Finally on 12V DC
Yesterday we crossed a milestone. Our NijeShikhi (নিজে শিখি) project demanded that we put together a low-power consuming PC with a 15″ TFT LCD monitor. The whole rig has to be rugged, portable enough toto be carried in a back-pack or on a bicycle’s carrier. The power would come form a mobile 12V DC solar photo-voltaic unit supplied by WBREDA. The unit is to function for at least 6 - 8 hours every day.
The PC part was the easy bit, thanks to all the help extended by AMD India by the way loaning us test units of Geode LX800. We were more worried about powering the monitor. But our experiments yesterday showed that finally we may have all the components in place, although things will go through further design iterations in the coming weeks.
Today I’m supposed to be doing the first, fully functionality, public demo at the Heritage Institute of Technology
March 21st, 2007 at 9:38 pm
One of those long cherishing hacks
March 26th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
People at our college have seen nothing like this “magician’s trick” ever before … as Prof. Thakur unveiled the idea of নিজে শিখি Unix, IDG swiftly assembled the tft, battery, the PC (its damn small) from his backpack … and voila we have a computer within 6-8 mins … runing a hacked up ubuntu from an usb drive!
The event was a huge hit … Too many of pics were taken and would be soon uploaded at our techfest site dakshh.org. Great job Indrada!
September 6th, 2007 at 12:02 am
[…] We wanted something low-power (as in energy efficient), mobile, dust-resistant, low heat-generation/thermal profile. At the time when we started, the AMD Geode was the platform readily available to us. It ran off 12V DC, was fan-less in design (this dust-retardant), and ran with minimal heating. Thanks to AMD Far East Ltd (India) for loaning us one of their initial test units in India for our work. Thanks to Jayarama Kasargod of AMD, who helped with detailed hardware specs and assurance to undertake even drop tests if our work warranted one […]