The Solar UMPC Blog

Mobile Solar Computing with the Viliv X70 UMPC

2009-06-16T04:36:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to give you solar computing fans a quick heads-up on a new solution that you should consider. The Viliv X70 EX.

I've been testing it for the last week and as a standalone UMPC its a really flexible solution. SSD and 3G options, high quality build and very long battery life. In tests, I've been getting 5-6hrs battery life and seeing great productivity levels using either the on-screen keyboard or a USB keyboard and mouse. The best thing is that the car-kit includes an adaptor plug for 12v => 9.5 but the input voltage can rise to 24v making it perfect for attaching direct to a 24w or even 12W solar panel. One issue however is the gloss finish on the screen. Viliv are producing a filter though so this should help a lot. I will get one and test it soon.

Initial plug-in test worked but I need to work-out the minimum sun power level needed and the full-sun charging time.

Stay tuned for more test results. In the meantime, check out my full review at UMPCPortal.

Sharp announces 0.8mm 300mw Solar Panel for cellphones.

2009-05-26T09:50:00.001-07:00

Producing a maximum 300mw in a 27cm square, 0.8mm thick, this lightweight panel just announced by Sharp looks interesting and gives an indication of where we are in small consumer-focused solar panels.

This newly developed solar module makes effective use of compact semiconductor packaging technology to achieve a thickness of just 0.8 mm, the thinnest level in the industry. The solar cells that make up the module are based on polycrystalline silicon and deliver a maximum power of 300 mW*¹ , and as an auxiliary power source for mobile devices, will contribute to saving energy. In addition, the electrode pattern on the cell surface can be formed to meet the requirements of device manufacturers, leading to increased design flexibility for mobile devices.

We're still at a very poor level of efficieny though. 11% efficiency by my reconing. It's no wonder they didn't put that statistic in the press release!

300mw is enough to keep a very basic mobile phone topped up while in standby.

Via

The Cheap, All-In-One Solar PC. iUnika Solar Announced.

2009-05-14T03:12:00.001-07:00

Does this mean goodbye to my solar panel, my 1KG lead-acid battery and the box full of cables I have? Does these mean that you won't have to spend over $1000 on a Solar UMPC kit now?

iUnika have announced a range of very low end, low-cost netbooks which include one with a solar-panel on the back. The price: $260.

700gm
8", 800x480
400Mhz MIPS CPU

It's eco friendly too "..the system body's is made from bioplastics and other biodegradable materials derived from starch and cellulose" [source]

Here's my take. Using a PC in the sun is hard work on the eyes and hard work on the battery as you need to pump up the backlight. The solar panel is also very small (I estimate 4W max output) so with a device that's likely to be in the 3-4W operating power range, it's at best, a trickle charger that can keep the device topped up when not in use. Putting panels on PC's does a nice job of cutting out the losses you get when charging external power banks but they need to be detachable to get the best use out of them.

Still, bravo to iUnika for doing this. There are definitely some customers that would benefit from this. Education in hot countries with poor infrastructure comes immediately to mind.

Source: Gearlog

Solar Charger from Aigo

2009-03-24T00:42:00.001-07:00

SolarCharger_1
Originally uploaded by Marcel Nuernberger

I checked this one out at CeBIT 2009 earlier this month and it looked very interesting. Tidy design too.

The problem is, as with many of these consumer devices, they dont even list the capacity of the cells which indicates that this one is more for the MP3 brigade rather than for UMPCs or MIDs. Shame.

Update: More pics including a shot of the specs, at Marcel Nuernberger's Flickr page.

Taking the iPhone off the power grid.

2008-12-12T14:56:00.001-08:00

Kevin Tofel, an eco-friendly blogger at the excellent mobile-focused website JKOnTheRun has bought himself a solar-powered battery-pack and plans to run his iPhone for as long as he can without connecting it to the mains power.

The charger is a Solio Classic with a 6wh capacity cell. The iPhone has a 5wh cell.

At first glance it seems like too much of a challenge. Looking at the solar cell area and comparing it to my own 25W panel which measures about 1m squared tells me that this device is going to have a tiny sun-capture capability. Looking at the FAQ on the device gives a few clues:

It takes 8-10 hours to fully charge a Solio from the sun. With peak charging times between 10am and 2pm, it takes a minimum of 2 days to fully charge a Solio.

8-10 hours for a 6Wh battery is under 1W of solar capture, under ideal conditions.

It's winter in Philadelphia right now so I guess we're looking at an average 60% sun-power through the peak hours which means it will take about 3 average days to charge the solar unit. Taking into account that about 20% power will be lost on cross-charging I'd estimate that Kevin is going to struggle to get a full charge every three days.

2.5G Smartphones like the first-gen iPhone that Kevin has, can easily take 2W of power when driven hard. So if Kevin isn't careful. he's going to be out of power in the first day but it looks like he's done his research and is well on top of the challenge...

The strategies...let me go two days without charging my iPhone however, and that gives me two days to capture sunlight with the Solio. I guess if we have a three-day rainstorm, I'm out of luck.

The interesting part of the experiment will be to see what type of usage Kevin gets out of the device. Will it be voice only? Will he be able to use regular email polling as he's planning. Will he use it as a mobile internet device or just as a voice phone?

It's clear that this isn't the best way to save energy given that the $75 Euro initial costs that could power an iPhone non-stop for about 40 years (*1) but these sort of experiments, this sort of publicity and the resulting discussion is exactly what's needed to stimulate development and improvement of consumer solar solutions.

I don't get many readers on this blog but from the responses I've had over the last year or so I know that many of the readers here will have already thought about this. Perhaps you've already done it? If so, what devices did you use and how did it / does it work out for you?

Track Kevin's progress at JKOnTheRun.

(*1) Assuming the iPone takes a (very high) average drain of 1W, $75 would buy something in the order of 500kwh of household power. With an AC adaptor efficiency of 80%, the $75 over 45 years of iPhone usage.

Emergency Computing for the Masses.

2008-10-26T04:37:00.001-07:00

When I did the Solar UMPC tour in 2007, it was an expensive job pulling together all the equipment. Foldable solar panels and ultra mobile computers were specialist items and difficult to find. The UMPC alone cost over 1100 Euro and had to be ordered through a specialist. Fortunately, Intel are starting to deliver on their promise of consumer-focused, highly efficient Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)and it's looking great for anyone wanting to power a real PC from the sun.

What was 1KG and cost 1110 Euro one year ago is now less than half the weight, takes half the power and cost a lot lot less. Within 12 months, the price will be down to 50% of what it was a year ago bringing mobile computing to the masses. Take the Aigo MID (see info below) It's a full Linux-based PC with keyboard and screen, storage, usb, a camera, wifi, bluetooth and will even be available soon with built-in 3G. Its just 350gm in weight and having looked in detail at test results and asked owners about the battery life, its clear that it's running in less than 4W of power meaning you can last twice as long on the same amount of stored power or reduce the size of the (expensive) solar panel and power storage. A huge step forward.

Survival with the Smallest and Most Efficient.

Recently, I have been thinking more about short-term emergency supplies. I usually keep a stock of foodstuffs and water in my cellar along with a radio, small gas stove and a radio but I really think a mobile computer should be part of my survival kit, even if it's just for day-to-day 'emergencies.' From being able to compute when your ISP has problems to being able to walk into the middle of a city without power or communications and instantly set up a WiFi hotsopt or Bluetooth hotspot with a simple, self-contained web-server offering emergency information. From being able to move away from an emergency area with your computer with scans of your important documents to being able to send an e-mail greeting to your mother when you forgot to send a card for her birthday (arguably one of the worst disaster scenarios possible!)

In times of disaster, you need to earn money too. As a pro-blogger (UMPCPortal) I would instantly lose 100% of my income if the Internet went down but by having an emergency Internet 'station' I'd have a lot of possibilities. Can you imagine how much bartering power you would have if your were one of the only people left in your area with a working PC and a 3G connection that could send and receive emergency SMS messages from the cellular radio system!

In times of comfort and stability it sounds almost extreme to be thinking about such scenarios but in the western world, we live in a just-in-time economy. Like the weather, everything could change in 48hrs. Considering your electronic storage, communications and computing as part of your survival kit is is something many people will be doing and having the lightest and most efficient kit is obviously the best way to go. Thank goodness for Mobile Internet Devices!

Solar UMPC Tip of the moment: (click on the links for information from the UMPCPortal database)

Aigo P8860 - One of the first consumer-focused Mobile Internet Devices based on Intel's Atom processor and Moblin, Linux-based operating system. Currently available by import. Average power drain (in-use) under 4W. 5V DC input. Micro-SD port. Wifi, Bluetooth and USB port about to take external peripherals. Also available in France as the Mi PC through the carrier SFR and expected to be launched under the Gigabyte brand soon as the M528.

Is anyone reading this considering a mobile PC as an essential item in their emergency kit? Is anyone even considering some form of fallback scenario?

Ah! The smell of burning electronics.

2008-07-31T10:13:00.001-07:00

It looks like this test is over now. The TabletKiosk MP3400 blew up on me.

This morning, everything was going well. The MP3400 was charging well from the Sunlinq...

...but later in the day, when I was charging the Q1 Ultra from the MP3400, it all went wrong. The MP3400 overheated in a big way...

I had left the Q1 Ultra connected to the MP3400 in the boot/trunk of the car while I went out to pick up some beer and when I came back the unit was incredibly hot. When I took it out of it's case, it was clear that it had overheated as the plastic on the inside of the case had melted onto the battery. Part of the grille had melted too.

I left it to cool for 20 minutes and it looked like it was working again but it didn't last long. Its completely dead now. No lights, nothing!

Lesson learned. Don't try and use the MP3400 in 32 degrees heat inside the protective case, inside the boot of a car.

Fortunately the Q1 Ultra is still working although i'm down to 60 minutes battery now. There's no way to charge it up until I get home on Saturday evening. Here ends another Solar-UMPC test. Now where's that beer I bought....

Spot the difference. (Technology moves on)

2008-07-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

One year ago (see this post for details of the 2007 Solar UMPC tour kit,) I was using the setup below for my mobile blogging and tracking.

This year, its a lot simpler. And a lot more powerful. Notice how the phone, GPS tracker and Camera have merged into one device. Yes, the N82 is a real boon. The N82 camera is not as good as the S2 (as expected) but the ability to auto-tag while tracking and then post the images directly to a server over the Internet is a massive advantage.

You'll also notice a change in UMPC. I'm now using the Samsung Q1 Ultra (with XP and HSDPA) which has an SD slot (negating the need for any cables for the camera) and a much brighter, higher resolution screen. I've also moved to SSD rather than the traditional, spinning hard drive. Its safer. The keyboard (A Samsung Q1 keyboard) remains the same as there's still nothing out there that can beat it. You'll also see the USB LED lamp. Still, a key part of the kit!

Now lets look at the solar setup. This is the setup I used a year ago.

And this is the setup i'm going to use over the next four days while I go work/camping.

[The Wife and Kid are off camping together and I was due to stay home and work but I've decided to come along and make a working holiday of it. Dads - this is the beauty of Ultra Mobile PC's!!!]

I've removed the lead acid battery from the kit and am now direct charging the Tablet Kiosk MP3400. It only charges during peak hours (one full charge per 100% sunny day here in mid-summer Germany) where the SLA battery charges during less sunny periods but the amount of energy you get in those few extra hours is minimal. I've chosen to drop the SLA battery and use the MP3400 direct on the Sunlinq 25W solar panel.

Here's a post with more detail about using the two together. And a how-to video.

I'll probably post a few solar computing thoughts while I'm away so stay tuned here for more. Weather is looking good!

Last year on the Solar UMPC tour.

Voltaic Generator Solar Bag. Enough power for a UMPC.

2008-06-23T06:38:00.001-07:00

SelectSolar in the UK have just emailed me to let me know that Voltaic have an improved Solar Bag solution. You might remember that I was considering a JuiceBag for the tour last year but in the end the idea was dropped because the wattage wasn't high enough. This solution from Voltaic bumps the wattage up to 17W by using a monocrystalline panel.

The Voltaic Generator is the first solar bag powerful enough to charge a laptop. It uses high efficiency solar cells to generate maximum power in the limited space available. It includes a battery pack custom designed to efficiently store and convert the electricity generated. It can also charge cell phones and most other hand held electronics.

At a recommended price of $599 you won't be buying one for the kids but for field-work this provides protection and charging in one neat solution.

SelectSolar will have these in stock soon.

Solar cells on Portable devices. Apple Patent.

2008-05-26T04:35:00.001-07:00

MacRumors have just reported on a patent filed by Apple that shows how they see a possibility to integrate solar cells into the display panel.

Solar panels will have to get much more efficient and power-drain reduced down to the sub 5W range before this technique has legs for any form of general computing device. Screens are never used in direct sunlight and I'm sure that the LCD layer will reduce efficiency by a huge amount but considering that its one of the largest available areas on any portable device, it makes sense to start thinking about it for the future.

Source:Macrumors. Via Engadget.

Solar-UMPC-powered web server testing.

2008-05-06T03:12:00.001-07:00

Yes, its that time of year again where we get the first encouraging days of sunshine in Europe so I've been into the cellar and dusted-off my Sunlinq 24W solar panel.

Sun strength for the last 2.5 days.

I'm not planning a solar-umpc tour this year but I am planning to get some use out of the panel. At the moment, the plan is to run a UMPC from the solar panel that could serve this blog. I doubt i'll be able to do it 24/7 for the whole of summer but I'm running some tests on the Raon Digital Everun S6S at the moment to see exactly how much I could get out of it with the 24W panel.

The Everun, when configured for 400Mhz with WIfi and screen off, will consume a tiny 4W at idle and about 6W at full power which is about as low as you can go with a PC without having to switch to an ARM architecture. I don't want to do that because the plan is just to install a basic Ubuntu image, fire up Apache and SSH and serve this blog as a set of static web pages. WIthout Mysql or PHP running it should keep the processor load down to a minimum although i'm not sure that Ubuntu will be able to switch the CPU into 400Mhz mode. It might have to stay locked at 600Mhz.

At 5W drain, the server would need 120Wh of energy to power it for a full day. With a 24Wh panel I'm only going to get about 80-100Wh per day on average (using the 4-hours sun/day rule that applies to this part of the world) so at some point, back-up power is going to be needed. The problem is, how can I switch-over to back-up power (or gracefuly switch over to another server.) Switching the servers is OK but getting the Everun to shutdown when it reaches 5% power is impossible under Linux right now.

The Alternative is to shut-down the server between 0300 and 0900 every day and to try and regulate it that way or just keep topping up the SLA battery from other sources when needed.

I'm going to need a couple of new items for this project though.

1) Power usage measurement tools. I want to feed the data back into the website. Power used, power given by panel, current battery level. Any tips there would be much appreciated. Should I buy a dedicated data logging system with software or are there simpler ways to do this.

2) An ethernet port. The Everun only has a WIfi connection and that would take too much power so I'm looking at a USB to Ethernet adaptor. This one from SMC takes about 150mw which will be fine.

3) Bigger SLA battery. Rather than using the 56whr battery that I have, I should get one that takes about 200wh so that if we have two or three good days of sunshine, I can store the engergy and use it on days where the sun is weaker.

Solar panel positioning is going to be a major problem at my house which is badly oriented for a solar panel. I'm also a bit worried about loss along the length of cable I will need in order to position the solar panel correctly.

Over the next few weeks I hope to at least have a partial solar-powered web server running but if this blog disappears, you'll know what's happened!

An improved geo-tagged image and live GPS tracking method

2008-02-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

You might remember that on the Solar Tour last year I used RoboGeo and a Garmin Etrex to enable an internet based track and tagged photo stream. The Etrex would do the tracking and every time I stopped I would download the track, to a UMPC, download the images I'd taken and run them through RoboGeo which would match the timestamps on the images to the position at that time according to the track. I would then export a kml file which would be uploaded to my website and automatically pulled into my Google Map. It was about the easiest way to do it then (see my day-plan for more info on it) but a lot has changed now!

Recently I bought a Nokia N82 smartphone which has built in GPS. Google Maps has been great fun to play with on a phone and even more fun was the beta release of Nokia Maps 2.0 which added satellite imagery, internet search, live traffic and a pedestrian mode. The other application I found was the Nokia Sports tracker. This phone-based applciation does the same job as my old Etrex in that it logs data and shows statistics pretty much as the Etrex did. The best part of it though is that you can authorise the software to send data to an online Sportstracker account, live! Users accessing the current activity on the website can then see your location in real time overlayed on a Google Map. Fantastic! Once you've finished your activity the program then goes through your photos looking at the timestamps and offers to upload them all with GeoTags to the same Sportstracker service. With a few simple steps, the track is automatically overlayed with image pointers. Groovy!

Here's a public 'track' I made on SportsTracker.
http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=74767

With one more step, you can export the KML file and import it into a Google MyMap thus breaking it out of the Nokia Sportstracker website and making it easier to share and add mroe info too. There's one more thing though. I didn't quite fancy my images being stored at the sportstracker website so I'm using Shozu to auto-tag and upload to Flickr. Using a great tip I picked up from TheNokiaBlog I found out how you can auto-link a geofeed from Flicker and have it show up live on a Google Map. The only thing missing is being able to auto-export the track in the same, live, way from Sportstracker online, or the Sportstracker app on the phone, to Google Maps. I'm sure that will come soon though as it seems like an obvious way to make live people-location mashups and create even more excitement over the location aware possibilities with Nokia phones.

Here's a map I prepared earlier!

View Larger Map

I'm sure that we'll see Nokia combining Maps2.0 and some form of live tracking soon. It would be so much fun to see where your friends are and what they're doing. Can you imagine that in a very short time we'll be able to link this into live personal video too for the ultimate GeoVideo experience!

One problem with all this is that it takes a lot of battery power from the phone. Where I was getting 20 hours from two AA batteries, the Nokia N82 will last for 3 hours if you set it up correctly using lower-power GSM-based data. If you use 3G data, your battery life will suffer even more and you'll see soemthing less than 1.5 hours. You might need to take a spare phone with you or turn off the live upload feature which will give you all-day tracking. Even if you upload every time you take a break, its a lot easier than using the manual process I was using before.

Goodbye Garmin Etrex! Goodbye Robo Geo!

14W Solar bag. Useful but expensive.

2008-01-08T10:44:00.001-08:00

It looks like Voltaic will be releasing a 14w solar panel bag, a huge step up from their, largely useless, at least for UMPCs, 4W bad. I hope its not a typo as the three-panel setup look exactly the same as before.

If it really is 14W then I'm interested. Well almost. The design is a little on the ugly side and the price of $559 means I could actually buy a stack of spare Li-ion batteries that, charged, would run a UMPC or one of the new Menlow-based MIDS showing up at CES for a few weeks or more!

This story is from CNet and the author mention in the article that they will be running a story about solar laptops soon. That should be interesting and one to look out for.

Thanks to Matt for the tip.

Solar powered 'desktop PC'

2007-12-05T14:29:00.001-08:00

This setup looks familiar!! Mini PC, Solar panel battery pack. The only difference here to my UMPC setup is that the CPU and screen are in separate units.

The Aleutia E1 is billed as the 'ultimate off-grid computer' by the London based company and they also offer the complete solution as an 'office in a box' package.

I have a few issues with the package though. First, the PC itself is running on a very low end 200Mhz, unspecified 'X86' processor. Secondly, the screen they're using can take up to 10W. With the PC taking up to 8W, the whole solution seems fairly heavyweight compared to a UMPC-based solution.

I've just been testing an HTC Shift which has the 7" 800x480 screen and can run Vista with Aero at an average 8.5w with the Wifi on! The AMD-based Kohjinsha SA1 averages even less and if you managed to get hold of an XO Laptop through he OLPC's G1G1 program, you'd be averaging something like 3W drain giving you 6-times the run-time of this solution - with twice the processor speed!

On the plus side though, the complete solar office solution comes in at under 500 pounds sterling. That's not bad at all.

Via LinuxScrew. Thanks Klaus.

Tags: solar, umpc, off-grid, mobile office

Solar UMPCs on the Appalachian trail.

2007-10-11T05:56:00.001-07:00

It's nice to see that someone else is as tech mad as me! Scott, currently residing in Cubicle 13, has decided to get out of the rat race for 18 months and he's taking a UMPC and Solar panel with him.

18 Months! 6 months of that will be on the Appalachian trail!

Scott is taking the ac-inverter route with his solar solution so it will be interesting to see how he gets on. He doesn't set off for another 78 days so there's time to get the kit in order!

His first tech task was to buy the Raon Digital Everun that he's planning to use and get it protected in some way. He's currently testing out a modified OtterBox.

I've promised to help out with the testing. I'm just about to go outside and plug my Raon Digital Everun directly into a solar panel as a test. Luckly I have a spare power board for it so if I get any of that magic smoke, I should still be OK!

Follow Scott's blog, Escape from Cubicle 13, here.

How to improve solar charging PC efficiency for consumer devices.

2007-09-07T02:53:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday I spent a lot of time analyzing exactly how efficient my charging solution was with a real-life test. What dropped out was a rather poor picture of how inefficient the whole solar charging setup was. From over 1.2KW hitting the area of my solar panel I managed to use about 19W. That's a 1.5% efficiency rate and its amazing that I was able to do anything with it!

Take a look at the diagram again below. it shows the loss-points along the route from the sun to the UMPC.

More efficient UMPCs?

Of course! Any improvement in efficiency here would help. Currently a good average is around 9W and if this could be reduced to 6W average, it would be a major improvement.

Bigger battery life?

No. For my tour, the battery life or battery capacity was really not an issue. 50W/hr per day total capacity (via two battery packs; one that can be used and one that can be charged, is ideal.)

Solar Panel improvements.

From 1.2KW that hit the panel, only 660W hits the solar cells and those cells are only around 8% efficient and this is the first place we can look for improvements.

Current top-end production solar panels are 22% efficient but these are hard panels. To get the equivalent of 25W power you would need a hard panel of about 35x35cm plus frame. Lets say 40cmx40cm in total area. By using a hard panel of this size I could have actually put one on the front and one on the back of the bike to achieve a much more powerful solution. Finding a 40x40cm high efficiency panel might have been difficult though and probably less rugged. There could be a weight consideration too. Given the space restrictions on a bike, I think that a hard panel solution might have been better. In the campsite it wouldn't have made much difference. The foldable panel was light and small and there should be no need for more than 25W of max power.

Battery tech and charging methods.

There's a lot that needs to be improved here and the improvements can be achieved through a combination of process and of technology. What follows are the most important issues.

Lead-acid out!

The lead-acid battery proved to be a hindrance more than a help. It was heavy. It had no charge level indication and at low charge levels it couldn't deliver enough current to drive my DC DC converter or even charge the AA batteries. In short, I didn't use it much at all and I would drop it from my kit list if I did it again.

Li-Ion problems.

I knew that charging a battery just to have it charge another battery would be inefficient but I didn't realize that it could be so bad. For example, the Li-Ion battery pack I have (Tekkeon/Tablet Kiosk MP3400) appears to lose about 25% energy through the input and Li-Ion charging stage. That is, you have to pump something like 20% more energy into it than it can store. But that's not the whole story. The voltage conversion process on the output stage kills another 20% of the energy! From input to output you're losing a shocking 40% or more energy!

But there's another problem too and i've mentioned it before. The charging of Li-Ion batteries occurs at a fixed rate which means however much energy you have available and however quickly you could feed it into a Li-Ion battery, it won't take it any quicker than its designed for. The MP3400 takes about 15W (about 0.8A at 19V) of energy to charge it and even if I attached a panel capable of delivering 50W, it would still only take 15W wasting a huge amount of available energy.

This last problem is the one that needs attention when designing a solar charging solution. I have detailed some possible solutions at the end of this article.

Direct charging UMPCs from solar.

One thing that I found annoying was that the only was I could charge my UMPC battery safely was to charge it from the Li-Ion battery. Obviously this is inefficient for the reasons mentioned above but why can't I charge the UMPC direct from the solar panel? The main problem is that the DC input circuitry on the UMPC is an unknown factor. There's no way to tell if there is over-voltage protection or whether it will charge a through varying input voltages and its just too much of a risk to try it out. When the DC input on the UMPC is broken, so is the UMPC! I also though about trying to charge the UMPC battery on its own but there's no standard in connectors or charging currents and voltages so unless you want to build your own charging circuit, this isn't possible (with the one exception of the OQO Model 02 that has an external battery charger.) I don't really see this changing much on UMPCs in the near future though. There's no real reason to increase the complexity of the DC circuit just because Chippy and a few others wish to use solar panels!!

How to improve the solar charging process today...

The Sunlinq 25w panel and Tekkeon MP2400 battery pack is an easy option, readily available and relatively cheap. It works, and if you use the tips above, it can be quite succesful but there are further improvements that could be made, especially if you have the time a flexibility to adjust your solution as you go. Lets assume the lead-acid battery option is too heavy and will not be used.

Ideally you will have the flexibility to add load and add solar capacity as conditions vary. This requires multiple smaller solar panels and multiple smaller Li-Ion batteries that can be set up in different situations. This is currently the only way to provide the most efficient charging solution. Buy multiple slow-charging (500mA for example) Li-Ion battery packs that can be stacked in parallel as energy availability increases. You will need a voltage regulator on the output of the solar panel and this will need to match the input voltage of your charging solution. Preferably 12V. Fit an ammeter and voltmeter to the output of the voltage regulator so that you can monitor load and voltage. This all takes a lot of time and effort though and for most people its not worth the trouble. Ideally you would have a smart charger that does the monitoring and switches in Li-Ion packs as current availability increases. I have not seen such a solution yet and this, along with some more advanced solutions is what I'd like to see in the near future.

...and in the future.

How about a Li-Ion battery pack that has three levels of charging speed. Low, Med and High. These can be manually adjusted to match the energy available. Ultimately you would have a Li-Ion battery pack that self adjusts to the input current available. I have seen a few advanced components that claim to be able to do this but have never seen a consumer product that is able to do it. If you can get vari-charging Li-Ion batteries then there is really no need for the heavy lead-acid battery at all.

Finally, I'd like to see more UMPCs that have an external battery charger with good, efficient circuitry, over voltage protection and a wide range DC input voltage. Currently there are very few options here.

I'll be watching this space carefully from now on and I hope that it won't be long before I can report about new solutions to the issues of solar power and battery charging.

Solar UMPC Tour photo set.

2007-09-05T01:44:00.001-07:00

The 102 (good) photos that I took on the Solar UMPC tour have now been posted in the UMPCPortal Gallery.

Is someone copying me?

2007-09-04T14:52:00.001-07:00

Found on Flickr.

...and there's my version.

Unpacking the gadget bag!

2007-09-03T14:32:00.001-07:00

We (that's me, VIA and a PR company) had tried to plan a crossing-the-line press meeting today but as it turns out, everyone is at IFA and no-one was available. It was a little disappointing but seeing as it was raining, I'm not bitter! I took the chance to jump on a train home and start the process of writing-up the project. The first think to do was unpack those smelly socks and make sure I had everything listed for anyone that might be interested in the future. The gadget bags were the most important bit unless you want to see a picture of my wash bag. No? Thought not.

It was a well-refined 10-day gadget bag I had with me on the Solar-UMPC tour so as I unpacked a few hours ago, I took the opportunity to update the pack list (Google spreadsheet available here.) and take photos of the solar setup and the computing setup I used when I was out.

First, here's the solar setup. Most of it is explained in previous posts (see this one and this how-to for example) but maybe this picture helps to simplify how I was using the devices.

The second picture shows the computing setup including the all-important gadget of the week, the USB LED lamp! The mobile phone and UMPC worked well together as a communication suite. The phone took primary role as email reader, music/radio and twitter interface with the UMPC performing the more creative roles with the map updates, blog entries, photo editing and geo-tagging.

The computing set-up was really good and apart from reducing cables and improving software, there isn't much i'd change in terms of components. The solar setup will defaintely need improving though and as I mentioned in this post about the inefficiencies, I have already made some notes about how I would improve it. I'll be going through my recommendations for the computing and solar setups in later posts.

Finish line: 80 min's of battery life!

2007-09-02T14:46:00.001-07:00

Wooooooohoooooooo! Total distance covered: 450km over 10 days. UMPC, Phone, Camera, GPS and Torch all topped up from Solar energy. I made it!

Distance since last post: 65km
Weather: Dark and cloudy.
Notes: Don't drink two beers at the finish line without having something to eat first!!!

Today at about 1700 (UTC+2) I crossed the unofficial finish line on the Solar UMPC tour. The official finish happens tomorrow with my sponsors, VIA, but that will be at the same place that I enjoyed the beer shown above. For me, the tour is complete and after I've posted this and used up the last hour of battery life on the Samsung Q1b, I'll be connecting back to the electricity grid to charge up my phone and umpc for the first time in 9 days ago.

Finish line!

It has been a fun and challenging time trying to balance a 450km cycle camping trip with work and a solar powered UMPC experiment but its been fully worth it. And that includes that last three days of full cloud cover and zero solar power possibilities. I've learned a lot about how solar energy works, how it can be applied to mobile computing and how different battery technology affects the results. But it hasn't just been about solar energy. Its mainly been about energy efficient mobile computing, mobile Internet connectivity and the balance of tasks between a mobile phone and a UMPC. Although I managed to perform a lot of tasks on my simple mobile phone, none of the mapping updates, images, GPS tracks and detailed postings would have been possible without a UMPC and the VIA-based Samsung Q1b has been a reliable and efficient partner all the way through. It hasn't missed a single heartbeat.

The last 65km leg up here to Duesseldorf was a fun trip. Two friends of mine, Steve Carr and Ian Emmett, came with me and we had a good fun ride. Bessy managed to clock 38.2km/h, Steve lost a mudguard and Ian managed to get a branch stuck in his (overly complex, if you ask me!) gears. Bessy has been an absolute star too and she'll be getting a good soft rub-down when she gets home. Thanks Bessy the Blue Bakers Bike.

As we rounded the last corner of the journey and saw the Vodafone Germany HQ and a long line of riverside bars I knew it had been worth it. I feel so happy that it would be impossible to describe it within the limits of my battery life here but its been a perfect week of work. I want to start planning the next project ASAP!

Goodnight Duesseldorf. see you tomorrow on the finish line again where I'll be showing off the Solar-UMPC kit to the journalists. I hope it doesn't rain!

When i'm fully charged up (personally) again in the next few days i'll be posting all the photos, an overview of the trip and a detailed report on how things can be improved. There's a lot to be learned from the Solar-UMPC tour.

Day 7 - Bonn to Koeln. Easy ride. No Sun

2007-09-01T09:41:00.001-07:00

Location: Koeln
Distance since last post: 15km
Weather: Brightening. Still 100% cloud

As I was leaving Bonn this morning I passed a trio of mountain bike riders. They where looking closely at one of the bikes and I heard them say 'I think the gear has broken.' My army-pattern bike might be heavy but its as solid as a rock!

Journey today was rather short and uneventful. There was little traffic on the paths apart from the occasional animal and a rather stupid (and probably deaf) old man that cut across me to turn into a side path. You do NOT want to be hit by my bike! Fortunately we passed each other safely and gave each other a friendly wave (sort of!)

I didn't get more than about 10 minutes computing power from the sun today. It was hopeless even stopping to try! Tomorrow is the last day for collecting solar energy and I am praying praying praying for just a few hours of sun to take me through to the finish line in Duesseldorf at midday on Monday.

I have updated the route map with a few more images. Hope you enjoy them.

Crossing the Rhein on a tiny Ferry (below)

We need more dylithium crystals captain.

2007-09-01T05:42:00.001-07:00

Location: Sürth
Distance since last post:15km
Weather: warm but cloudy and wet.
Notes: Always wear tight underwear when cycling!

A business issue this morning cost me 25% of my battery power and with the current weather situation, cloudy and wet, that could cost me dearly. There was a brief bright period at around noon where i slammed on the breaks and stopped to put out the panel but it was short, lived. The mobile phone needs a top-up and the GPS too. It's fair to say that this has not been the best week for solar energy but despite that, it's been possible to get a few hours of umpc work done every day. The bad weather has also made me think long and hard about how the process can be improved. I have some notes that i am going to try to type up tonight but that, of course, depends on my battery!

Day 6. No Sun. Lots of Biking.

2007-08-31T09:35:00.001-07:00

Distance since last post: 75km
Weather: Cloudy, rainy.
Forecast: Bad for the next 3-days. Looks like I'll have to be careful!
Notes: Crashed into a lamppost while I was trying to mount my bike. No damage. Phew!

View towards Remagen (two bridge towsers can be seen at base of hill) in terrible weather.

No sun, no energy although somehow I'm managing to squeeze enough out of the clouds to charge the phone which is pretty amazing. Luckily I have enough juice on the UMPC battery and the Li-Ion battery to give me about 4 hours of computing. If I spot any sun at all over the next 3 days I'll have to stop and sap up as much as I can. Its going to be very tight. Will I have enough left for the final report in Duesseldorf?

Right now I'm in Bonn and at home with my wife. I'm only using battery power and won't be charging anything so there's no change to the plan. Apart from a long bath and a good sleep tonight ready for the last two legs on Saturday and Sunday.

Mathematics, sunburn and how 1.2kw of energy gives you 2 hours of computing.

2007-08-30T12:25:00.001-07:00

When I did my first tests and calculations about the use of solar power to drive a PC I was quite amazed at the inefficiency of the process and today's 'laboratory conditions' test proves just how much room for improvement there is. It's thanks to devices like UMPCs that this is project is at all possible because I really doubt it would have worked with even a 'power saving' notebook PC.

Today I stayed at the campsite and put the Solar panel and Li-Ion battery through a 3 hours test. Its was a cloudless day with a very thin haze, 22 degrees centigrade and for reference I'm located at about 50 degrees north and 7 degrees east. The date is the 30th of August which is heading towards Autumn here in Germany. The test was done from 11:00 - 14:00 and I took the empty Li-Ion battery and charged it with the solar panel for 3 hours.

I estimate that about 1.2KW of energy hit my 7000 cm2 panel with about 660W falling on the Solar cells (3500 cm2). After conversion to electricity it created about 50w/hr of energy. Of that, about 40W was taken by the Li-Ion battery because it only uses a fixed current and voltage. It won't adapt to the power available. Due to input voltage conversions and charging losses, this left me with an estimated 30W of energy and after taking this through yet another set of voltage conversions and charging process, left me with a rather poor 18W of power. Of course this is enough for a few hours of work but isn't it incredible that so much power is wasted (or rather passed back as heat!)

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to work out how this process could be improved and I've come up with a list of ideas that could help. I'll talk though them in the next post but right now I need to put some more cream on the back of my legs because through all the concentration I forgot about the sun and I've burned the bit right behind the knee. That's going to be really enjoyable tomorrow when I make the 70km dash to Bonn.

Here's a diagram I created quickly on the Q1b. Hopefuly it makes things a bit clearer. How would you improve the architechture?

Goodnight from the campsite.

2007-08-29T13:04:00.001-07:00

A few photos from day 4

2007-08-29T09:54:00.001-07:00

This part of the Rhein, from Bingen, all the way up to Bonn, is really wonderful. And the campsites just keep getting better!

Grab those rays.

2007-08-29T09:45:00.001-07:00

I'm still not 100% sure how much energy I managed to capture today but it looks like around 30W which should give me enough time to post without too much worry.

I stopped at about 10:45 and set up my solar collection point, ate my breakfast and waited. And waited. And got a bit bored! I managed to hold out until 1400 and then went for it. Nearly all the way up to Koblenz. Total distance for the day was about 61km which is really good and way ahead of schedule. I can now plan a rest day. Or rather another solar collection day!

I'm going to finish this entry now and make sure its posted before the battery runs out although right now its looking good.

Berta the Blue Bakers Bike

2007-08-28T12:58:00.001-07:00

Distance since lost post: 15km
Weather: Clouds thinning
Notes: I don't have much faith in the lead-acid battery. The Li-Ion battery seems to be charging much more reliably.

Another day completed and I feel like I'm getting into a better rhythm. Checking emails and RSS on the mobile phone and creating rich journal updates with the Q1b. I only wish I had a mind recorder because I'm thinking of some great ideas while I cycle but forgetting them when I get to a point where I could write them down!

The bike, which I've decided to call Berta (the Blue Bakers Bike) is performing fantastically well. I was a bit worried about having no gears but the fixed gear ratio is perfect for around 22km/h which, with 65KG of pack on a 25KG bike is just perfect. The thick tyres help to soak up bumps and now that I've pumped up the pressure a bit more, seem to roll without too much resistance. I even clocked 34kn/h on a straight today . Wohoo! Berta is Berta

Tomorrow morning I will cross the Rhein on a ferry over to Bingen, a lovely town that I've visited before, and then continue up the left side of the Rhein. The hills meet the rive here and so there could be an issue with mid-afternoon sun dipping behind the hills. If that's a problem I'll switch sides again but I can see from my map that the route on the other side takes me up into the hills. Not good!

Time for some sleep now. I had yet another good meal and feel like I've capped a good day!

Winter is coming.

2007-08-28T07:55:00.001-07:00

Distance since last post: 40km
Weather: Mixed, cloudy. Hazy. Warm 20-22 degrees
Notes: Feeling really good. No aches. Pushing harder today. Cant stop eating sultanas! The hills on each side of the Rhein are getting bigger!

Winter is coming...If you take notice of the geese that is. I saw a flock flying south (following the River perhaps) this morning and wondered if they knew something that I didn't. Its was lovely and warm yesterday and its pretty much the same today. Is there some nasty weather around the corner or did they get an SMS from some Geese mates in Africa telling them to come early?

Although its been warm its been very cloudy today. Much cloudier than yesterday and yet I still managed to get some charge into the Li-Ion battery and (I think) something into the lead-acid battery. Despite that though I'm using my spare battery and thinking carefully how to use the UMPC more efficiently. Daytime use (like now!) is not the best as the backlight needs to be turned right up. That's draining an extra 2 watts compared to evening use when I can drop the backlight to minimum.

I felt very strong this morning and powered the 85KG bike/baggage combo through to Mainz in much less time than I had planned. It was really enjoyable. While the clouds where thick I kept on cycling and ended up in Eltville where the was a lovely Rhein terrace restaurant serving Spargel Suppe (Asparagus Soup.) I stayed for an hour while the solar panel and bike rested by a tree and then layed myself down on a bench for an after-lunch nap. After buying, writing and sending a few postcards I carried on the journey. The Rhein-side path was pretty bumpy and at every chance I tried to find another route but this was really the only sensible offering, the other being a trek up to the hills! Then, after about ten minutes I heard a crash behind me and stopped as quickly as I could. I looked back to see the battery packs and cables strewn across the path along with the shattered container. Shit! I gathered it all together, repacked it and then checked everything out.I think I've been lucky. Everything seems to be working still so I think it was just a warning from above to tell me not to take afternoon naps!

Only about 20km to go until the campsite and having looked closely at my plan, it appears that I'm ahead in terms of distance but behind in terms of energy capture. I need to take longer breaks. But no afternoon naps!!

A grape day

2007-08-27T12:20:00.001-07:00

Location: Oppenheim
Distance since last post: 68Km
Weather: Hot with 50% cloud cover
Forecast: Heavier cloud tomorrow. Clearing toward Thursday.
Notes: Problem with the Lead-acid battery today. It didn't seem to charge. Will concentrate on loading the Li-Ion battery tomorrow.

Due to the cloudy weather I decided to cycle all the way through to the campsite in one stage today. I chose a route slightly away from the Rhein which had the advantage of being more direct but the disadvantage of being inland and therefore higher. Hills are not something I enjoy on the 25KG Kronan bike! The route was nice though and it took me through endless lines of grape vines (and loud, gun-like bird scarers going off every ten seconds all over the valley) that are almost ready for harvesting for wine. Every town and village seems to be advertising their Winzer (Wine) Fest!

The mobile phone I have is doing very well as my email notifier and as (filtered) emails come in I get a little beep telling me to stop and take a look. Its nice to be able to say I'm in the middle of a Vineyard' at the end of each reply! But that's about it for the mobile phone. Trying to do anything Web-like is slow and terribly inefficient. Firing up the Q1b UMPC every now and then keeps proving how perfect they are for Internet activities. There's no way I would be able to write so quickly, create the maps, review and edit the images and communicate via IM through all the protocols possible without it.

I'm camped right next to a beach on the Rhein (that's the Rhein behind me there!) and can hear the waves lapping against the shore. Every 10 or 15 minutes a huge river boat can be heard either coming down from Rotterdam or heading up from the south somewhere. Fuel, sand, containers and even the occasional passenger boat. The Rhein is a business river. I wonder how long it remains efficient compared to trains, trucks and air transport.

I haven't planned tomorrow in detail but it won't be as long a journey as today. The Lead-Acid battery I have (2.2KG worth of old technology) didn't charge well and so I'll concentrate on loading-up the Li-Ion battery. One bit of good news though is that the mobile phone charges from the solar panel even in bright daylight. If all else fails I'll have to email the blogs via T9 but I hope that doesn't happen. I still have a fully charged spare battery for the Q1b so I'm not in trouble yet!

68k with 68kg

2007-08-27T11:18:00.001-07:00

Or thereabouts. It was a long hard day and ill write a bit more about it later. I've updated the map and am just off to have some food.

Pleasant evening talking UMPCs

2007-08-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

Location: Here (just south of Ludwigshaven)
Distance since last post: 27.1km
Weather: Warm 25 degrees C. Some cloud cover.
Notes: Counted 33 mosquito bites from last night. My back got eaten. There must have been one in the tent. He's full up now!

When I arrived at the campsite this evening, the tent area was empty. About 30 minutes later someone turned up on a recumbent and, as you do, we started chatting. My 25KG bike is usually a good conversation starter!

Manfred is 63 and from Constance, where the Rhein river starts. He had just finished a 120km run and was on that last leg of a tour he started at the beginning of August. He had already been down the Rhein to Holland and was on his way back! We went for some food together and he was telling me about his career in computing and I tried to explain a little about what I was doing. Of course we had lots to talk about but I held back on saying too much about UMPCs. On the way back he was telling me how pocket PCs don't have the right OS, how the communicator has the same problem and how he wanted a small windows XP (not Vista - he still has some DOS programs that need to run) machine. When I showed him the Q1b back at the tent he was amazed and when I connected to the Internet on the spot he couldn't believe it. I passed my card over and smiled saying that I hadn't expected to be promoting UMPCs face-to-face on this tour!

I'm settled in the tent now and I can hear Manfred snoring (yes Manfred, if you read this, let me tell you that you snore!) The Q1b has about 20 min's of battery left and I'm going to switch to the external one soon.

Tomorrow I will have to see how the weather goes. If its as good as today I'll take a nice long lunch break and load up as much as I can because the forecast for Tuesday isn't as good.

Day 1 starts well

2007-08-26T03:40:00.001-07:00

Location: Speyer.
Distance since last post. Approx 30km
Temp. 25 C
Weather. Blue skies!

Awake at 0730 after a really good sleep and a horrible dream that when I got out of my tent I was in an empty campsite...with no bike. Packing up camp took a bit longer then expected mainly due to the dampness of everything and the fact that I usually get up at 0900 and not 0730. I also had to deal with about 10 mosquito bites. Damn they are annoying. On the road at about 0915.

At 10:45 this morning I pulled off the path and set up the solar panel for the first time. I haven't actually tested it with the frame yet because I only finished building the frame a day before the tour but with a few strips of velcro it folds back on itself nicely and stays well in place. Its a pain to be getting things out of the panniers all the time though.

There are literally hundreds of bikes out today. The route is well ridden and of course, its Sunday. Everyone seems happy and friendly. I chatted to a couple of bikers at a train crossing and then, 30 minutes later they passed me in the opposite direction waving and wishing me a happy journey. That really helps make it more enjoyable.

I'm riding at about 20km/h on the bike which is a steady, but certainly not fast pace. Taking into account stops I think I must average about 15km/h while riding which means 3-3.5hours riding per day. I think that will fit nicely into the plan of a morning and late afternoon ride.

The Q1b is working well here on a table in a biergarten. I was worried about the screen not being bright enough but in there shade there's no problem.

Now its time to catch up on emails, RSS feeds. See you at the next campsite.

First UMPC camp. Day 0.

2007-08-25T13:27:00.001-07:00

I made it down to Karlsruhe in Germany after a quite stressful train journey with the bike and all the kit and after a short journey that turned out to be a 2.5hours trek to the campsite. I just managed to get the tent up before it got dark and I had to dive straight into the tent though because there are thousands of hungry mosquitos here.

After spending an hour trying to organise my kit inside my one-man tent (I gave up) I finally settled down with the local radio playing on the mobile phone and the Q1b lit by my USB led lamp. How nice!

The campsite here is terrible. It's right next to a factory and full of drunk people. In front of me is someone trying to play the bongos and to the right of me is a family having an argument. Mmmm. I hope it gets better than this!

Tomorrow will be the first test of the Solar kit. Will it work? Will I be sitting in my tent tomorrow evening surfing the net and writing journal entries or will I be playing cards?

Tour day-plan.

2007-08-23T10:52:00.001-07:00

Planning a busman's holiday around the weather isn't that easy. Camp set-up and break down, cycling between locations, working, keeping an eye on the weather, finding suitable places to work and charging power sources all need to be thought about. The key to success here (in our wonderfully changeable weather system) is to be flexible between 10:00 and 16:00 when there's a possibility to get something out of the sun. Outside these hours there isn't enough power in the sunlight to make it worth any effort or planning.

The original plan was to cycle during the day with the solar panel across the back of the bike however, a 25W panel is too big to lay in a useful, efficient position across the back of the bike so either I suffer with 50% energy loss or I stop when the sun shines. Having thought about it for about 2 seconds I think the latter idea is rather good and in fact, the objective of the tour is not to cycle as far as possible, its to test and learn about how UMPCs can be used and powered in mobile situations.

A rough dry-day plan could go like this.

0730-0830 wake up. Check email/RSS, Cuppa, Breakfast and pack up.
0845-1100 on the road for a concentrated 40km ride. Panel 50% deployed on bike but not expecting any usable power at this time of day.
1100-1600 Weather watch! If its sunny then stop and charge! Work, play, read, eat during this time. If not sunny try to get to campsite before midday in order to deploy trickle charge solution. Best charging period is 1200-1400 here.
1700-1900 If not already at campsite, set up tent. Find food. Shower. Food. Relax. Connect mobile phone and AA batteries for top-up from lead-acid battery.
1900-2100 Work (max 1.5 hours)
2100-2130 Prep for morning.
2200-2300 To bed with RSS, emails or book. Pray for sun! Earplugs in (camping by the Rhein is always noisy) and sleep...

Next job is to get the Google map started. I'm using RoboGeo to generate a live route map (here's one I prepared earlier!) with images but I'd like to merge Google 'My Map' KML data with it so that I can build more than just a track map. If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know.

Update: I worked it out. You can create the My Map in Google Maps by doing the usual drag a nd drop, draw etc etc. Then export the KML. Uload the KML to your web server and add the following two red lines into your RoboGeo 'map.htm' file after the 'var map' line. Obviously you need to adjust the URL to point to the KML file you uploaded.

var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map"));
var geoXml = new GGeoXml("http://www.solar-
umpc.com/images/moblog-30-4-07/SolarUMPCTour.kml");
map.addOverlay(geoXml);

Once you've done that, upload the RoboGeo dir to your server and link to the map.htm file.

Here's one I've just made with a previous RoboGeo route and photos and if you zoom out you'll see the start and endpoint for the tour and the current location of my bike. The great thing about it is that as you update your 'My Map' the created map changes too as it pulls in all the data from the Google servers. Wonderful!

I'm now off to ~~do a bit of shopping. Packet soup, sultanas and muesli bars. Yum yum!~~ create some maps!

Chocks away for the Solar UMPC Tour!

2007-08-22T12:20:00.001-07:00

And that is about as good as its going to get I think. Time is running out fast and a good weather window is approaching. 'Only' 20-30% chance of rain. 6 hours of sun per day. 28th, 29th and 30th don't look too fantastic but I'm afraid I'm going to have to take the risk. The Solar UMPC Tour is under starters orders!

After this blog post I will be emailing my PR contact at VIA Technologies and awaiting confirmation. I want to start on Sunday 26th of August and go through to 3rd Sept where I will finish on the Rheinufer (Rhein River promenade) in Duesseldorf and drink a huge Krystalweizen beer!

My decision was made only hours ago and I've just realised there's a lot to do in 3 days. Posting frequency will be picking up here now so stay tuned!

Alternative energy for the tour.

2007-08-18T12:28:00.001-07:00

Frank, another UMPC blogger found this...

He blogged about it here and called it a 'European solution.' He might be right because this year has been a terrible summer. My BBQ rate is down to once a week when it should be at least three times per week! A wind solution would need to be a lot bigger than this one though. According to the designers web page it takes 12 hours of wind to store enough power to charge a mobile phone. Mobile phones run on batteries of about 3 watt/hour. I'd get about 20 minutes of UMPC time per day with this version.

Frank. It might be easier for me to Fly over to Florida. You provide the tour Oranges OK?

9 days rain ahead.

2007-08-09T02:16:00.001-07:00

I know that weather is supposed to be chaos but this is just silly. The most settled weather we've had this year was back in April and since then its been a real mess. It doesn't look like it wants to change much either. The whole of central Europe is stuck in a mess of clouds that does not want to move and bizarrely, Helsinki, the place I've just come back from in northern (and generally colder) Europe is expecting a ton of sun!

Getting everything re-organised in another country is not something I really want to do to be honest. There's a lot of cost and time issues that would make the project too much trouble for me and my sponsor, VIA Technologies so once again, I'm going to wait. The 9-day forecast takes me up to 18th August. After that point I have about 5 more weeks left in the summer before the sun gets too weak.

Solar UMPC Picnic

2007-08-01T07:55:00.001-07:00

I took a long lunch break today for a solar UMPC picnic!

The Q1b was really difficult to see in the sunlight (as are all UMPCs) there but after a while, my eyes actually adjusted a bit and it was useable. The only problem is that you have to wind up the backlight which kills the battery life. I will have to be working in the shade on the tour.

Speaking of which, I'm still planning it. I mentioned before that the weather has been bad but its starting to look better now. I have to wait for my daughters 1st day of school on the 7th August and then I'm free to choose when to go.

One other thng to mention...A cool Solar Lamp that Kornel, one of the UMPCPortal team, sent me from his holiday. It works! Thanks Kornel. I'll be taking it with me.

Technorati tags: umpc, solar energy, solar

Solar GPS trip recorder.

2007-07-30T10:17:00.001-07:00

This is a solar-powered GPS and track logger. It does the things that I'll be using my Garmin Etrex for on the tour (still delayed due to the worst summer I can remember for many years!) but in a much tidier way. Transystem Inc, the manufacturer of this product already have a solar powered GPS unit called the I-Blue-757 which appears, in specifications, to be similar to this one so I'm not sure exactly what the difference is. Here's a picture of the I-Blue-757

If I can find a local supplier for one of these, I might get one to test out although The Etrex is hardly taking a huge amount of power and is proving to be reliable and rugged. I'll give it some more thought I think!

Via Navigadget.

Xantrec 300 / Sunlinq portable solar solution

2007-07-11T10:30:00.001-07:00

Here's a solution based on the Sunlinq 25w panel and a Xantrec 300 Plus combo lead-acid battery/inverter. Its very similar to my own solution apart from the fact that this one weighs nearly 10KG!!!

A number of blogs seemed to have picked up on this solution today and are quoting 11-12 hours charging time. This figure is a little misleading. The battery capacity is about 240w/hr and based on a reasonable 5-hour per day full-sun rate its going to take 10 hours. That's a minimum of 36 hours duration! In middle-Europe, you'll be waiting for 3 full days of sun!

The other point to consider is that you need to take all your AC converters with you (weight problem) and should recon on 20% energy loss by converting from 12v -> 110V and down to 12, 16, 19 or whatever voltage your device takes. Hardly efficient. Alternatively you can buy 12v car adaptors for all your equipment (can get expensive.)

My recommendation is to use a combination of a Li-ion battery with variable DC output (I'm using the TabletKiosk/Tekkeon MP3400) and a lead-acid battery (I'm using a 2.5kg 6Ah part) This gives you the best of both worlds (lead-acid flexibility and Li-Ion light weight) and cuts the total weight right down to under 4KG. At also avoids having to operate a dangerous 110v. Capacity with my solution is around 130W/hr but here's the key. Don't use a notebook PC, use a UMPC. They are far more efficient. With a normal UMPC you're good for 10 hours of computing on a fully charged system (around 7 hours full-sun charge time.)

News Via GottaBeMobile.

Sunlinq 25W and Tekkeon Power bank work well together.

2007-06-27T04:50:00.001-07:00

I don't really understand why I didn't try this before. Its simple. its recommended and it works. Have I been too focused on flexibility why simplicity could be the answer?

I was speaking to Chris from Euro-Line, an importer of consumer solar products and he highlighted a document that I'd already seen. I took another look and staring me in the face was a recommended and tested solution using equipment that I already have. Its the same setup that I tested with the P3 panel. Just plug the panel into the Tekkeon MP3400 and wait for enough sun. You might remember back in the early posts that this is how I found out that Li-Ion charging solutions where not so efficient and how it set me on the path to research a more flexible solution.

With the '12v' 25w Sunlinq panel I have I assumed that a 12V output wouldn't drive a 19v input and after looking at the diagram again I though 'why are they recommending this solution? It shouldn't work.'

Image taken from GlobalSolar.com PDF here.

Looking more closely at the specs of the panel, its clear now why it works. The 12 panel isn't strictly 12V. The voltage varies according to the load and in fact with an open circuit the voltage is way up over 20 volts. However, with a load of around 800mA, the charging current for the power bank, the voltage sits nicely at around 20V. Tada!

With a 25W panel, 800ma at 19V is reached at around 60% sun power. On a clear summer day here, the sun is over 60% power for around 5 hours between 11 and 4pm. The charger needs 4 hours to load up 56W of energy.

Now here's an idea. Between 12 and 2, the panel is producing 40% more energy than the Li-Ion battery is taking. Can I mop that up with a lead-acid battery?

Testing continues...

Solar charging. Lead Acid vs Li-Ion

2007-06-27T04:08:00.001-07:00

In a recent comment here, someone asked why the Lead-Acid battery was needed. Its probably not too clear in the video why I use it so I reproduce my answer (which comes from the best of my knowledge!) here.

There are two main problems with charging Li-Ion batteries from Solar panels.

Firstly, Li-Ion batteries (in notebooks and battery bank) charge using a constant current (stream) of power. For common notebook batteries and battery banks such as the Tekkeon MP3400, this is around 1A. A lot of the 12V portable solar panels only reach this power at high sun levels meaning you can only use them for a few hours mid-day. In fact a 12W panel might not be enough to even start the charging process. Secondly, if you have a huge panel that could deliver, say, twice as much power as needed, its not used. Only the power needed is taken. The rest is wasted.

These two problems can be overcome at the expense of weight with a lead-acid battery.
L-A batteries are more flexible. You can charge them with a trickle and also with a higher charge rate. They are much more suited to pairing with a solar panel. The problem with this solution is weight. Small 12v L-A batteries are over 2KG in weight!

What's needed is a flexible Li-Ion battery charging solution. Currently there are no products on the market that can archive this but I'm searching hard!

In summary there are 2 solutions.
1 - Get a panel powerful enough to charge a Li-ion battery at 70% of its rated output. For example, a 25W panel and the Tekkeon MP3400 Li-ion battery. This will give you about 4 hours of charge time on a sunny summer day. (Mid-Europe) This should be enough to completely fill up the Li-ion battery.
2 - Go for a heavier solution with a L-A battery and give yourself more charging flexibility.

Technorati tags: solar, charging, computer, laptop, energy, battery, Li-Ion

Solar UMPC Tour weather update.

2007-06-24T14:49:00.001-07:00

The latest weather report is still bad. No chance of leaving in the next 10 days unless the weather report is wildly wrong.

Its unbelievable! We had the hottest, driest April ever and since then the clouds and rain just won't go away and summer storms are threatening almost every day. Looking at the sun graph for the last three days I doubt I could have got get even a few hours of computing time out of it.

It gives me more time to set up more tests and products of course, but I'm really keen to get going ASAP, especially as I have a holiday booked with my wife on the 19th July. The last possible leaving date for the tour would be 8th July. After that point I won't be able to fit it in and will have to wait until 28th July. This is really frustrating. I've been planning this since late 2006.

On the upside, I tested out the bike with full baggage tonight. It was just a 10km round-tour in Bonn but it was a good test. I'm hoping to squeeze in one nights camping this week so that I can test all the equipment out together.

I've also heard that there's a possibility to get a Reware Juice Bag. That makes me happy!

Expedition teams. What's your solar PC solution?

2007-06-24T14:16:00.001-07:00

Tonight I'm doing what I've been doing most night for the last few months - researching solar power and solar notebook/laptop solutions. Tonight the Google search subject is expeditions. I figured that these guys must have solar computing pretty much sussed by now but I'm struggling to find a solution that can improve on my, 'draft', solution.

For a start, many of them are using lead-acid batteries, the most dense battery solution around. Is it because they are cheap , rugged and flexible I wonder? Why aren't they looking at lighter Li-Ion solutions? And then there's the panels. All the expedition panels I've seen have been non-flexible solutions. Is this because the efficiency is better than the flexible (CIGS) solar solutions? That's actually quite likely and I'm wondering if I would have been better off with a solid panel solution, especially after I just spend two hours making a frame for my flexible solution!

The biggest shock came when I looked at the PC solutions though. None of the websites I've looked at attempt to advise on the most efficient laptop solution. Those that do seem to be incredibly out of date. "Laptop computers consume between 15 and 30 watts of power (some as much as 60 watts)" said one.

It makes me wonder weather I could actually help some of these expeditions. I wonder what they are using the notebooks for? Is it just emails, logging, weather, mapping solutions, inventory management? If so then I think a UMPC could really help. Not only are they much lighter and smaller than your average notebook (1/3rd the weight which could save 3-4KG for an expedition that is taking two notebooks.) but the excellent power efficiency would mean knock-on savings with battery weight and solar panel size.

If you're responsible for the PC solution on your expedition, please let me know what your set-up is and what you're planning to use it for. I think I might be able to help you cut your weight or increase your computing time. For example, the very efficient VIA C7-based Samsung Q1b, retro-fitted with a solid state disk drive could average less than 9Watts of power and give expedition team members enough time for a lot of extra emails home!

After I've finished the solar-umpc tour I'm planning to take the knowledge gained, continue to add to it and then try and design an ultra-efficient solar-computing solution. Well at least I'll try! I have been speaking to Select-Solar about this and they're also keen to find out more. Maybe together we can take solar computing to the next level and make it available in a cheaper, lighter and more efficient package. I think that Ultra Mobile PC's are going to be an important part of it because battery and solar technology seems to be advancing very slowly compared to the efficiencies of Ultra Mobile PC's

Digital Donkey image courtesy of Alex Papadimoulis.

Technorati Tags: expedition, solar, notebook, pc, adventure, umpc, camping, backpacking, outdoors

InterSolar 2007. Nothing for Solar-UMPC fans.

2007-06-22T09:56:00.001-07:00

It was an early start yesterday. 0445 rise and bus at 0530. 5 hours later after three trains and another bus I arrived at InterSolar 2007 in Freiburg, Germany hoping to find out how I could improve the UMPC Solar kit at Europe's biggest solar expo. Unfortunately, there wasn't much there for consumers at all. It was all 200w, $1000 panels and huge thermal heating set-ups. I saw one company that was selling the Voltaic Solar Backpack but I've already assessed this product and at 4W max output, its not powerful enough. I was rather hoping to see someone with the Reware Juicebag which, at 6.3W is much more useful.

Actually the most interesting thing that happened yesterday, apart from some awesomely stormy weather, was that the train journey took me on the Rhein route south to where I will start the Solar UMPC tour. Its a gorgeous route. Lovely scenery and I saw loads and loads of great Rhein-side restaurants and camping sites. I'm looking forward to the tour more than ever!

One bit of relevant news from yesterday which came through RSS and has spawned another bit of research was that Sanyo have broken the record for a production solar cell. We're up to 22% now. In theory, the cell on the left here, a 10x10cm device, should be able to generate over 2W. 100cm2 is about the same area as the face of a UMPC. 4W is the target average power consumption that Intel have set for devices based on Menlow, their UMPC platform for 2008. The interesting thing that I've found out is that this cell (or at least the previous version of it) appears in the Sanyo Eneloop solar charger. The charger houses a Li-Ion battery which can store enough energy to charge 4x2000mah batteries. That's about 10W if my maths is correct. The only problem is the quoted 6 DAYS charging time for the internal Li-Ion battery. I suspect that the cell isn't exactly being used that efficiently because as I said before, that 10x10 cell should be able to kick out 2W, enough to charge the batteries in a few full days of sun. This little bit of tech will set you back over $150. Eek!

HiTechWealth Solar Mobile phone is encouraging.

2007-06-20T06:44:00.001-07:00

To know that there's a commercially available solar-powered mobile phone gives me a lot of inspiration and encouragement that one day in the near future we'll be able to design UMPCs with infinite standby capability. You could have a panel and electronics that senses light levels and keeps the device in standby (or even turned on) when there's enough ambient light. When the light levels drop below a threshold for a certain amount of time (based on remaining battery life perhaps), the device would drop into hibernation.

The mobile phone shown here is produced by HiTech Wealth and is available in China for $510. Full news story at SolSie.

Unlucky weather.

2007-06-20T04:45:00.001-07:00

Could the weather forecast be any worse? Not only will I get wet and be unable to test the solar kit fully but with an overnight low of 11 degrees, camping wouldn't be much fun.

Mobile Internet Connectivity solutions.

2007-06-14T03:54:00.001-07:00

I learned a long time ago that WiFi Internet access is not a truly mobile Internet access solution. Its a solution for multi-location access but not a full mobile solution. Fortunately the mobile telephone carriers offer Internet access too and it 'aint bad!Its going to be the perfect solution for the Solar-UMPC tour.

In Europe, we use the GSM and UMTS (3G) methods of mobile phone communications and they are well advanced. 1.8Mbps is common in and around most cities and towns with 3.6Mbps being available in the most populated places. Even out on the fringes, a 384kbps connection is possible so in terms of availability, there are very few issues.

Issues arise, however, when you start looking at equipment and cost. In order to use a 3G data connection, you need to have a 3G data modem. There are three options. Either you buy a dedicated 3G modem that you can connect to your PC, you buy a PC or notebook or UMPC with a 3G modem integrated or, if your contract allows it, you use the modem that's part of all 3G mobile phones. In this case you simply connect the phone via USB or Bluetooth and in general, its an easy few steps to get connected. It really solves the costs of hardware because in 2007 we've seen a number of high speed 3G-capable mobile phones hitting the market and with the normal contractual discounts, the costs is minimal.

It doesn't solve the other cost though. The cost of the data. This has been a real issue for early adopters of this connectivity method. Costs of data can be shockingly high and for the average user its just wasn't worth it. Until, that is, the advent of the data-focused contract. Nearly all the major cellphone carriers in Europe are offering data-oriented connectivity and costs are coming down extremely quickly. In the UK and Finland, 10-15 Euros per month is all it costs to get hundreds of megabytes, sometimes even up to 6GB) of data per month. For the average user that's is using just a few hundred megabytes a month on their normal broadband connection, this is more than enough. In Germany, I have chosen the Vodafone Data Tariff. Vodafone, along with T-Mobile have the widest coverage of high-speed enabled cellular towers and a good selection of data tariffs. You can start with 30MB per month for 10 Euros and go as high as 50 Euro per month for 5GB of data. In the middle are a couple of attractive 200 and 400MB tariffs and the 200MB tariff is the one I've gone for the WebConnect L at 20 Euros per month. I could have got a cheaper tariff but if mobility is an important factor, cellular coverage has to be high on the list of requirements.

Insert SIM card for instant connectivity! Samsung Q1b HSDPA

Combined with the Samsung Q1b HSDPA I've got a 'real' ultra mobile solution in my hands. Vodafone have given me a second SIM card for the UMPC and with the built in HSDPA modem I'm online with broadband speeds within seconds of turning the UMPC on. This is how it should be!

Could Solar Energy solve the UMPC Battery Life Problem?

2007-06-14T01:48:00.001-07:00

They are expensive and inefficient. Solar panels need to develop a lot before they can provide the average man on the street with enough energy to supplement a worthwhile portion of his energy intake. Mind you, the average man is pretty inefficient. Cars, lighting, heating, cooling. We sap up energy like there's no need to think about tomorrow. I'm sure the average person could cut their energy usage by 90% if they had the skills, time, money and resources to do it. At that point, solar power might be a more interesting proposition.

Mobile computing is one of the areas that is already cutting its energy requirements buy huge amounts. Where notebook PCs can take 20-30W, ultra mobile PCs are taking 10W and in 2008 when we start to see dedicated ultra low power, ultra mobile computing devices, that power requirement is going to get slashed down to the sub 5W level. Intel is talking about sub 4W and VIA have just launched the 3.5W Mobile-ITX board. Of course, the reason for this is not because of energy conservation, its because of heat, size and weight. Mobile devices need to be small and light. Small devices can only dissipate a certain amount of heat and light devices can only contain a certain amount of battery. The last thing we want is a UMPC melting through the bottom of our bag!

One nice side-effect of all this drive for tiny, light devices is that solar energy starts to cash-in. Smaller energy requirements means smaller solar panels which means lower costs and higher mobility. Right now, today, if you took the best solar technology and made a fold-out sun-shade for a UMPC of about 20x20cm, you would be able to power the UMPC non-stop during sunshine. Its true. The best solar tech is reaching 40% efficiency in the lab and at that rate a 20x20cm panel would provide up to 40W of power. Unfortunately, this is lab-tech at the moment and good quality, mass produced solar panels are down at the 15% efficiency level. Also add in the fact that many places don't get much sun and you can see why its not really possible today.

But lets take the Reware Juice Bag as a good example of a useable bit of solar tech. It can provide up to 7W of power from a 20x30cm panel stitched into the backpack. That's about 25W of stored energy per sunny day if you take into account losses on storage. Today, that would give you about 2-3 hours UMPC usage but with a 5W UMPC, you're looking at 5 hours usage. Drop down to 3W (2010 perhaps) and 8 hours of battery life starts to get really useful. Lets assume that by 2010 the efficiency of Solar panels in increased by 50% and you've got full-day power from a panel that's the size of a UMPC.

OK, its not 100% practical for everyone to be sitting outside looking for sun but it would work for a lot of people. And its just one example. How about taking the same calculation and scaling it up to a classroom full of UMPCs. You could power a full class of 30 with a few square meters of solar panel. Costs would be sub $1000 and if you compare it to 30 normal PC's taking 150W per hour for 4 hours per day. (30 x 150 x 5 = 1.8KW) you are not only helping the environment but you're reducing your air-con costs, noise and starting to get to the point where you save significant amounts of money. For a university that has 2000 PC's deployed, well I don't need to show the calculation do I.

After the solar-ump tour is finished I'm going to be following solar tech very closely on this blog and will continue to promote the marriage of ultra mobile PCs and solar tech. I don't see the battery companies shifting towards more efficient battery technology so as solar energy starts to become a really interesting business opportunity we might start to see solar being integrated into specialist UMPCs for long-term outdoor usage. At some point in the future, when the calculations look attractive to the bean counters of this world, investment money will come pouring in to the mass market and the whole thing could take off in a very short time span. I predict, with excitement, that within 2 years we're going to see solar accessories for UMPCs. Within 3 years we'll see specialist UMPCs with integrated solar panels. I'm hoping that in ten years time, the extended battery will be a thing of the past.

Mobile Office UMPC Table

2007-06-13T13:45:00.001-07:00

I have been looking all over for a lightweight table that I can use on the Solar UMPC tour (which is at risk of being pushed back by another week due to weather and PR organizational activities unfortunately) but I realised at the weekend that I already have a table.

Its a heavy bike but it has its uses! Since taking these pictures I've fitted a center stand to the bike so that it stays level. All I need to do now is to find a stool. I've tried a few three-legged walking stools but they're not comfortable. I'll try and get a folding camping stool sorted out.

Now all I need is a little beer bottle holder on the side and I'm all set!

Juice Bag and other solar backpacks.

2007-06-12T02:37:00.001-07:00

Kornel, a member of the UMPCPortal.com team, asked my why I wasn't using a solar backpack on the tour. He was referring to products like the Juice Bag from Reware and the Voltaic Solar Backpack. [update: And someone has just told me about the Clear Blue Solarpac Series. Another option. Thanks Jon.]

Reware Juice Bag backpack

I had pretty much dismissed the idea based on the fact that I didn't really want anything on my back and I thought I had all that I needed in my 25W solar panel. However, I've had some other thoughts in the last 24 hours mainly because the big 25W solar panel is proving impossible to deploy in a 100% open configuration on my bike. The other thought I had just 30 minutes ago was that if the 25W panel breaks, I'm finished. I need a back-up. The final though I've just had as I sit down here is that I need to test as many possibilities as possible out so that I can, at the end of the tour, be in the best position to advise other people what combination of products is the best for a certain situation.

Voltaic Solar Backpack

The Juice Bag looks like the best option as it provides 6.3 watts compared to the Voltaic's 4 watts. It has a 31 liter capacity (could be good for some light clothing) and is waterproof. It certainly sounds like it could supplement the kit very well so I've decided, just 5 days before I'm due to start, to try and get hold of one to test. I'll see if I can contact Reware to get hold of one under some kind of sponsorship deal where I report back to them how it worked out and whether its worth them promoting them for UMPC usage or even creating a UMPC-focused solar gadget bag!

Thanks Kornel, for making me think about this as a possible solution!

Blue Bike Baggage test

2007-06-09T15:12:00.001-07:00

Encouraged by yesterdays progress with the solar kit, I spent most of today finishing off the wiring and packing it all into a plastic box. I then paired down my kit list somewhat (out goes the Nokia N800 and spare mobile phone, two pairs of underwear, one of the t-shirts, the multimeter and a pair of trousers) and loaded everything up on the bike to see what sort of weight I was dealing with. The total wight of the bike and kit together (that's biking, camping and computing gear) comes to 55KG. I have some food and bits and pieces to add to that so lets call it 60KG. Considering the bike weighs 25Kg that means I'm going to be carrying a 35Kg office. I took the bike for a ride and it seems pretty stable although I am a little worried about brake failure. I only have a back-pedal brake and while its very good I'm in serious trouble if it fails. I'm thinking about getting front brakes fitted this week. I also notice a small S in the back wheel. Its out of alignment and I hope that it can be brought true again by a local bike shop. If not, I'm probably in trouble and might have to switch bikes. I don't want to do that as I really like FK398. Its been a work horse for 4 years and it deserves to be in the tour. It also looks great. I love the retro style.

About 90% loaded. The Kronan feels OK to ride with 35KG on it.

Another problem I really need to think about is the positioning of the solar panel on the bike. I can easily deploy 50% of it across the rear baggage but that's not really going to be enough. I should have tried to find two separate 12W panels and mounted them front and rear but its too late for that now and I'll have to work round it. In this part of the world, the sun gives you about 4 full-power hours per day. With a 50% deployment of the panel, that's only 48W/hrs. Short of the 60W/hrs I think I need per day. However, what I could do (and I really like the sound of this idea) is take a 2 hours working break between 12 and 2. This should give me close to 50W/hr of energy assuming the sun is shining. Outside these hours I might pick up another 10-20 w/hr so that's 70W/hr of energy from the panel in a day. It looks like its possible and I will test the theory this week.

Under the seat is the battery and electrical kit. It weighs something like 5KG but packs an 80W/hr lead-acid battery and a 56W/hr Li-Ion battery. Enough to take a full days energy from the solar panel.

There's about 5KG going on the front rack. Its not attached to the forks so doesn't affect steering as much as panniers would. I'm thinking of using it as a computer table in the evening but I can't find a good enough stool.

Mounted on the front handlebar are the Garmin Etrex GPS logger and a Plexiglas map holder. I will get some rain covers and more straps for the equipment. The Q1b UMPC sits in the right hand pannier its its organizer case and wrapped in clothes. I will have to be careful about making sure the device is in hibernation before I ride. If its in standby and then goes into hibernation it will have to start-up the disk. I don't want that to happen while I'm riding as it could be fatal.

Technorati tags: solar panel, solar energy, computing, umpc, mobility, bike touring, biking, camping

Video: How to use a solar panel to power your gadgets.

2007-06-08T16:40:00.001-07:00

Before I talk about the video I just want to say "where's the damn weather!" Lesson number one in the Solar-UMPC project is that the weather is chaos and if you live in mid-northern Europe, you can't rely on it as a source of instant energy. You'll see how I've had to adapt my solution in my first Solar UMPC video. In the video I present the solar charging and storage setup that I've decided to use for the tour. Its based on the fag-packet drawing I did a few weeks ago after deciding that Li-Ion batteries weren't really the best solution.

I've introduced the lead-acid battery as a buffer and despite the 100-year old technology and 2.6KG weight, provides the perfect stabiliser to the whole architecture.

A quick rundown of the equipment I'm using (mostly bought from my home country, Germany.)

The 20-min Video is below (800kbps divx, 120MB) and also downloadable here. If you can handle a 1.5mbps stream or 200MB download, take the WMV version from here. YouTube version also below. More pictures in the gallery here. Blip.tv link here for sharing. Many thanks to SelectSolar for their help in preparing this solution.

Now available at YouTube:

Countdown on pause.

2007-06-08T04:35:00.001-07:00

Just like all the best countdowns, this one is paused for a while. The reason? Taiwan. Both VIA and myself have been non-stop busy since Computex started 4 days ago and we've decided to delay for a week. Looking at the weather forecast, its probably a blessing in disguise because cloud and light rain is forecast for much of next week.

Watch out for a video overview of the Solar equipment coming up either later today or tomorrow.

UMPC Tour Pack-list

2007-06-04T01:28:00.001-07:00

Despite the terrible weather forecast (rain, clouds, heat, thunder) It's time to finalize the pack-list and buy the last items, prepare the solar equipment (which should turn up today) and do some test loading and test cycling. Over the last weekend I fitted the baggage to the bike and loaded it up with random heavy items including the new tent, sleeping bag etc. There should be no problem with space or loading weight. I also tested out the tent and it seems OK although some dampness came through from the floor. Is that normal? I'm surprised.

I've written the pack-list in Google docs and shared it for everyone so you can always see the latest version. Its organized into sections. Feel free to take a copy for your own use.

View the pack-list here.

I will go through it and weigh each section before I go and add that to the pack-list. Despite the sub 1kg PC, it won't be a light load! Here's the list of electronic equipment I'm taking.

12v AA battery charger,12v charger for Nokia phone,12V lead-acid battery (70W/hr),Adaptor cables and tips, Batteries 8xAA for camera, Batteries (2xAA for GPS), Camera case, Camera USB cable, DC-DC adaptor, Digital Camera + 2GB mini-SD card, GPS logger and holder, GPS serial cable and USB-serial adaptor, Li-ion battery (56W/hr), Mini battery tester, Multimeter (voltage, amps, sun, temp), N800 (spare web-access kit), Nokia headphones / adaptor. , Nokia phone (6280) + 2GB mini-SD card, Nokia USB cable, Passive USB mini-hub, Solar panel (25W) +cable kit, Spare mobile phone (voice only), Standard UMPC battery, Torch, Tripod, UMPC (Samsung Q1b) + Extended battery, case + keyboard, USB LED Lamp.

Later today I should have more details about the solar panel/battery to post. Pictures too.

An evening outside with a Samsung Q1b.

2007-06-02T14:21:00.001-07:00

The new tent has arrived, the bike baggage, and finally, some warmer weather so I'm taking the chance to test things out in the garden. My daughter is nearly asleep in the tent and I'm perched outside with the Samsung Q1b and organizer pack resting on one of my panniers, a clip-on LED lamp a paraffin lamp and a bottle of Germanys best beer!

This is the perfect time to be writing because its dark and you only need the minimum of backlight on the UMPC. As I write this with WiFi on, I'm taking between 6.5 and 8.5W on the UMPC. Its also wonderfully quiet.

Behind me, in the spare bedroom, I have started to lay out everything I need for the tour. I've written the pack list and there are only a few more things to buy before I'm ready to go. I hope it all fits into the panniers I bought for the bike which, incidentally, is going to be the blue Kronan.

A few things that haven't turned up yet are the Lead-Acid battery and the solar panel. They should be here on Monday which will allow me to build the frame that the panel and battery will sit in on the back of the bike. I've ordered a could of panel meters too because I want to see what sort of drain each component puts on the panel.

One thing I was a little disappointed to find out tonight is that in theory, DC-DC conversion will cost at least 25% of my energy. That's rather a lot to be wasting just to transfer energy, especially if I charge the Li-Ion battery from the 12V lead acid battery. I could lose an hours computing time just in that process.

I'll finalise the packlist (V1.0) in the next few days and post it up. I'm also planning to do a video overview of all the equipment I'm taking, a picture-set of the bike and the charging setup and as many other images as I have time to take. The 9-day forecast is looking OK (not perfect, but OK) and so I'm quite confident that the tour will start at some point next weekend.

Route plan: 500km from Strasbourg to Duesseldorf.

2007-05-30T04:35:00.001-07:00

I've finally decided on the start and end points of the tour and I'm 90% sure that its going to cover 500km from Strasbourg to Duesseldorf along the Rhein. The route will take me through Karlsruhe and Mannheim, Mainz, Koblenz, Bonn, Koeln (Cologne) and will end on the Rheinufer (Rhein promenade) in Duesseldorf with a very large beer although I do reserve the right to spend more time working and therefore less time on the bike! If big news breaks, the main aim will be to work and test out the UMPC 'office' to its limits.

The planned start date is within the 3-day window 9th to 12th June and the end date will be between the 19th and 21st June.

I've been checking maps and comparing them to the 'netzabdeckung' (coverage map) from Vodafone Germany. Apart from a few GSM-only areas (which I guess will at least get me GPRS coverage) on the first stages of the tour, most of the route is well covered with 3G services. I really can't imagine having any connectivity problems on the way. If there's no signal I'll just pick up my office and cycle to the next cafe!

Detailed dates will really depend on the weather which will start to come in range within the next few days. The current 14-day forecast via RTL Wetter (paid service) is looking good with a big change coming in the middle of next week. It might make sense to go as early as possible and that means I need to be ready! I've still got lots of items on the todo list although I heard to day that the tent and solar panel have been dispatched.

Refining the Solar equipment. Li-Ion or Lead-Acid?

2007-05-24T05:54:00.001-07:00

I've just had a nice conversation with my energy advisors, Select Solar, about some of the issues I've seen with the tests I've done so far. The main problem being that Li-Ion batteries will not trickle charge. They require a certain level of stable voltage/current before they start to charge and this wastes the possibility of charging a battery at lower sun power. In fact, on a hazy day or with light cloud cover, the sun power might not actually go above 70% and you have no chance to charge anything. This could be major problem and I've decided to try and address it.

A solution to this problem, as I mentioned before, is lead-acid batteries. These are the type you will find in your car and are a tried, tested, reliable and relatively cheap solution. The problem is that they are also extremely heavy - at least 400% of the weight for like-for-like power storage. They also operate at 12v which means voltage conversions (and more electronics and power-wastage) in order to operate the UMPC.

The decision I've made is to buy a 70W/hr 12v lead-acid battery (2200g) and to try and use this as a charge buffer. Here's a little sketch of the planned set-up.

The idea would be that I connect devices to the lead-acid battery as the solar power increases during the day. For example, I might add a couple of AA batteries or my mobile phone in the morning. At mid morning I might replace it with the Li-On battery and during the peak hours I could re-attach the AA battery charger with 2 or 4 batteries depending on sun power.

Two problems I can see here:

How do you know the charge on the lead-acid battery?
Will the lead-acid battery be able to feed up to 1.5 Amps?

There's only one way to find out. I've just put an order in for a 70W/hr lead acid battery and charge controller along with some fresh AA batteries, a powerbank tip adaptor for the Samsung Q1, a 12v charger for the mobile phone and something I've always wanted, a flexible USB LED-lamp!!!

Later today I will probably be ordering the solar panel. I won't be using the P3 Panel as the only advantage with that was that it could drive 19V into the PowerBank. Now that I'm going for a 12V source solution I'm going to be looking at the 25W version of this Sunlinq panel which is the same price as the 15W version of the P3 panel. There's a risk that its going to be too big for the bike at 1m long but even if I fold 25% of it away, its still going to give more power than the 15W panel and during mid-day pause and work sessions I hope to get the full 25W out of it.

Daily power requirements.

2007-05-18T05:17:00.001-07:00

I'm quite lucky to have been able to test a lot of UMPCs out over the last year. Most have been good in their own target markets but only some have been good for me. One of my favorites, the Kohjinsha SA1, an AMD based device is also one of the most-power efficient too and I took it to CeBIT this year where I used it exclusively for 5 days. It worked well and it demonstrated to me how much I might use a PC in one day. During the daytimes I was able to get by with a single charge - 4 hours. In the evening I was using it for another 2 hours, minimum! OK. CeBIT was a worst-case scenario. There was breaking news all over the place and there was one point where I was walking to a meeting with Intel and trying to edit and post a news entry at the same time. I don't expect to be doing that on the bike! I do expect to be stopping 2-3 times per day for 30-60 minutes at a time though. Primarily to update my location, photos and geotags and to make quick reports here and also to work on any news that's breaking. In the evening I expect to do a small amount of video editing, uploading and maybe a longer post, chat, IM etc etc. 2 hours is what i'll give myself in the evening depending on the forecast for the next day.

At 9W drain (hopefully less in evening with low backlight and careful control of HSDPA and WiFi) that's about 36W per day.

In addition to the UMPC I will have:

Mobile Phone. This is a Nokia 6380 with the 3.3v 900mah battery. 3watts. I will use this as my email and quick blog news checker using the gmail java app and the opera mini browser with bloglines mobile. These are combinations of applications that I've found very efficient and there's really no need to turn on the UMPC to read email and RSS text. I can even do short emails on the phone too. If something interesting comes up then i'll take the UMPC out of hibernate and do further reading, research or even email or blog. If I throw an hour or so of MP3 or FM radio in, I estimate that one charge per day on the 6280 will see me through. That will take about 5W of power from the power bank or I might be able to charge it in the early/late part of the day when the suns power falls below 70%.

Camera. This takes 4 x AA batteries. I use 2300mah 1.2v rechargeable batteries that should (if I use the camera carefully) last up to two days. That's again, 5W per day. Charging will have to come from the solar panel during the day. Hopefully this can be done for an hour earlier or later in the day. Testing and research into different types of chargers needed. Smaller capacity batteries could also be useful.

GPS logger. This takes 2 x AA batteries every 15 hours. I hope that 2 batteries lasts me 2 days so that's 2.5W per day. I will take a Bluetooth GPS device in case the logger fails. I think it lasts 10 hours on a 3W battery and can be charged from a USB port so its much the same in terms of power.

Lamp. This will be a very efficient LED lamp. Its possible to get ones that are solar powered or hand-cranked. I expect this to be a negligible drain. I will even take a few candles just in case. Bear in mind that it will be light until 2200 and will get light again at 0500. I don't expect to be awake much during these hours!

Finally, something I haven't mentioned yet, a backup PC. Well its more of a web tablet really. Its the Nokia N800 and it will run for 3-5 hours on a 5W battery. That's very efficient and could serve as an email tool, IM tool and, at a pinch, blogging tool (although i'll have to look into a mini keyboard solution for it.) This will only be used if the worst happens. I.e. I run out of power or the main UMPC breaks. Otherwise I won't use it and it will stay packed away.

Total daily usage:

UMPC: 36W

Mobile Phone: 5W

AA batteries for camera: 5W

AA batteries for GPS logger: 2.5W

Total daily power usage: 48.5W

In the previous post I estimated I could average 48W solar power collection and storage per day. Bingo! Now, did I forget anything?

The other luxury I will give myself is a fully charged set of batteries before I go. I don't think its unreasonable as anyone in their right mind would ensure that their batteries were charged before they went. Here's the battery power that I will take with me:

Powerbank: 56W
Extended battery: 60W
2nd extended battery. Empty
8xAA batteries for rotating through camera. 20W
4xAA batteries for rotating through GPS. 10W
Phone charged. 3.5W
Emergency UMPC charged. 5W

Total starting power: about 150W.

In theory, that lot will give me a 1 day buffer which means at some point in the tour, I can have a day of bad weather and continue as normal.

I will talk to select solar next week to see what they think of my estimates and if they give it the thumbs-up Ill start real testing - assuming the sun comes out!

Solar panel testing. Tough calculations.

2007-05-15T08:04:00.003-07:00

The weather is still bad here in Germany and there's no chance of getting reasonable testing done on a solar panel at the moment. The forecast is also bad so I've decided to send the test P3 panel back. In the very short time I was able to test it I was able to learn a lot though and its given me some thoughts about how I will move forward. This post goes over some of the stats, figures and calculations so its not exactly the most interesting post for the average reader. For those that are thinking about doing a similar thing though, this could be a very interesting post for you!

A very important lesson was learnt on the first day - the charging system doesn't even start working until the sun reaches 70% of full power. This is due to the Li-ion charging system on the powerbank. It wont trickle charge so only kicks into life when there's enough power to drive it. This renders about 8 hours sunlight per day as unuseable with this set-up.

The second thing learnt is that the charging system doesn't work faster if there's more power available. It seems that the power bank needs 12W to charge and will not take any more power if, say, 15W is available. Thinking back to my basic electronics, I guess this makes sense! This means more waste though and requires balancing the charging requirements with the power available if i'm to use this set-up.

One very nice feature of the P3 panel was that it was able to charge the TabletKiosk powerbank directly, without voltage conversion. That helps a lot because the other solar panels i've looked at only drive 12V. That would mean converting voltage up to 19V and losing power in the process. Taking a few of the figures learnt, there's a simple equation gives me the theoretical power possible per day.

Power available (W/hr per day) = Powerhrs x ChR

Powerhrs is the number of hours per day when the sun is over 70% power. (taken from sun power records. June. Bonn, Germany) This is about 7 hours in May, June and July.

ChR is the charge rate of the power-bank (must be about 0.7 of solar panel rating for best efficiency.) = 12W

This assumes a sunny day. No cloud cover. No shadows and the panel facing the sun. The changes of that happening are slim. I have the advantage that I'll only leave the house if the 6-day forecast is good so I can reduce this risk to a minimal amount but I think I'll lose another 20% through shadows and positioning while I'm moving. If cycling around becomes a problem with shadows and sun positioning I might have to carefuly plan my stops in order to maximise solar panel positioning. Maybe a stop at 10-11 and again at 3-4 would help get the best out of the early and late light.

So lets plug the figures into the equation and see what we get with the P3 solar panel and the TabletKiosk MP3400 power bank.

7 x 12 = 84W/hr energy per day assuming 15W from panel at max sun power.

Now for the second part of the equation:

There's no such thing as a perfectly sunny day. Especially when you're cycling. I've been advised to use a figure of 4 hours per day for sun. In my tests, on two sunny periods, I managed to load a 56W/hr battery in about 8 hours so the equation seems to be roughly OK. At a 12W load rate, that's about 4 full hours of sun so I agree with the 4 hours rule.
You can not charge and use the bank at the same time. This means that a second power source is needed for the daytime. In the evening its fine because I run from the powerbank. I could use the battery on the device UMPC in the daytime of course but what happens when its empty? Can I charge it from the solar panel (that's stupid because I would need a second UMPC just to charge the battery - the solar panel will not be able to run AND charge a UMPC. Also, if there's not enough voltage or current protection on the UMPC I would risk killing the UMPC) There's is the possibility of topping up the UMPC overnight from the power-bank but If I do that, I have to consider the following...
To charge other devices from the bank, there is something like 20% power loss through the charging circuitry.

There's one other point too. The powerbank can only store 56W/hr of power. Taking point 1) into account brings me down to 48W/hrs on a sunny day which I guess solves the problem of limited powerbank capacity!

I think the best solution for point 2) is to use a second power bank. This also has the advantage of giving me a spare powerbank should one fail, and, being able to fill a second device should I find myself with sun and nothing to charge! It also reduces the risk of killing the UMPC and avoids the wastage of 3)

So we're now at 48W/hrs per day. Its incredibly poor considering the power of the sun. In theory, the suns power is equivalent to 1Kw of energy for every m2 and that makes solar energy capture and storage horribly horribly inefficient. Consider that in 4 hours, about 2KW/hr of energy will be hitting the solar cells on the panel I tested. Yes 2000W/hrs. Enough energy to power a small UMPC for 1 month at 8 hours per day! The efficiency is a crazy 48/2000. Just over 2%.

How can this be improved? One thing I could do is to find a lower-power charging solution. That is, start storing energy before the sun reaches 70%. If you can start storing energy when the sun is at 50%, you have a few more hours per day and if you can start gathering energy at 30% power, you can even get some when its cloudy!

The second variable is the power-loss on charging. This is generally because the Li-ion batteries need a fairly strict charging voltage and current and there's a fair bit of circuitry there to protect them. Lead-acid batteries could be better but, wow, the weight! To store just 70W/hr of energy you're looking at 2.5KG. The 56W Li-Ion power-bank I have is just 500grams.

The third option is to get a panel with more efficient solar cells.

Having said all that though, this is an off-the-shelf system that appears to work. I didn't need to make any modifications at all and I like the idea that this project could go ahead with off-the-shelf equipment. It makes it easier for others to replicate it.

The big question now is, will 48W per sunny day be enough? If so, I don't have to worry about the terrible efficiency and high cost. It will be enough to provide me with power where I can't get it. I'll be analyzing the power requirements in the next post to see if 48W per sunny day is enough. If it isn't, i'll have to go back and look at other options.

Solar testing on hold.

2007-05-11T02:39:00.001-07:00

Isnt it typical? Just hours after starting the solar panel testing last week it started to get cloudy. You can even see the first clouds appearing on the sun power graph that I used on the first test.

Ever since then the weather has been bad. Look at the last three days below. With weather like that I would have no chance of charging anything. The forecast for the next 6 days is the same too.

The only good thing about the rain was that I was able to re-test my old tent. I suspected it wasn't going to be water resistant any more and I was right!

As for the bike, i'm really thinking of doing it on the Kronan bike now. Its a solid machine and the seat is really comfortable. I'm going to order a couple of new tyres and some spares this weekend and get it back up to match fitness.

The first of my planned start dates is approaching. I was hoping to start on the 21st May but thats just over a week away. Its not looking good. I am looking at a second date now (10-19th June.) just in case the outlook dosn't improve in the next week.

Choosing the Solar UMPC

2007-05-11T02:09:00.001-07:00

Its decision time on the UMPC and I think I've just about come to my conclusion - The Samsung Q1b HSDPA. Its not perfect but it covers the important requirement of efficiency very well. Maybe in a few more months there will be better options but right now I need to focus on one device and start testing and getting used to it.

Let me take you through the reasoning though. You might be thinking about the same thing yourself so I'll list my requirements and then go through the options.

Requirements.

Power efficient. Obviously. I'm looking for sub 10W average power drain for a total power budget of under 60W per day. (More on the power-budget in another post.)
Lightweight. All UMPCs are lightweight. This shouldn't be a problem.
Bright screen. Some are better than others and when you're outside, this can make a huge difference. Put it this way, I'd rather be sitting on the terrace of a cafe rather than inside on my own!
Keyboard. I'm going to be doing a lot of typing so this is going to be an important requirement. Nearly all built-in keyboards are nothing more than thumbboards. I will have to consider external keyboards
Protective case. A slip case isn't going to be enough. I need a very good protective case. Preferably rugged.
Ruggedness. 8 days on the road is going to be tough on a UMPC. I'm concerned about dust and the hard drive.
Bluetooth connectivity (for data through mobile phone). There are other connectivity options including connecting a mobile phone via USB and getting a UMPC with built in 3G data modem.
SD card slot for digital camera images.
Extended battery. Generally the batteries with UMPCs are around 20-30W/hr types. an extended battery is going to make charging easier.
Reliable. A proven track record is important.
Cost effective. Upper limit is around 1500 Euro for all UMPC equipment.

I have already chosen VIA as the platform I will use. Intel is powerful but can start to sap power very quickly is not used carefully. One stray process and you can eat 15W in an hour. I don't want that to happen. AMD is another option and there are some nice low power solutions around. The only problem is that the processing power of the AMD solutions is limited. I have edited a couple of movies on an AMD platform and it was a long process. I can not afford to leave the PC for one hour crunching videos and sapping energy.

VIA have been on the UMPC scene since the Origami launch in March 2006 and the core of their solution is the C7-M ULV CPU. Its available in 1, 1.2 and 1.5Ghz versions but until recently, only the 1Ghz versions have appeared in UMPCs. Amtek (OEM), Samsung and Uren are really the only manufacturers that already have VIA-based UMPCs on the market and although there are three more available this month, they are new, untested and not available for immediate delivery.

The T700 was the first VIA-based UMPC. Its a basic device compared to some of the UMPCs we're seeing today with a simple style, no SD and no web cam. It has proven to be a solid device though. It has an extended battery and there are bump cases available for it. Its also good value. You can pick up branded versions for under $800. The big problem with the Amtek T700 though is its average battery life. 11-12W drain is normal. It is also lacking the SD card slot required.

The second option is the Q1b from Samsung. This is the VIA version of the Q1, another UMPCs released as part of the Origami project from Microsoft. Its a slightly more attractive design and comes with a 280nits screen. Brighter than the T700. Again there's no mouse and no SD card slot but bump cases and even a specially made Samsung organiser pack with keyboard is available. In fact, I'm using one to type this right now and its a very very nice keyboard. The other major advantage of the Q1b is its battery life. It can average well below 10W and is even reported to run in a battery saving mode with low-backlight for 4 hours. That's about 8W average drain. Again, its a good value buy although its not available in its basic form in Europe because Samsung introduced it here in Germany with a built in HSDPA modem, bigger disk and more memory. Potentially a great advantage but the price is quite a bit more than the T700 is available for. It would stretch the budget when taking into consideration the keyboard and protective cover.

Finally, there's the Uren V1. Unfortunately this one is very quickly out of the running because it's not available at outside Asia. Its also a car-focused UMPC. The most difficult thing about the Uren though, is that no-one has really written any reports about it in English. Its certainly not a UMPC that I've been able to get hold of and test so at this stage it goes straight to the bottom of the list.

So there you have three UMPCs. One looks like good value and capable. The other looks like its perfect for the job but expensive and the other is out-of-reach. I mentioned a budget of 1500 Euro for the UMPC. This includes the cost of protective cover, keyboard and extended battery. When I add up the costs of the Q1B HSDPA, the organiser pack (with the wonderful keyboard) and an extended battery I come to just under 1500 Euro. Phew! I've even got some spare change for a USB-SD adaptor. The Q1B HSDPA it is then and as you might have seen on UMPCportal.com, I have already taken delivery of one. Unfortunately it had a faulty USB port so its gone back but the short time I spent with it was really nice. The HSDPA modem is going to be a great advantage and I've already transferred the data portion of my Vodafone tariff to a new SIM card. No messing with Bluetooth or cables and no worrying about keeping the mobile phone charged. If the phone dies there's always skype!

Solar Panel arrived for testing.

2007-05-04T03:14:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Select Solar UK I received a 15W P3 Solar panel this morning. As I write, it's out in the garden with 660W/m2 of sun power beaming down on it! Temp in the shade is about 22 degrees.

P3 Folding Solar Panel

Its smaller and lighter than I expected too.

The first test was to measure the open circuit voltage and at about 450W/m2 sun power (I'm using this web site to give me my sun power reading - its very local to me.) it was over 20V. At 650w/m2, its open circuit voltage is about 28v which is higher than I expected.

I connected a AA battery charger with 2 AA batteries in it and it was charging straight away. With 4 batteries I had to wait until about 10:30. I also tried connecting the TabletKiosk PowerBank but it wouldn't charge until the sun power reached about 650w/m2. I haven't connected the Q1 yet because I'm missing a connector for a DC-DC converter I will use for protection.

Look at the graph below. Its the sun power from today and I've added some notes to it.

Click to enlarge.
A - 2 AA batteries. B - 4 AA Batteries. C - PowerBank

You can see by the wobbly graph that there's a few clouds around today. Yesterday was perfect and using that part of the graph I can work out how much time there is for a given level of sun power. The sun is at or above the 'C' level for 6 hours a day for example. The area under the curve gives us the power too. I'm not going to get my integration maths book out right now but its fair to say that if the sun peaks at 800w/m2 (80% of Panel power) the average is something like 0.7 (RMS?) of (600+(800-600) for 6 hours. Tap tap tap. That's 75% of 15W panel power for 6 hours....a possible 67W/hrs of power. (average 11w for 6 hours.)

67W/hrs of power is a full power bank or full Samsung Q1 extended battery which is what I think I need every day to keep me going. I might be able to get that down to 40W by being careful with the UMPC but if there are 2 days of clouds, I'll be out of power.

This is just a preliminary test. I need to do more double checking on this. And don't forget, its sunny today. The barometer dropped sharply this morning so tomorrow is going to be very different. It will be interesting to see if I can power anything under cloud cover.The other thing to consider is that I'll be moving on the bike. There will be shady times! The big question is, do I take a risk and challenge and go with the 15W panel or do I take the next step up and go for a 24 or even 30W panel. Like I said, more testing needed!

I've put up a gallery of the P3 panel.

More testing going on today and tomorrow.

Thoughts. Should I take a simple sun meter? How much power will I lose through using a DC-DC converter? Should I buy a small multimeter to take with me?

Technorati tags: solar, umpc, energy

Solar UMPC ToDo list.

2007-05-03T08:18:00.001-07:00

I've been making another list! Its the big one. What do I need to do to prepare for the Solar UMPC tour which could start in under 4 weeks if all goes well. Below you'll find a summary of the things I need to sort out before I go. I'll be going into detail on each of these topics over the coming weeks.

UMPC. I already have a very shortlist of UMPCs. I've chosen VIA as the platform (who are now my sponsors) and at the top of the list of devices is the Samsung Q1b HSDPA. Luckily this is available in Germany now. I am also considering the OQO Model 02 but I will definitely need a full keyboard in addition which negates the advantage of the thumbboard on the OQO. Amtek T770 is also in the running. There's a question of extended batteries and I also have to take availability and price into the equation. What about ruggedness too. Hard drives can fail and I've already experienced that. I'm also thinking about a backup solution if the UMPC fails. N800 could be well suited as its got no moving parts. I need to sort this out as a priority and while I've been writing this I've been talking to TheTabletStore in Munich who might be able to get hold of the Q1b HSDPA for me. Fingers crossed.

Solar equipment. At the moment I'm looking at a number of rollable solar panels ranging from 6W to 24W. I have been recommended a P3 Solar panel because of its ability to drive 19v - the native voltage for my battery pack and the Q1. Voltage conversions cost energy an require extra components which can go wrong so simplicity is the key. I will be looking at various connectivity methods, charging methods and need to add up the average daily power budget to decide on how much solar power I will need. I will probably be getting a P3 rollable solar panel from SelectSolar to test in the next few days.

Power storage. I already have the TabletKiosk MP3400 battery pack which has worked well in the past and so I would like to continue to use it. If it fails, I'll have to fall back to the other power storage method - storing in the UMPC and driving other devices through the USB port. Very inefficient but a possible last-resort solution.

Mobile phone/Cellular Internet connectivity. If I get the Samsung Q1b HSDPA then Internet connectivity is going to be a breeze. The only thing I'll have to do is get a second SIM card so that I can take/make voice calls on my mobile phone. If I don't get a UMPC with built-in HSDPA, I'll use my Nokia 6280 as a modem via Bluetooth or USB,. Its only 3G but having used it for 5 days at CeBIT, I know its going to be enough for my needs.

Keyboard solution. I don't want to use a Bluetooth solution as, again, its got too many things in it to go wrong. USB keyboard will be fine. If I go for the Q1b, the organiser pack makes a perfect solution to this problem.

Bike. I don't have a bike yet. Well, actually, I do have a bike. In fact I have three here to choose from but I don't fancy doing 8 days on either a mountain bike, a Dutch shopper or a Finnish army bike. I need something stable for sure and will need to think carefully about panniers and loading. All my camping equipment needs to go on it. I hate suspension on bikes and as I'll be on flat asphalt all the way, there's no need to waste money and energy (those things sap energy from the bike) on it.

Tent + Camping equipment. This one is a list in itself! I have most stuff but I found out last year that my little 2-man tent has finally given up and started letting the elements in. That means I need a new tent. Damn. I'm wondering whether it needs to be a one man or two man tent. A one man tent will be smaller and lighter but if it rains, I need to store my equipment so a two-man tent is a better option. Will test some solutions out soon. As for the other camping stuff. I'll make another list for that!

Logistics. I have a rough idea of the route now. Its probably going to start from Strasbourg on the French border. I'll take the Rhein Radweg north and hopefully make it back to Bonn. The main problem though is weather. I will need to make a final decision as near as 48 hours before the start of the journey in order to get an idea of the weather for the next week. This means I cant book a train down there and can't tell friends to meet me on the way. Annoying but necessary.

There are are a lot of different little things to sort out too. Bike clothes, shoes, rechargeable batteries, blogging plan, PR work, website preparation, and, oh, one more big thing.

Fitness. Fortunately, I've got an in house personal trainer. My wife's company, Power-Balance, will get a training plan together and I'll start it this weekend. Running, biking and arm exercises are the order of the day. This is the bit I'm not looking forward too!

Why am I doing the Solar UMPC Tour?

2007-04-27T02:41:00.001-07:00

Although you might find some value in what I'm posting on this blog, what you might not realise is that a lot of the posts are there for me! I'm a 'list' man you see, and I need to write everything down to get some order, detail and priority in my life that lasts for more than an hour. Call it bad memory if you like but I like my lists and I like writing things down. Doing it publicly like this also has the advantage that my mother can watch it and 1) Tell me not to be so stupid and 2) Correct my spilling!

So here's the first one. Its the one that seeds all the other lovely lists that I'll be writ....hey....pay attention at the back. You might learn something!

The main aims of the tour are:

Have fun
Demonstrate that UMPCs allow you to be productive while mobile.
Demonstrate that UMPCs are very low power devices.
Demonstrate that Internet access is available wherever you want to be.
Get a little fitter.
Learn about solar energy and how it applies to ultra efficient computers both now and in the future.
Get contact with others working in this area of tech.
Promote UMPCPortal.com and my sponsors.
Have fun

You'll notice I've got 'sponsors' listed there too. I've been very lucky with them to be honest. I assessed some companies, made a decision and sent an email to the two chosen companies. One is VIA who I chose because they currently have some of the most efficient UMPCs available and are well known for energy efficient computing. VIA will be my main sponsor. The other company I contacted was Solar Select in the UK. In fact I contacted them some months back and we had a good chat about the technology and the possibilities. Solar Select will be my energy adviser and supplier of solar equipment for the tour. Many thanks in advance to both sponsors for helping me out on this project.

Next up on the blog will be....you guessed it.....another list. It will be my ToDo list.

Welcome to Solar UMPC. Welcome to the Solar UMPC Tour.

2007-04-26T15:46:00.001-07:00

No, this isn't just another one of those keyword-seeking blogs that hang around waiting for a market and clogging up search results. This is one with a purpose. A real project! A working blog from day 1.

If you don't know me, Hi! I'm Steve (aka Chippy) from UMPCPortal.com and in about a month from now I will be starting my Solar UMPC Tour and this site is where the project will be detailed and journaled from start to finish and beyond. Yes, a Solar UMPC Tour! I'll be taking a bike, camping equipment an off-the-shelf UMPC and solar kit to South Germany, climbing on the bike and cycling down the Rhine for about 7 days while continuing to work on UMPCPortal.com and Solar-UMPC.com using a UMPC. No, not while I'm riding. I'll be stopping at lots of cafe's on the way! There's one important rule I should mention though - No mains charging of equipment is allowed. Everything will run off solar power for a week. Camera, Mobile Phone, Lighting and UMPC.

Sounds like a challenge doesn't it. It will be! Its one month away and I haven't even started testing solar equipment yet. I don't know how long I will need the UMPC each day. I don't even know what UMPC to take. I don't know how long my camera will last on AA batteries. What data connectivity should I use? Bike? Tent? There also the small worry that I haven't done a bike tour in years. I need to get on a 4 week training program so that I can cover the ground between stop-overs and still have enough time to work. And then there's the weather. More unpredictable than a UMPC manufacturers battery life figure! One thing is for sure, I won't be going if there's no sun forecast and if the weather breaks half way through I probably wont be able to go on. End of story!

All these questions will be answered in the coming weeks. The project starts today and I'm happy to say I've got the support of the best sponsor possible. VIA Technologies. I have been thinking about this project since last year and put the details to VIA some time ago. They came back very quickly with a positive feel and after our first project conference call this morning, we've agreed to do it and are all very excited about it. Its what the UMPC is all about of course. The combination of Ultra Mobility, power-efficiency, work and play. Ultra Mobile Life!

So there's the introduction in plain text. Things will get more detailed and colourful from here on and I hope you'll stay with me, help me, advise me and pass the word on about Ultra Mobile Computing. Help me. I'll say that one again!

Steve.

Technorati tags: solar, umpc, umd, via