Monitor Draws Zero Power In Standby 405
fifthace writes "A new range of Fujitsu Siemens monitors don't draw power during standby. The technology uses capacitors and relays to avoid drawing power when no video signal is present. With political parties all over Europe calling for a ban on standby, this small development could end up as one of the most significant advances in recent times. The British Government estimates eight percent of all domestic electricity is consumed by devices in standby."
The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I've never seen a CRT display much light when showing black at night.
Thats comparing my web surfing monitor (white) to my IRC/Konsole monitor (black).
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
As for Fujitsu's 0W-standby monitor, they conveniently omit the fact that this extra relay's coil and related components will be drawing an extra 1W or so while the monitor/TV is on. I would prefer that they perfected ultra-low-power standby like 1W as the current typical appliance has 4-10W standby power: having standby rely on capacitors means standby would not work as expected every now and then if it's been too long since the previous power-up.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Blackle [blackle.com] seems to say differently. And people have done the math [blogspot.com].
These people are idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
So a "Blackle" would increase power usage on LCD systems, which needs to be factored in.
If these people really care about saving energy, maybe they'd look to things like old, inefficient air conditioning units. ACs use power like no other appliance in a normal home. However there are many different quality levels out there. Good modern ones can move a lot more heat per unit of energy input. This is generally measured in a term called SEER, which means how many Btus of cooling a unit does per watt-hour of energy input. For old units SEER values of 9 or less are common. These days, you can't get less than 13 (by law) and you can get them over 20 SEER. That means that you'll be talking about a unit roughly twice as efficient at cooling. That is some major, major energy savings right there. Doesn't take a lot of that to equal their theoretical Google numbers, and this is backed up by reality.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that design could be improved either by using a solid-state switch or a bi-polar relay that only needs a pulse to change state rather than to hold a state. What Fujitsu have done is a good start.
How long is a monitor on compared to off for most people anyway? In an average work place one would hope that most peo
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:5, Informative)
1 Watt??? I built a circuit that used a relay for precisely this. I just called it from the other point of view, it turned itself off. There is no way you need 1 Watt of power to hold anything but the largest relays.
Btw - this 0W standby only works when its a relatively simple thing to monitor for to come out of standby, a line level. Try making a TV that is 0W standby, yet I can boot it with just my remote. Actually, its quite simple, you use a rechargeable battery to power a IR monitoring circuit, but thats cheating
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:4, Informative)
> and related components will be drawing an extra 1W or so while the monitor/TV is on
Can you please post a link to the datasheet or page where you read that. I strongly suspect that you made that up because I've never come across a relay that requires 1 *WATT* to work. A relay only requires a few milliamps to work. A 1 watt relay would be a brick sized device that might be used to turn on some stadium lights or or several miles of highway lighting or something - not an LCD screen sat on your desk.
I doubt it adds any significant power consumption wattsoever (geddit?).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Not necessarily. If the two polarizers are in parallel, then, yes, it has to twist the light as it goes through to block it. But if the two polarizers are perpendicular, then black is the "default state", and light is blocked unless the liquid crystal twists it to let it through the second polarizer. (My Sony CLIE (SL-10) was like this -- it turned black when the device was off. It looked nice.)
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
power isnt free (Score:4, Insightful)
A more useful version would be one that used solar cells on the top of the LCD to absorb the already expended energy of ambient lighting.
Re:power isnt free (Score:5, Informative)
Sure you're going to use some extra electricity to come out of standby, but this does cut down on that amount in a vast manner.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:power isnt free (Score:4, Informative)
There's a difference here, and that is that this new monitor will draw enough power to wake itself out of standby, and then not draw anymore power. Normal monitors generally go into standby, and then continue consuming power, which is less wpoer than an idle screen, but still more than just enough to charge some capacitors.
I don't see it as winning a prize for groundbreaking-innovation, though.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There's a difference here, and that is that this new monitor will draw enough power to wake itself out of standby, and then not draw anymore power.
Except of course that that's not really possible since it needs to draw power to know when to come out of standby. That's where the constant draw comes from. The key to this is the solar panels they mention, which keep the caps topped off against leakage current. Without them, the design seems worthless to me, but with them you have an "alternative energy" monitor that puts photovoltaics to a use where, amazingly enough, they actually work.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Congratulations. You may well be the first non-idiot to post a reply to this story. It's been a painful read to see so much ignorance and stupidity getting points.
Indeed... Solar panels aren't cheap, though, and I thought of something else. A computer monitor has no point in turning on when there's no signal, so why not power the relay from the VGA/DVI
Re:power isnt free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
According to the article:
Re:power isnt free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And ideally the mousetrap doesn't draw down energy from the spring, but practically it does. After months or years, the spring will lose tension strength and wait a longer time (if nothing trips it) and it will eventually be all the way back to it's beginning.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
After months or years, the spring will lose tension strength and wait a longer time (if nothing trips it) and it will eventually be all the way back to it's beginning.
This is not true. Your symptoms might occur after repeated cycles of energising/de-energising the spring, but at normal ambient temperatures, creep does not occur (in metallic materials).
Capacitors (to return to the monitor standby topic) will lose their charge over time, which is presumably what the solar cells are to mitigate in this application.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The caps aren't running the monitor, all they are doing is reserving enough energy to start things up again on demand. Which means that the energy draw is fixed wrt the interval in which the monitor switches itself off, and user input switches it on again.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but the relay is now basically acting like a latch and is drawing power continuously to keep itself closed until the appropriate hardware cuts off the control voltage. Now I'm not saying that the relay might not have been there anyway, but if this is an additional relay, you have an efficiency problem. Also, when the capacitor bleeds down, there has to be another way to cause the relay to latch. So why not just use a pushbutton to latch the relay and be done with it. After all, you're sitting at th
Re:power isnt free (Score:4, Insightful)
But the real reason for all those soft-power settings I think has less to do with powering on than it does with powering off. Most devices don't like to be daisy-chained and controlled by a remote source, like lots of analog electronics were, because they can't stand having their power cut abruptly.
In other words, it's the "shut down" procedure that's the killer, not the "start up" one. Lots of devices perform little rituals when you turn them off, writing settings to non-volatile memory for instance, that analog electronics just don't have to do. Because of this, you need to make sure that the user doesn't really have control over the device's whole power. So instead of a real switch, the user gets a soft-power button. That way, they can press it, and the device can start shutting down, and do its thing. But this basically necessitates 'standby' rather than 'off,' in order to be able to start up from the soft power button.
Remote controls are the other driving force, but there are lots of devices that do 'standby' now, that don't have remotes. I think it's often because they have a power-off procedure; if you designed devices so that they could be unplugged at any time without consequence, then you could go back to centrally-controlled, daisy-chained power supplies.
The biggest wastage is in the power supply itself (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest wastage in taditional designs is that they use switch mode power supplies designed to run at full power. They don't operate very efficiently at very low (standby) power. It is far better to completely turn off the power supply and just use a local capacitor to keep the micro going.
Re:The biggest wastage is in the power supply itse (Score:2, Interesting)
You would just need an RF diode coupled to the video input to be rectified and bias on the gate of a MOSFET that inturn drives a relay to connect mains power to the switchmode PSU.
The crazy thing is, what took me 10 seconds to design in my head will probably be patented, and used to extort millions!!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The crazy thing is, what took me 10 seconds to design in my head will probably be patented, and used to extort millions!!
I'm not sure this would work anyway: in order to power the MOSFET, wouldn't you need a power supply of some sort? Maybe if you used a triac instead, something like this might work.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
VGA gets you 1V peak-to-peak at 75 ohms impedance (13 milliamps, probably per color). DVI gives you 5VDC @ 50mA through pins 14 and 15. The latter can drive a relay directly, the former would probably need a voltage multiplier circuit (which at those low voltages could probably be embedded on an IC, in fact you'd probably have
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet according to TFA this monitor still draws power when you press the standby / power button. It's only when the video signal ceases that the power usage drops to zero.
If I press the "off" button and have to press it again to turn it on, why is the monitor still drawing power?
Re: (Score:2)
The circuitry is dead simple and very light.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The big offenders need nailing first so they should be banning hot water tanks (instant on hot water uses 50% less energy) before they start regulating standby mode.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
They do use solar panels (Score:3, Informative)
*AHEM* From TFA:
Re: (Score:2)
The other thing people can do is to make sure they are using rechargable batteries for the remote control. I wonder if solar panels could be added to rechargeable batteries, so you could have them recharged simply by leaving them beside a window.
Re: (Score:2)
Then the remote can function off a capacitor as well.
Same thing only different. (Score:4, Insightful)
A hibernating computer still draws power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Same thing only different. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pull the battery out if your paranoid.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Safe Sleep [apple.com] is your friend. (May or may not be supported by your particular PB G4, depending on its vintage.)
-Ster
instead (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it obnoxious. (Score:2)
But, I'd argue that no matter what the reason that people are lazy, or ev
Re:instead (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems a lot of people simply can't tell the difference between "not my problem" and "not a problem" - between placing responsibility for a problem and actually seeing it solved. You wouldn't expect the same people to argue "Why can't all world leaders just sit down and hold hands and sort it all out peacefully", but it's exactly the same sort of worthless argument. Well, I don't know why, but your rhetorical question doesn't mean whatever reasons there are suddenly disappear, and hurrah if they all did what you suggest, but I'm sure as hell not going to carry on with my life pretending "well that's solved, then".
This mental dodo is especially mind-boggling when the negative impact is on a third party and not on the one identified as 'responsible'. "Damn regulations. Parents should take some responsibility and screen their children's toys for toxic chemicals". Implicitly: "if they don't then they deserve what they get". Errr, OK, let's just for the sake of argument assume that they did deserve it. Does that affect what their kids deserve?
This last variant also incorporates another common logical gem: the scapegoat fallacy - the idea that responsibility for something is a constant amount. If you can blame someone, everybody else is off the hook. It's like saying that "the hit man was just doing his job", or "don't blame me, hire the hit man I hired". No. You are both fully responsible for all easily foreseeable consequences of your actions, including how you affect the actions of others, and a longer list of parties who share responsibility for the result does not lessen yours unless it lessens your control or predictive capability over what happened.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh crap. Maybe mechanical devices might have a problem - like spinning down and spinning up your hard drive - but not electrical devices. Modern electronic devices haven't been around for decades, maybe just over one. Most old fashioned electoronics - like old TVs and radios - did get turned on and off (they had no standby) and they did last decades.
Modern devices barely last five years before needing replacing. Add the fact that they chew up power when they are in "stand-by" and I wonder what the definition of "progress" really is.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Old TVs certainly did have standby. It was called "instant on".
Generally because of obselescence, not failure. Or because of a failure that, in an older device in former times, would have been worth repairing. Those old TVs and radios and VCRs were not
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Go ahead, push the button on the front if it makes you feel 'green' or something. But other than the LED on the front going off instead of blinking and/or changing colors you ain't done a goddamned thing. It is still wasting almost (less the couple of milliwatts for the LED) exactly as much power as if you hadn't pushed the button. Because the button on the front is just a 'soft button' on almost
Re: (Score:2)
I have never, ever seen that happen.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No sissy waiting for stuff to shut down. All my programs are closed, hard disk activity light not blinking *click* everything's off.
Why wait for a solution when we've had one for decades and it works more reliably than some software-controlled switch?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Remember old beige Macintoshes? The monitor power actually ran through the computer, so when you shut down the machine the monitor was powered down, too.
One of those nice little touches we lost on the way to cost cutting and standardization with the PC industry.
it's got an LED on it, too (Score:4, Interesting)
The monitor might not, but what about the power brick? those things consume power even if no monitor is attached.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Where's the OFF switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where's the OFF switch (Score:5, Funny)
8% sounds high (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess this is more save the planet stuff.
Now I need to buy new monitors, tv's, vcrs, dvd players, microwave, oven, unplug my clocks every day, etc.. Lots more aluminum smelted. Lots more resources used up. Lots more pollution, but we all can sleep better knowing the residential power demand may shrink by a fraction of a percent.
I'll get right on that after I scrap my relatively new car and buy a prius, and pull and toss all my perfectly functional lighing in favor of compa
Re:8% sounds high (Score:4, Insightful)
Annoying LEDs? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Annoying blue LEDs (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in the day, devices came with nice red LEDs that didn't ruin your night vision. A nice coincidence with the fact that red ones were the first/easiest LEDs to make.
One problem with blue LEDs is that the human eye has poor sensitivity to blue, at least resolution-wise. There's a great example of this problem here in Jyvaskyla, a bicycle counter installed in a cycle path (probably using some inductive effect for detection, and intended to collect statistics for traffic planning). Its display consists
Re: (Score:2)
Pull the plug (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Eight percent? (Score:2)
How much political power gets directed at stuff like this which could be more properly directed at new power sources?
Bad power factor is the real problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That happens for companies already, and I believe even homes in parts of Europe.
Some big-ass capacitors, just like the power companies do already to keep from being overwhelmed.
Funny you should mention it.
Over the past few months, I've been notici
Only 2 to 4W difference (Score:4, Insightful)
My airconditioner uses at least 1kW. 1 hour of airconditioning = 20 days of monitor standby.
For those of you who live in countries that need central heating, the standby power isn't going to hurt as much during winter since you want stuff warmer anyway.
I need a better designed house (to reduce cooling bills etc), but I can't afford one... An "Energy Star" legislation for houses here might be good, but I'm worried the builders will just use it as a way to make a lot more money.
Re: (Score:2)
The best thing you can do for heating/cooling is to have a well-insulated house with good air movement and to take advantage of passive heating/cooling.
American Powerpoints (Score:2)
Do American power points have switches on them? Or are they just live the whole time?
Re: (Score:2)
This is more of a stunt (Score:3)
This is more of a stunt. It's relatively straightforward to design the control electronics for a display such that the electronics draws under a milliwatt in standby. The problem is how to get 1mW at 5V or so from the power line. Low-end switching power supplies don't even work right with no load, and better ones still draw a few percent of full-load current when unloaded. So you can't use the main power supply. Transformers have the same problem.
What's really needed are low-cost power supplies for obtaining something like a milliwatt from the power line without wasting more power than they deliver. But they have to be attached to the power line, and need the the protection circuitry and isolation for that. It's not something that can be done with a single IC.
One could power the standby electronics from an ultracapacitor, and when it gets low, bring up the main power supply for a few seconds for a recharge.
Forgot the solar panels.... (Score:2)
The next part (my opionion) is the one that makes this work (FTFA)->"Solar panels provide enough power to maintain zero consumption mode". Pretty nifty, I've seen solar
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you power your standby circuit off the line power, you need a transformer or switch mode supply to isolate it from line power and provide the low voltage (probably not 5v, probably 3.3v for most modern devices). The power supply itself unloaded will consume several watts - at very low loads, the power supply is probably less than 1% efficient, so it's just wasting 99% of the energy.
If you charge a capacitor instead, when the supply is under load and operating ef
Power usage (Score:2)
I agree that most things don't require "stand-by" power. Hell, I have some USB external hard drives where the switch isn't on the actual power supply, but on the device, meaning that the power supply is always drawing some current even though th
Relay? (Score:2)
Unless they have a two-coil or polarity-reversing relay and some clever magnets on the relay contacts so one state doesn't need to be constantly fighting a spring.
RFID-like Receiver Could Solve This Problem? (Score:2)
Think outside the box
Ron
Remote Conservation (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me like some kind of RFID type passive tech could do this with only the power from a RF signal itself to flip the transistors gating the appliance power on/off.
Prior Art? (Score:2)
It's called ' OFF ' . You may have heard of it.
Ob. Mac Fanboi post... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:patents?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you can patent something that 1-2% of EE students discovered on their own.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While I'd bet that the editors had that in mind and even better odds Fujitsu is milking that angle the issue of standby power waste is a real one that has only been growing worse in recent years. Combine with general shortages in fuel sources (especially if you don't like the idea of giving our enemies in the GWOT Sagan's of dollars to fund terrorists with) and a stressed out distribution grid and there are real reasons to think ideas like this one have mer
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you looked at the oil price lately? Even if you are irrational enough to ignore the mountain of evidence for human caused global warming, you might still want to cut down on your energy bill and/or make the remaining oil on this planet last a little longer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Practically no oil is going towards generating electricity on the grid.