[Freedombox-discuss] Environmental limit how can we use this hardware?

Dave Taht dave.taht at gmail.com
Sat Mar 31 02:22:34 UTC 2012


On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 7:10 PM, Jack Wilborn <jkwilborn at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I know most of you out there are software people but considering the
> temperature limits of the Dream Plug 2 I don't understand how we can
> support such a piece of hardware.  The US distributor advised me the range
> is 0 to 40 Centigrade, which is 32 to 104 Fahrenheit.  As for putting this
> in a box without control over the temperature you are asking for failure.
>

The thermals on the guruplug were awful. It was my hope they'd learnt their
lesson with the dreamplug.

What are the the ratings on the upcoming smile plug? That has a few
advantages for the freedomboxes targets..


>
> Even those in NYC see temps below freezing and certainly close to or above
> 100 during summer.  Here we usually don't freeze but it gets VERY hot here,
> I've experienced 122 degrees.  I can't see how we can use a hardware
> component, with what we want it to do, that has such a limited temperature
> range.  Maybe the people who make the Dream Plug need to know this, but I'm
> not investing in hardware I can't use.
>
>
I agree that

I will also argue that fans  are also a major point of failure, as are
non-solid state power supplies.

I have experience in both hardware and software and know you would be
> sticking your neck out on something that won't tolerate the local temps
> without some kind of heat or cooling, which of course increases the price
> of the installation.  It seems that whomever thought this out didn't look
> very far.
>
> Am I blowing steam or do you people understand what I'm talking about???
>
>
I do. I lived in south america off and on for many years. Ratings to 60C
and beyond are needed.

Very little consumer gear in general is rated based 40C. Net result,
survival times measured in months, not years for, in my case, on my gear:

liquid cooled pc: 2.5  yrs
normal pc: power supply and cpu fans went inside of 2 years
laptop: fans went inside of 2 years on 3 laptops
4 separate routers went (not all mine) - cisco, linksys, netgear, and
buffalo

The only pieces of gear I had that survived longer than 3 years were the
work of embeddedarm (usually rated to 70C), a couple olpcs,
and ubiquiti nanostation m5s and picostations. An openrd survived over 2
years as well - which is what got me interested in this hardware series.
However the plugs have been a source of continuing disappointment.

They should be underclocked at the very least.

on another note...

I am delighted to see power ranges on much gear nowadays that can tolerate
80v (I frequently saw power sags that low), and delighted to see solid
state power supplies that don't need fans for the ATX bus, and delighted to
see battery powered operation (sub 30 second outages 6-10 day were typical,
day long or longer outages happened during the oil crisis, typical long
outage was over 7 hours)

So, it's progress, and if the thermal problem can be licked the
dreamplug-like idea can work.


Jack
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedombox-discuss mailing list
> Freedombox-discuss at lists.alioth.debian.org
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
>



-- 
Dave Täht
SKYPE: davetaht
US Tel: 1-239-829-5608
http://www.bufferbloat.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/attachments/20120330/26ee2224/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Freedombox-discuss mailing list