systems. Thus the more systems we have the less efficient it will become. So "smart dust" is the fastest way to produce a minimum efficiency with a maximum of computers.

    Sometimes I wonder if this effect i planned by the IT industry. With quantum and DNA computing on the way, we will see in a few decades computers which are extremely powerful but also also extremely cheap. Obiviously the profit margins of the industry will drop below vaccuum energy levels. Therefore they have to find a way to make people more and more computers besides the incredible power of a single machine. The easiest way to do this is the make computers more powerful but less efficient.

    I would even conjecture that this idea is behind the introduction of XML, web services and grid computing. Normal computer operations are overlayed with bloated protocols and documents to decrease to efficiency of modern servers and workstations forcing people into new upgrade cycles.

    Ever wondered by why XML is not binary based ? Computers don't care if humans can read their data. Or why bloated XML is used for web services where simple binary based RPC would do the same job ? Or ever the perversion of putting it on top of HTTP, introducing new security holes by making trditional firewalls useless ?

    • Answers to your questions (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:23AM (#6776752)

      Ever wondered by why XML is not binary based ? Computers don't care if humans can read their data.

      Oh, but humans do. If you're developing such systems it's many times easier to debug human-readable text instead of binary stuff. You can also see what's going on more easily. See below.

      Or why bloated XML is used for web services where simple binary based RPC would do the same job ?

      Because being plain text allows for easier access, modification and searching by humans AND computers. No more locking in to proprietary binary formats. Would you like each manufacturer to have their own binary RPC protocol, all of them being incompatible with all others?

      Or ever the perversion of putting it on top of HTTP, introducing new security holes by making trditional firewalls useless ?

      It needs to have something as bearer, so why not use something tried and tested. What would you have suggested? A completely new protocol? What a waste of time and resources. Besides, a firewall alone does not quarantee your safety. It's not like if you allow web traffic, suddenly everyone and their dog is able to r00t your box. You allow port 80 but you disable RPC stuff in the server and that's it.

      Have I been trolled?

    • Re:I doubt that this ubiquious stuff will ever wor (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kramer2718 ( 598033 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:29AM (#6776765) Homepage
      First of all, DNA computers will probably never be practical. Not because of the equipment involved, but because their is a hard limit on the amount of dna that can be involved in a single computation.

      Also, you are correct that it is not feasable for a network to achieve linear time speed-up in the number of processors. Theta(n/log(n)) would be great, though, and sufficient for most applications.
      • This reminds me of Neal Stephenson in his novel "Diamond Age" has a very interesting plot: Put the computation into a virus and let it spread to the unsuspecting victims. And presto! lots of computing power. The disadvantages is that it needs precious bodily fluids for communication.

        Yes, the novel is not that realistic and I suspect that Neal Stephenson WUI (Writing Under Influence) :-)

      • An archaeobacteria(sp?) capable of living under extremely powerful DNA-modifying radiation corrects mutations by error-checking between _four_ identical DNA strands at once, as I remember.

    • Re:I doubt that this ubiquious stuff will ever wor (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, complexity grows exponentially, but only if a cell is allowed to comunicate with any other, that's not the 'right' way to do it.
      Local communications, seeking global behaviour (biological-like way) seems to be a better way.
    • "While in theory it all seems fun and games, th researchers usually overlook the major problem: communication. The amount of necessary communication to coordinate the data exchange between the sensors increases non-linearily with the number of autonomous systems. Thus the more systems we have the less efficient it will become. So "smart dust" is the fastest way to produce a minimum efficiency with a maximum of computers."

      This is an existing and solved problem with application intercommunication. Everything

    • Re:I doubt that this ubiquious stuff will ever wor (Score:5, Informative)

      by hankaholic ( 32239 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @10:44AM (#6777394)
      XML not being "binary based" is a good thing -- you can view the file contents with anything from a program created specifically to work with that schema down to lowly "cat" or "less".

      XML's textual nature keeps XML documents "open". I did a Google search a while ago when trying to determine whether there was a standard scheme for putting binary data into XML, and came across somebody discussing parse times for XML. He'd written a program which parsed XML and saved the parsed version in a binary format, and found that it was actually faster to just parse the XML again than to reconstruct the information from his binary format.

      On one hand, sure, perhaps his coding wasn't up to the level of those who'd written the XML parser, which might account for the slower loading.

      On the other hand, there's a good chance that someone writing an XML parser intended for general inclusion within other programs is paying a lot more attention to doing things right (in terms of speed, security, etc.) than the person who writes a quick data-parsing routine.

      Computers don't care if humans can read their data, sure. But, humans do. Parsing a simple, well-defined text format isn't computationally expensive, and makes the job easier for those who might have cause to view the data.

      Finally, XML tags can and do carry important semantic information. It's much easier to write a program to parse an arbitrary unknown XML schema (say, GnuCash's file format) than to have to reverse-engineer an arbitrary unknown binary format (yes, I've done both). This is important because it helps to ensure that the data isn't quite as bound to the program -- parsing and conversion between schemas is generally much easier than, say, translating a WordPerfect document to MS Word format.

      Hans Reiser has even decided to use text in his transaction-control syscalls:

      To anyone who has worked in databases or any other aspect of language design, this design surely seems exceedingly simple and modest. To many filesystem and OS folks, this seems like something extraordinary; commands that are parsed, oh no! The complexity will be extraordinary, oh no! Sigh. Namesys, determined to bring radical new 1960's technology from other areas of computer science into the filesystems field no matter how crazy our competitors think we are! Sigh. Reiser4 will be smaller than XFS much less VxFS....
      Text parsing isn't as bad as people like to make it, as long as you aren't parsing a horribly ugly specification (like, say, C++ code).

      Besides, how is carrying something on top of HTTP going to introduce new security holes? I haven't been able to decide where you are implying the issues might arise.
    • I think that these "verbose protocols" generally allow one to use some kind of standard compression on their files, e.g., gzip or bzip2. So I doubt that you loose much by their having a verbose ascii expansion.

  • Paintball? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Empiric ( 675968 ) * on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:56AM (#6776710)
    I want some high-tech painball loads of this stuff, so I can get a tactical advantage feeding the enemy's location into a little heads-up-display...

    Okay, I'll just stick with Unreal Tournament for now. Proper exercise can be a unimplemented goal, can't it...?

  • One question. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by glowfish ( 310099 )
    How much for a dimebag?
    • initally, for the very first working batch, it will be worth more than all the grant money expended creating it, otherwise nobody sane would research this idea.

      eventually, the dime bag would be worth more if you filled it with dimes.

      that's the way all legal technologies go...

      (for instance: me sitting on my back porch, typing on a $200 second hand laptop with a $30 wi-fi card)

    • fifteen bucks for a can
      put that spray in your hand
      if that money doesn't show
      then you owe me owe me oh,

      my jungle love

  • Does anyone else not get it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wackoman2112 ( 685339 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .2112namokcaw.> on Sunday August 24, 2003 @04:59AM (#6776714) Journal

    I don't know about you, but I don't really see the point of using an aerosol can to make computers. Yeah, I get the medical thing (and I think it's a good idea) but why do you have to spray it on? Why not simply apply it with some tweezers and glue? Is it funner to shake up a can, say "Close your eyes!" and press down on the little button?

    With this you could take a pen and spray it and it becomes an interface in its own right.

    Umm... okay... So everyone has a can of "Kwik-n-Ez Spray-on computers" sitting on their desk and then they say, "I want to interface with my computer!" shake up the can and spray their pen. "There! I typed a command, now I'd better throw the pen out and when I need to interface again I'll shake it up and spray!"

    1.3 million pound grant eh?

  • do they care about security? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ReallyQuietGuy ( 683431 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:02AM (#6776720)
    do these devices have enough compute horsepower to handle encryption? do you really want your heart status to be "broadcast out"? can they autonegotiate proper encryption for correct data exchange? all these smart dust, smart pebbles, etc. plans (especially those intended for military purposes) - it looks like major security needs to be built in, but at least so far the track record has been pretty bad (WEP).

  • They only forgot one thing - power (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tftp ( 111690 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:02AM (#6776722) Homepage
    "In a cubic millimetre, you can have a sensor for heat, pressure, light and so on, but also a computer and wireless technology."

    I am afraid this is just another grant hunt. There is no battery that would be suitable for this project.

    • Solar, maybe?

      If they can power pocket calculators with indoor light, maybe some dispersable form could be engineered...

    • Re:They only forgot one thing - power (Score:4, Informative)

      by akedia ( 665196 ) * on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:10AM (#6776734)
      Ever build one of those crystal radio kits you got from RadioShack as a kid? Those had way larger components than we're talking here, and they were powered by small electric currents from the AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio waves.

      With these spray-on computers, you could easily add a small circuitry that could provide power just from stray radio waves. IIRC you would just need a magnetic coil, a diode and a transistor. That would provide plenty of power for the scale we're talking here.

      • Re:They only forgot one thing - power (Score:4, Informative)

        by tftp ( 111690 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:25AM (#6776758) Homepage
        It is not possible, believe me - I work with RF for a living. You need to have a relatively long antenna to receive any reasonable energy. Briefly, the energy is radiated from a point (a transmitter) and spreads as a sphere. The farther you go, the less energy per square meter you get. A small antenna won't receive anything; a Dyson sphere will receive 100%, as an example. There are other complications too.

        There is only one working solution: to etch the antenna on the surface of the chip, and then to point some radar transmitter at it. However it will cook you within seconds :-)

        As I said, those guys need to come up with a battery before they can think of anything else. This is especially important if they want to use wireless, since it involves parting with the energy.

      • Crystal radios need large antennae to work. There clearly won't be enough room in a device like this, unless you start hitting the sprayed area with high-power RF (which may have its own health implications). I suspect this is probably the best way around the problem - it's the same way proximity cards work. There almost certainly won't be enough room for an on-board power source.
    • In the particular case detailed in the article, the machines would probably draw energy directly from the patient's body. Considering that the human body can quite handily conduct electrical energy -- and that the nervous system is based on electrical impulses -- finding the microvolts necessary probably wouldn't be that hard a task.
    • "In a cubic millimetre, you can have a sensor for heat, pressure, light and so on, but also a computer and wireless technology."

      I am afraid this is just another grant hunt. There is no battery that would be suitable for this project.

      And that is why we have grants. So people can build a bettery that is suitable.

    • Re:They only forgot one thing - power (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SilverSun ( 114725 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @07:04AM (#6776862) Homepage
      A friend of mine is working in a bio/med-tech company. They develop energy sources for cardiac pacemakers which feed on the sugar in your blood. They can in principle also produce energy from body-fat. The device is not particularly smal, thou. a little more than a square inch, and ... errr.. it's not yet working.
      Then again, the RFID tags in the supermarket don't even need any direct power source.

      Cheers.
    • Assuming batteries are the only relevant power source only tells how little you know of this research area. There are so many ways to get power in controlled environments, and even in uncontrolled environments.

      Secondly; these things use very very little power. Check the spec http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jhill/spec/index.htm
      for an example of _current_ hardware.

  • Someone has to say it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Sunday August 24, 2003 @05:15AM (#6776744) Journal
    Imagine a beowulf cluster of those. Oh. Wait.
  • I haven't read most of the comments thus far posted, but I was wondering just how smart these little guys will be. For instance, how will they know who their peers are? i.e. you use them to monitor a patient's heart. but you have 3 cardiac patients in the same room. will each spray bottle have a "signature" on each little speck, or maybe specks in close proximity to each other will somehow learn that they are part of a larger group...? the latter seems like too much to expect from something that size.

  • Finally... (Score:2, Funny)

    by zr-rifle ( 677585 )
    ...nobody will complain that geeks don't wear deodorant.
  • Shouldn't they first build a nice working supercluster of AT-sized or rack machines communicating via WiFi/BlueTooth/whatever, then try to build a single spraynetathingie that can handle house a CPU, a power souce and a wireless hookup, and only then go about making fancy declarations?
    On another note, they can use that tech the japanese made declarations about a week ago about using glucose to generate power for these things...
    • That's pretty much what the grant proposal is suggesting... There are a number of different labs at a number of universities involved and one lab does the networking/OS research, one does research on building small computers (first prototypes are intended to be about 1cm cubed, then they will try to make them smaller), and so on.
      Obviously the reason for stating the grant proposal this way is that it's very hard to get a big grant for a supercluster communicating with bluetooth ;)
  • Imagine a pretty, smart geek chick like Ceren Ercen [kurtspace.com] wearing only SPRAY-ON COMPUTERS... running Gentoo... and a Beowulf cluster of them at that!!! ... ))drool((
  • "We are the Spray-On-Borg, raise your arms and lower your shorts, we will add your biologically distinctive odour to our own, you will be deodourised"

  • Prey (Score:2, Interesting)

    by xinot ( 98923 ) *
    I actually picked up Michael Crichton's Prey while I was in Edinburgh last weekend. It follows a similar kind of technology. Pretty cool, and quite a tie-in for me personally!

  • If you spray a flash mob with this stuff... (Score:3, Funny)

    by vudufixit ( 581911 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @07:06AM (#6776865)
    Would you get a spontaneous Beowulf cluter?
  • Is this sand so smart it knows you don't want it in your swimmers or your clothes when you go to the beach? :)
  • I also covered this subject some days ago in my blog [weblogs.com]. It is important to note that the medical applications of this technology should be ready within four years and these spray-on nanocomputers should be at work in hospitals, schools and shops in less than ten years. But this isn't the only application envisioned by the scientists. Professor Arvid, who leads the project, thinks our current computer interfaces, typically a keyboard or a mouse, will completely be replaced by these nanocomputers.
  • Just so we're clear -- the article is not about why you shouldn't change your son's diaper in front of your computer....

  • Imagine the applications... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Esion Modnar ( 632431 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @08:52AM (#6776994)
    ...for spray-on deodorant. Or how about car paint that changes color according to your whim?
  • 1.3million ($2million) grant? For something like this? Scotland to be the leader in this area of nanotechnology?

    Someone has been on too much whisky. That much money wouldn't keep a serious nanotechnology project in whores and cocaine for the marketing department.

    • Re:Obligatory rain on parade (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @09:33AM (#6777138) Homepage Journal
      I'm not sure if you're joking or not, so I'll answer seriously: The whole idea of nanotech is to be small and cheap. A lot of useful research can be done with $2 million (equivalent) if you're not wasting money on a marketing dept., executive salaries, and all the other corporate bullshit. The academic research environment has shown time and time again that it gets more done dollar for dollar (pound for pound, euro for euro, whatever) than the corporate research environment, which is why most genuine science (as opposed to engineering) comes out of academic labs. In fact, it's a nice refutation of the "free market is always more efficient" mantra beloved of both "privatize everything" politicians and university administrators -- who are basically whores for the oxymoronic "business schools" and sports teams.

      [steps back, looks at post]

      Wow, that was a bit of a rant, wasn't it? I didn't realize I had that much venom stored up on this subject. ;)

  • Power (Score:2, Interesting)

    by joe_adk ( 589355 )
    Checking the archives here at good 'ol slashdot, I found this [slashdot.org]. The power of chee--- uh, blood. One would suppose that this would be a good sourse of power (at least for the medical applications).

    Let the toner wars begin! (N.Stevenson reference)

  • A Dream (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Sunday August 24, 2003 @10:31AM (#6777341) Homepage
    I posted this a year or so ago.

    I had a dream once. In this dream, you could get a PDA applied to the back of your hand. It was sort of applied on the surface. It would wear off after about a month.

    Just think, PDA functionality for everyone, and you can't lose it.

    Everyone wanted one. But you have to pay by the month, because the PDA would wear off. For people who couldn't afford the PDA, there was an alternative. Corporate sponsorship. You could get a free low-end PDA on your hand if you also agreed to let them apply a higher end color animated advertising banner to your forehead.

    Especially among young people, which particular animated advertising banner you had on your forehead would become a status symbol. After all, only so many Brand-X sponsorships were available in a certian period of time. So it would have more sex appeal to have, say, an ad for a leading soft drink, than to have, say, an ad for an auto tire repair shop.

  • Perfume Ladies at the mall again.. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remember when those perfume ladies would hunt down unsuspecting victims and spray them with the scent du jour? Well, I can see a surge of this practice in the future, but will the spray contain just a scent? Or will it be a computerized leech?
  • Anyone ever play the game "Total Annihilation?"

    If we can find a power source for each component, what's the likelihood of designing spray-on computers that can ultimately reform themselves into a larger, more workable design?

    One previous poster made mention the possibility of making them move (I forget the method they suggested), and they are going to have communicative abilities, so it seems reasonable to assume that with a schematic in a main computer somewhere, and a capable enough transmitter, the "sp
    • Yes but that's more traditional nano-technology, a concept that's been around for some time. Total Annihilation's nanotech is the idea that, as long as you've got the blueprints, you can spray a fine mist of microscopically small machines which act as generic building blocks. They then link up to form the desired structure, according to the blueprint (or greenprint, in TA's case). The difference is that in this case, the idea is to use the tiny particles not as building blocks, but as miniature computers.
  • Just think: Smart potato guns.
  • isn't that the pixie dust for servers?

  • Great. Something else to mistake as a can of deodorant early in the morning.

  • Obviously, they never saw the "Bags of Mostly Water" episode (or whatever the real name was) of ST:TNG. Smart sand can kill you.

  • Its interessting to reflect a bit on current technology when discussing "science fiction" like this.

    Reseachers at Berkely have developed a single chip sensor node called the spec [berkeley.edu] . Although this node lacks sensors, it clearly demonstrates the potential of the approach, even using existing technology and implements the basic platform for a sensor node in 5 mm (thats 2.379E-5 cubic furlongs for the metricly challenged). This node have very low power requirements and are capable of communication of more than

  • Yeh, that's just what we need. Spray-on computers. I hope they come with some serious spray-on batteries since I'll probably need to output my data by freakin' candlelight.

    Pardon my belligerence, but I just spent some time looking for electric generators. Electricity. Remember that? It's what makes your goddamn computer go in the first place. And for the life of me, I can't find a generator (especially one fueled by natural gas or propane) to save my life for less than 400 bucks.

    Priorities! We are lac
    • "gee, electronics ... how expensive can that be?"

      You must be a software guy/gal.

      Try reading this faq first [survivalistbooks.com]

      And then try pricing 1 kw electric motors. I think you might be surprised at how much they cost (new). If you are really interested in making a generator for under $400, try using a lawnmotor engine with a used pump AC motor. I'd give more advice, but I'm in a hurry. Best advice, get a friend to help you who is an electrician!
      • I got my start in common and electronic hardware in my teens. I stand by my statements.

        Anything electronic should be the benefit of our modern age. My particular quote "gee, electronics ... how expensive can that be?" dealt with the electronics that controlled the engine, the motor, and regulated the output. You are talking about the motor/generator part. And that's another thorny issue.

        The West has been making electric motors for over 100 years. In fact, this page [peerlesselectric.com] shows a company that started making
        • There is always a difference between used and new prices. The same site you mentioned [surpluscenter.com] has a few generators for sale for ~$100/kW. However, none below $400. However, I am sure you can find some, if you are trying to find a used/surplus one. There are a few on Ebay [ebay.com] as I am posting this. Good luck!

          You are correct in that electric generators are a "mature" technology. I've always been of the opinion that there is no such thing as a "mature" technology, only a stagnant one, but until I come up with a ch
  • beowolf clustor of....cardiac patients?
  • Am I the only one who wonders what happens to the spray on computers when the heart patient decides to take a shower??

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