One Laptop Per Child News on Hardware

OLPC Human Power Generation Reality Check

Posted on April 09, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Power Supply

The Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art is acquiring two XO laptops for their permanent collection because MOMA's Paul Galloway believes the design of the XO Laptop and the ideas it embodies belong in the museum's collection. While I'll not dispute his concept, I do think the display is in error.

XO laptop in the MOMA

If you look closely, you'll see that the display case has two XO laptops and a Potenco pull-cord generator. Personally, I don't think the MOMA should be showing off vaporware.

While XO laptop is in full-scale production, I even have one myself, no one has a Potenco yoyo, no matter the fancy Wired interviews. Individual purchase inquiries are rebuffed with this polite but vague brush off we've heard since last June:

We appreciate your interest in Potenco's human power generators. We'll be posting much more information about the product as we move into full scale production.

So I'm wondering when we'll actually see yoyo production. More than one Give One Get One donor was disappointed to find out that XO laptops currently don't ship with alternate energy sources, and children in the developing world should not be expected to have grid or generator electricity in the classroom.

Potenco is not alone in developing alternate human power generation, and it's not alone in lacking a production cycle either. Both the XOctoPlug and Freeplay Clamp Charger are innovative power supply ideas that are still in prototype mode. Emails to Freeplay on their Clamp Charger are returned with:

Thank you for your interest in Freeplay's charger for the OLPC XO. It is not currently available for individual sale, but when we have more information about availability, we will let you know.

Yet, unlike Potenco, Freeplay has a long and solid history of commercializing their products. May this mean we'll all have human power generation alternatives by this time next year.

More Power Generation Posts

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OLPC Power Plays: XOctoPlug and Freeplay Clamp Charger

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Power Supply

As Give One Get One donor, I was disappointed not to get an alternate power source for my XO laptop from OLPC, but I can understand its absence. In North America individual donors already have reliable grid power - other laptop battery chargers are not needed.

But in school environments, there is a need for multi-laptop chargers - a way for all the children in a group to power their computers during the school day without interruption. To fill that need, Carla Gomez Monroy of One Laptop Per Child is designing a different kind of gang charger, a XOctoPlug:

8 in one anti-electrocution and tangle-free XO power supply to be used in the classroom to improve safety, convenience and battery life.

I really like this design as it allows several kids to use one outlet, an efficient use of scarce plugs, and requires they sit in clusters, which promotes collaboration more than rows of desks.

Still, the XOctoPlug has the grid power limitation that limits its use in the developing world. There, even OLPC has experienced shocking electric power costs, and off-grid power is the norm. The original hand crank charger for the XO laptop was a good, if flawed idea. The torque of a hand crank on a laptop would be too much for even the OLPC's rugged design.

Enter FreePlay Energy, the inventors of the wind-up radio and the robust Weza foot crank power. They took the OLPC hand crank idea and bolted it to a desk and called it the Clamp Charger.

Freeplay claims that cranking the spur gear transmission driving a 3-phase alternator with 3-phase rectification at 130-140 rpm will yield a nominal 15VDC 1500mA output. In addition, it can be cranked in either direction. Quite an achievement, eh?

I wonder if you can combine both the XOctoPlug and the Clamp Charger for an off-grid experience for a gang of students? Or connect the Clamp Charger to a bicycle for a more efficient generator rotation?

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Going XO Laptop Green is Better and Cheaper

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Alexandre Van de Sande in Hardware: Power Supply

Mary Lou Jepsen of OLPC

If there's a trend that is universally welcome is the greener technology trend. But in most industries green is sold at a special premium: from organic food to electric cars, you are paying for your eco-conscience. But Mary Lou Jepsen has different approach.

At first when told that to go green would be more costly the OLPC was willing to sacrifice a greener XO for a cheaper but not so green laptop. But as she progressed on the design process it became clear that to build a laptop that cost less also means a laptop that consumes less resources as a whole. In her words:

"People are trying to make a buck off of green. Green is actually cheaper. Green isn't about (sigh) buying more stuff."

According to a very inspiring keynote she gave at the Greener Gadget conference in the beginning of February the factors of making a laptop green are:

Consume less power. According to Mary Lou if every computer in the consumer market had the power footprint of the XO, their total energy consumption could fall 95%. Also by reducing the necessary power it needs to run you put the laptop under the threshold that can be provided by some clever and surprisingly low tech sources, as cows, bicycles or cheap solar panels.
Expand the lifetime of the product. Surprisingly enough that's a factor rarely factored in when figuring out the impact of a product: how long will it last?
Repairing is more important than recycling. If disposed the XO battery can be "consumed by soil bacteria" but Mary Lou has a bigger point: by making the laptop easier to service will prevent it from being dumped in the first place.

You can check the highlights of the presentation above, but I would highly recommend anyone actually watching the whole 50 minutes presentation where she talks a bit about the purpose of her new company PixelQi, the deployment of the laptop and the history of the design.

Or if you attended you could have done as Crackhead did and actually get Jepsen to sign your XO.

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OLPC India's XO Laptop Cow Power Dynamo

Posted on December 29, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: India, Hardware: Power Supply

Arjun Sarwal has just made a short video about his Cow Power Dynamo to generate electricity for the Khairat village school pilot of OLPC India.

Before you think of the easy bovine humor, realize that Arjun is applying a very innovative solution to the shocking electrical power costs in the developing world. Rather than relying on a gasoline generator that would lead to recurring petrol/diesel costs for the villagers, he looked at locally-available and relevant power generation solutions that minimized reoccurring costs:

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XOh the Humanity! The First XO Brick Delivery

Posted on December 17, 2007 by Guest Writer in Hardware: Power Supply, Implementation: Support

Wanted: a XO heartbeat

So, I was a first day donor (bought online about two hours in) and finally got my XO this morning... and it is DOA! No lights, no power.

Like many of us, I've been reading the blog posts from folks who'd gotten theirs already, and I've been dying to get my hands on one. You can only imagine the horror as it slowly set in that I wasn't doing anything wrong, but that my XO was actually completely non-functional (no charge lights or power up or errors, no activity at all).

It turns out, to the best of my knowledge, that mine is the first brick that's been reported to OLPCNews. Not a distinction I'd like to have, but there it is. After the initial fury/disappointment, I remembered that this is a charity organization, and I started to understand why they were hesitant to sell to consumers in the US.

Understandably, they don't really have the infrastructure for consumer support since they're not a commercial organization, and the usual anger I'd have for tech- support on a bricked product melted away a bit at that thought, I felt a sort of peace.

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OLPC XO: The Greenest Laptop Ever Made

Posted on October 22, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Production, Laptops: XO-1

OLPC Laptop Physical Design

Congratulations to Mary Lou Jepsen! In what I consider to be a under-celebrated achievement of One Laptop Per Child's Chief Technology Officer, she has succeed in designing one environmentally friendly laptop per child.

By combining the XO computer's power management, including the LiFePo4 battery, with its highly rugged yet low toxicity case, she earned an amazing triple play:

The XO laptop has earned the highest environmental certifications: it is in full compliance with the European Union’s rigorous RoHS(a) standards; it has qualified for Energy Star 4.0 Category A (the most stringent ranking); and it has received the US PC and notebook environmental ratings agency EPEAT Gold(b) rating, one of only eight laptop computers to do so.

In fact, the last we heard Mary Lou was working on a take-back policy with Quanta Computer so that no XO laptop will end up in a landfill - anywhere.

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Redux Model 1: OLPC XO as Mini Tablet PC

Posted on October 01, 2007 by Guest Writer in Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Screen, Use Cases: Technology

This entry was first published on IT Redux. It's posted here with Ismael Ghalimi's permission.

I am Ismael Ghalimi and I am leading the effort to create Redux Model 1, an experimental device built for the Office 2.0 Conference.

When I first suggested the idea for the Redux Model 1, several people recommended that I start from an existing platform, instead of building the device from scratch.

Among the suggested candidates, the OLPC XO came highly praised, especially from my friend Darius Clarke. Unfortunately, it was not distributed to the general public, therefore could not be used as sacrificial starting point.

With the recent announcement of the Give 1 Get 1 program whereby you can buy two XO laptops for $399 and have one donated to a child, this situation has changed, and we are seriously considering using Negroponte's marvelous little machine for our Mini Tablet.

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Reading eBooks in the Sunshine

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Martin Woodhouse in Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Screen, Content: eBooks

Martin a few years ago

In the company of my young assistant Callum -- aged thirteen, writes PC games in his spare time, holds that the Help button is used only by wimps, and has already emailed Winchester College (which he is about to attend) to make sure that they have a computer-controlled milling machine he can use -- I have taken the battery out of my elderly Toshiba Satellite.

It is 70mm x 18mm x 170mm, weighs 630gms, and has a capacity of 2.8 ampere-hours at 12v, or 33.6 Watt-hours. It is thus something of a brute, lasts about 2 hours in the Satellite, and has an eco-impact -- when we include its disposal -- which I hardly care to think about.

Power consumption in computers is notoriously hard to measure and varies greatly according to what the machine is actually doing from minute to minute. My best guess is that the average laptop consumes between 90 and 120 watts (though a current magazine review of a 'multimedia' laptop quotes a battery life of only 67 minutes!)

Suppose we want to lower power requirement by an order of magnitude?

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One DC Power Input Connector Per XO-1 Laptop

Posted on August 22, 2007 by Guest Writer in Hardware: Peripherals, Hardware: Power Supply

OLPC DC power input port

Much has been written here on OLPC News concerning any and all technical aspects of the XO computer. I am Benjamin Nead, an itinerant tinkerer in the broadcasting industry, and I tend to think that just about anybody that takes a critical look at this remarkable machine from afar typically walks away quite impressed with what has been accomplished by the OLPC consortium.

That it has been developed "behind open doors" makes the entire engineering aspect project all the more impressive. Indeed, one can visit the official OLPC web site and study all the details of the XO that one could possibly ask for . . . except, curiously enough, for a rather important one: the size and polarity of the DC power input plug.

For the record, the official OLPC Hardware Specifications web page has basic electronic criteria, but there's almost nothing in regards to the mechanical aspect of the connector itself

"Power: 2-pin DC -input, 10 to 20 V usable, -50 to 39 V safe, one- time fuse for excessive input"

If one were to visit a typical electronic supply store (which may or may not be conveniently located in one of the various third world countries where the XO will be showing up) and ask for a "2-pin DC -input" connector - or any DC connector, for that matter - the first words from the salesperson behind the counter will be "Which one?", as there is a rather large variety to choose from.

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OLPC Nigeria's Shocking Electrical Power Costs

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Implementation: Maintenance, Countries: Nigeria, Hardware: Power Supply

Low OLPC XO transportation costs

Do you remember Jon's computation of One Laptop Per Child "$100 laptop" costs that concluded that XO's are really "$1,000 laptops"? Or the implementation cost follow-up where we debated the estimate in detail? Or José Antonio Meira da Rocha's OLPC Brazil laptop costs comparison study?

Jon's general point was that computer hardware is usually only one small component of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for technology implementations in the developing world. Training, maintenance, and Internet connectivity can drastically increase a project's scope and expense

Expenses in follow-on years are even more difficult to cover when the initial excitement of new shiny flashy things has past. Now that the initial fanfare around the One Laptop Per Child pilot testing in Galadima School, Abuja, Nigeria is waning, OLPC Nigeria is starting to learn this lesson with a cost we didn't include: electricity.

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Steve Cisler's Potenco Presentation Impression

Posted on July 05, 2007 by Guest Writer in Hardware: Peripherals, Hardware: Power Supply

This post originally appeared on digitalcommons and is republished here with Steve Cisler's permission.

Colin Bulthaup, Potenco

On July 3, 2007, The Institute For The Future hosted a talk by Colin Bulthaup, CEO of Potenco, a spinoff of Squid Labs, based in Alameda, California. Colin characterized SL as a Do Tank, not a think tank.

Fourteen months ago they had been working on smart rope, a rope that knows when it is about to break, but with a grant from the OLPC team they developed a pull-cord generator (PCG) that can be used to charge mp3 players, mobile phones, LED lights, portable batteries, GPS devices, and the XO laptop.

Their base line human is an eight year old pulling on the yo-yo device. They even tested the amount of CO2 produced as a kid uses it, as well as calories expended (very few). One minute of pulling generates enough energy for 20 minutes of talk time on a mobile phone and four hours play time on an iPod Shuffle.

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Potenco YoYo Power Generator Update

Posted on June 19, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Peru, Hardware: Power Supply

Potenco Power Generator

Wondering about the progress on One Laptop Per Child's hand-crank power generator ideas, I went looking for news of Potenco's hand-powered spindle (or salad spinner, or yoyo) and I found not one, but two very informative videos.

First up, we have a Potenco presentation at Web2.0Expo where we learn that Potenco is estimating one minute of pulling its human-power electricity generator can give a user 1 hour of light, 25 minutes of mobile phone talk time, 45 minutes on the Nintendo DS, and an impressive 230 minutes of iPod shuffle music - about one song per pull!

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OLPC Products: XO, Server, Charger, Antenna, & Repeater

Posted on June 11, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Peripherals, Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Production, Sales Talk: Products, Internet: Routers, Hardware: School Servers, Hardware: Wireless

OLPC multi-battery "gang charger"

In this weekend's , OLPC VP Walter Bender casually drops an OLPC product lineup bombshell:

We are shipping five products this fall: (1) the XO laptop; (2) a school server; (3) a multi-battery charger; (4) an active antenna; and (5) a solar-powered WiFi repeater. Much of the emphasis has been on the laptop, but a push from Quanta this week has resulted in firmer plans for the other products.

While we are all intimately familiar with the OLPC XO, what are the other four "products" that Water speaks of? The last time we checked, school servers were still very much an idea or barely Beta, and now they're going to be production ready?

The multi-battery charger, or "gang charger" is even more mysterious. There is a basic Wiki entry, and now a photograph, but not much else.

Walter tells us about the active antenna for the first time in the very same update:

Thanks to John Watlington and the team from Cozybit, we have out first working "active antenna" prototypes. Attaching them to an XO lets you optimize the placement of the antenna: use with a mesh portal will double the network throughput. They can be used on the school servers or attached a 5V power supply to build a stand-alone WiFI repeater.

Luckily, thanks to Aaron Kaplan, we now know more about the solar mesh repeaters, but that was only last week.

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One Cheap Solar 802.11s Mesh Repeater Per Child

Posted on June 10, 2007 by Guest Writer in Internet: Access, Hardware: Power Supply, Sales Talk: Products, Internet: Routers, Hardware: Wireless

Mesh network testing

I am Aaron Kaplan and I was recently visiting the MIT, home of One Laptop Per Child. I think I have to tell my fellow OLPC News people about the wonderful new solar goodies that are being designed and tested there.

Since I myself come from a background of building and designing free community wireless mesh networks, I was naturally very interested in OLPC's mesh solution. So I was lucky to get a preview of what surprises OLPC might come up with soon.

With my background, one question I had was - "how does OLPC test their 802.11s mesh implementation"? Well, when entering the office, I was quite surprised to see XOs hanging from the ceiling everywhere :) As I discussed with Michail Bletsas, having a moving mesh will actually be something else. But this test setup can already give you a good impression of a school class.

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Intel's Dream: One Exploding Classmate PC Per Child

Posted on June 02, 2007 by Guest Writer in Sales Talk: Intel, Hardware: Power Supply

One laptop is a dog

Remember last year's exploding laptop debacle? You may recall that both Dell and Sony had to recall in an incredible number of faulty batteries and battery adapters that had the annoying habit of bursting into flames. We would all like to think that the computer industry has learned from this mistake but if Intel gets its way, kids all around the world will get their very own exploding Classmate PC.

Hello again, this is Will Ahdoot to tell you more about Intel's Classmate PC. Before I go on, OLPC News readers should know that I am not affiliated with OLPC or any large software or hardware company. I believe that Intel deserves to be held to the same level of scrutiny as OLPC.

OLPC has gone to great pains to make sure the XO laptop meets the most exacting environmental standards and is kid-safe. You may agree 100% with me on that last sentence but after reading this article, I think you will agree that they are doing a far better job in these regards than Intel.

So you want to provide laptops to poor kids in the developing world? Then you best develop a laptop that is safe and stable where most of those kids live: hot and humid countries. Sure there are poor kids in Mongolia and Siberia but not many compared to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. For this reason OLPC has chosen LiFePo4 batteries that are stable at much higher temperatures and levels of physical mistreatment than your typical Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) battery in most laptops today.

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$5 Billion Intel R&D and We Get Classmate PC?

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Guest Writer in Use Cases: Business, Sales Talk: Intel, Hardware: Power Supply

What's the Classmate PC BOM?

Who knows Intel's Bill Of Material for the Classmate PC? I'd say it's probably more than $400 a laptop. That is based on the fact that the Classmate is nothing less than a stripped down normal business laptop with optional flash memory instead of a hard disk.

Also part of Intel's strategy is to assemble the Classmate locally instead of mass producing in China, both factors, local assembly infrastructure and low volume production both push the price way up much higher than the $250 that Craig Barrett is claiming on 60 Minutes.

The cost estimations and the specifications of every single component of the XO-1 computer are available at the official wiki. $175 was Nicholas Negroponte's latest estimation as of last months industry analysts meeting. Did you know that Intel's annual revenue is over $35 billion dollars and that over $5 billion dollars of that each year is spent on R&D? Compare that with the OLPC foundation reportedly using a $30 million dollars on R&D over the last two years.

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Classmate PC: Intel's Two Hour-Long Joke

Posted on May 30, 2007 by Guest Writer in Sales Talk: Intel, Hardware: Power Supply, Prototypes: XO

I want to know more

Hello my name is Will Ahdoot and I have some experience with OLPC's XO but no hands-on experience with Intel's Classmate PC. I am very skeptical of the Classmate PC for a number of reasons but primarily because of the Veil of Secrecy that Intel keeps around it.

While some people feel that OLPC miscommunicates, Intel hardly communicates at all. We know hardly anything about the Classmate PC. There is nothing on the web beyond a few brisk product reviews and Intel's own pathetic "community" website that basically reviews it hardware and software specifications.

I was quite curious to read Tina Gasperson's review of the Classmate running Mandriva Linux . Apparently it comes w/ several learning applications such as Tux Typing, Club Penguin, a web browser (Konqueror?), and . . . that's it. Yup, no Block Party, no eToys, no TamTam, no OLPC Library. Wow, Intel's commitment to content is impressive! Most amazing about the Classmate is how long its battery lasts power -- Two whole hours!

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Laptop Mag: OLPC XO Price Increase - Now $175?!

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Power Supply, Commentary: Press, Sales Talk: Price

Reading the "Intel vs. OLPC: A Battle of Good Wills" article today on Laptop Magazine, I noticed this paragraph about the Children's Machine XO price:

OLPC's XO laptop offers a new Linux-based software platform called Sugar, as well as special features like a built-in video camera, high-resolution dual-mode screen, longer battery life, and innovative charging options for about $175.

Does that mean that the "$100 laptop" is now officially ~~$150~~ $175? Could that be due to the BTest-3 hardware upgrade? And isn't that $5 more than predicted by OLPC News?

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Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop" computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.