Power Supply

I received numerous email on my powerbox, solar panels and Wrap board installation. I believe I have some pictures of the powerbox. I can run anything up to 400W or 12Amps. I have 3 solar collectors that each 200 W at 2 Amps (these numbers are estimates.) These solar collector plug write into the Powerbox. The powerbox controls the stream of energy ensuring that it does not "leak" out back through the solar panels at night.

Currently I tried to recharge the battery with the wrap board plug into it. This took over 48 hours to recharge. Normally the recharge varies. For electricity they adapter is low power and it takes 48-72 hours to recharge. In my vesicle it only takes 4 hours to recharge and with the solar collectors it took between 6-10 hours to recharge. Assuming nothing is plug into the powerbox when recharging.

Experiment like this take sometimes a long time to setup and then to duplicate. I plan to put this unit out on Sunday. Connecting the battery (powerbox) to solar panels and the Wrap board to the battery itself.

Wrap board electrical bench mark

3:00 AM this morning the alarms on the energy cube started to ring and I knew I came to my electrical limit with the Wrap board. The battery was able to give me 30 hours. This is impressive.

I am looking optimistic for using the solar panel once again.

New Solar Experiment using WRAP Board

I started up my Solar Experiment once again after the VIA board failure. The experiment that I am running is using a WRAP board 2C model with 128 Meg of Memory and 128 Meg CF-Flash card running it off a 12V high cycle battery and solar panels. I am using a 12V power supply. The objective of the experiment is to determine if the WRAP board can run of the 12V high cycle battery for over 24 hours.

Well it is at the 25-hour mark and the WRAP board continues to run off the battery. I will run a benchmark test to determine the length of time the WRAP board runs off the battery. Once that matrix is determined I will repeat the experiment once again, to get an average.

After running a few cycles of the battery I will fully charge the battery and then attach the solar panels. It is the start of spring and the days are known longer. If my calculations are correct I believe I will be able to run this experiment indefinitely even through winter month.

The wrap board is running Locustworld’s build 25 dev 107. It is customized with a video custom portal and is running an 8-dbi antenna with 200 mW 802.11b Senao radio card.

PC Engines becomes Prototype 19 and 20th

Like the old saying goes once you go Wrap you never go back. I finally built out my first two Wrap boards as wireless Mesh AP. Using Locustworld's flash installer I successfully install the software, configured and created a working node in less than 15 minutes. Not bad for a guy who spends a day and half trying to figure out why it didn't work.

Well let’s just say that the software flasher didn't work for me on automatic mode. I went to manual mode and the software was installed properly. I also received some advice to wait for the slow boot up. Since I have no SVGA port to watch it boot up, I could not view boot sequence. Once I've learned the magic of being patient I went to view if I had a connection using DHCP. The IP address was assigned I quickly SSH into the Wrap and never look back. These little buggers are cute and they use very little power.

I will start testing out my alternative battery and solar panel solution with these boards, as the power consumption is minimal.

Toronto wireless way too slow

The problem with building wireless mesh network is the current speed will never be fast enough. Since wireless is still early in it's development do you think that Toronto Hydro will abandone it's plan to go wi-fi everywhere for new technology?

To satisfy our appetite for bandwidth the next generation networks needed will required to have speed of present day Gigabyte ethernet. "Georgia Tech have built a new architecture which delivers super-broadband wired and wireless service simultaneously. This hybrid system "could allow dual wired/wireless transmission up to 100 times faster than current networks." In fact, this optical-wireless network can carry as many as 32 different channels, each providing 2.5 gigabit-per-second service to your home or your office," as reported by ZDNET.

Can anyone say Wi-Fi? Quickly in less than 3 years times this new development will be available. Why should Toronto build a wi-fi network now when the future is already here? The problem is best practices. City of Toronto has never been a leader but always a follower. The Wi-Fi city will be built on best practices and not on innovation.

Toronto Municipality to go Mesh

Well the story out of the Toronto Star today indicated, yet again, Toronto municipality with Toronto Hydro will once again try to make a mesh, or was that mess?

I'm really happy that the Toronto municipality is talking about he future of wireless mesh; but, already the back lash from the public has started. On Slashdot many readers indicated that the money would be better spent helping the homeless and others indicated that they didn't want their tax dollars setting up another infrastructure project. While it was indicated in the Toronto Star that the large telcos like Rogers did not like Toronto's idea of becoming a Telco.

But who is to gain from this is the silent Bell Canada. Why? Because they are currently providing Toronto with network services and will probably get the contract with Nortel to make Toronto a Wi-Fi zone.

The problem I see is with existing internet providers. How will they co-exist? Will they share the same infrastructure? Will free internet be available or are we making another white elephant? Or will Toronto ease them out of existence?

Well I'm not sure about the fall out but it is a good idea to blanket Toronto with a wireless mesh. So much so that I have started to build my own mesh network in the corner of Toronto and am starting to expand it, one mesh node at a time.

But here is the unfair advantage, I'm forced to build my mesh on private property while Toronto can use it own street lights or public property. Can you imagine if I applied to get my mesh on street lights?

And the second unfair advantage Toronto will have is the budget for this activity. You know the number is going to be in $100 million range or more. You just have to look at other municipal wireless mesh. There cost is rising all the time.

I believe it would make more sense if Toronto worked with all the ISPs to make this happen. Use the example of other municipalities and work with the people.

Video versus Writing

Well you can see from my web pages that video is becoming a large part of my web site. I have successful upgraded the site to hold and stream video. As example
you can see the Get Connected Video or the Once you are connected video or how to make a video.