One Watt Linux computer?

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nooby
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Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
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One Watt Linux computer?

#1 Post by nooby »

Would be cool to be able to run a linux computer for many days on battery alone.

here is one example.
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News ... 10/?kc=rss
1GHz SoC touted for single-Watt consumption
By Eric Brown
2010-04-26

Development platforms are available, built around a baseboard that supports both the Armada 310 and Armada 300, says Marvell (see image above). Complete reference design platforms are said to be available for Linux, VxWorks, and BSD, including software drivers and board support packages (BSPs).

No information was available of real-world ports and other features, however.
so it is for the experienced builder of such things. And one would still need a screen that draw as little as possible and still give readable result.

The lady that made the screen to the olp she seems to have something going but I have no link just now. No backlight was one trick she planned to use to make it look great in bright sunshine. That would save on battery. The better light in the room the better the screen looks? Now it is the opposite. The best sunshine and one see nothing on the screen. Ambient light outperform the backlighted screens.

Edit

one watt? what is that?

Well suppose you have a lcd battery typical for a Mobile Phone. 3.7 Volt and the comptuer draw one watt.

1/3.7=0.27Amps and if the battery is a typical Nokia litium then say 700mA to 1400mA then approx 2.5 hours to 5.2 hours. So mobile batteries are two small for running many days. One would preferably go NiMH AA cells that can be easily bought and replaced and one could even use discarded such in parallel if one want to save money.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

raffy
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Location: Manila

Re: One Watt Linux computer?

#2 Post by raffy »

nooby wrote:The lady that made the screen to the olp she seems to have something going but I have no link just now. No backlight was one trick she planned to use to make it look great in bright sunshine. That would save on battery. The better light in the room the better the screen looks? Now it is the opposite. The best sunshine and one see nothing on the screen. Ambient light outperform the backlighted screens.
You mean Mary Lou Jepsen, see her blog.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

nooby
Posts: 10369
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Location: SwedenEurope

#3 Post by nooby »

Thanks Raffy. Yes that is the kind of innovative things I find promising.
Something that don't takes so much powers are the reading devices that only need power to the display when you change page. Slow updating the page but if it is only text then you don't need the speed. To turn a page in a book takes a bit of time too.
One get used to it. One need the 3mS response for fast games or action movies maybe but not for news or educational texts.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

DMcCunney
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Joined: Tue 03 Feb 2009, 00:45

#4 Post by DMcCunney »

nooby wrote:Thanks Raffy. Yes that is the kind of innovative things I find promising.
Something that don't takes so much powers are the reading devices that only need power to the display when you change page. Slow updating the page but if it is only text then you don't need the speed. To turn a page in a book takes a bit of time too.
One get used to it. One need the 3mS response for fast games or action movies maybe but not for news or educational texts.
The problem with the eInk technology currently used by most dedicated ebook readers is two fold: slow refresh and no color support.

If all you want to do is read text, it's not an issue. If you want to do anything else, it is.

I have about 4,000 ebooks, but don't use a dedicated reader. I need color support, and a device that does other things besides display ebooks, so my usual reader is a PDA. (It does video too, but I normally don't do so. Some things need the big screen on my desktop.)
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Dennis

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Aitch
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#5 Post by Aitch »

I still find it odd that we still try to get A4 pages viewable at all in handheld devices
My eyesight isn't good enough to read below 9 point...

Why don't we have text to serial line output or even to audio.....with an optional picture viewer kicking in as required?

After all we only read or hear one word at a time, don't we?.....even if we forward anticipate read the next

Low power seems pointless if it strains my brain to use it, IMO

The 7" DVD viewers are about as small as I find usable for useful computer use and use led backlighting for about 6/8watt drain

Dennis, have you tried Foxit reader for ebooks?

Aitch :)

DMcCunney
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Joined: Tue 03 Feb 2009, 00:45

#6 Post by DMcCunney »

Aitch wrote: Dennis, have you tried Foxit reader for ebooks?
No. I've no doubt it would work, but I get ebooks in PDF form only if there's no other option.

PDFs are problematic because most are created assuming fixed page size, and assume they will be printed out, or viewed on a large screen. They are not created with the tagging that will permit them to reflow to fit a different screen size. My main ebook reader is a PalmOS PDA with 320x480 screen. I can view PDFs on it, using PalmPDF, and open source product based on a port of the xpdf library, but they may require sideways scrolling to read, which is actively painful.

I want to download an ebook once and read it on what ever I happen to have. Where possible, I get HTML format, because I can red it in a browser on desktop, laptop, or notebook, and can convert it to a different format for other devices.

The bulk of my ebook library has been converted for Plucker, and open source HTML viewer for Palm OS. Plucker supports hyperlinks, color, text attributes, embedded images and (on OS 5) custom fonts. The Plucker converter is cross-platform, written in Python. Plucker documents can be created using gzip compatible compression, using a Palm port of zlib, for an average 70% reduction in size.

Under Puppy, I use FBReader, which can display Plucker documents, as well as ePub and Mobipocket files among other formats.

Some content really requires PDF, but those documents aren't things I'd try reading on a handheld in the first place.
______
Dennis

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