The Tweet-a-Watt project was good – in fact good enough to win a competition – but there are a few obvious flaws in the first iteration of the design. Not least is the requirement to have a computer turned on to receive power-use stats and tweet about them; now Adafruit Industries are back with their solution, a hacked $40 ASUS router with XBee wireless capabilities.
Video overview after the cut
Until now the most we’ve seen of the Tesla Model S Sedan has been a coquettish wheel-arch and a glimpse of rump. Now the electric car company has officially unveiled their 300-mile range seven-seater, and promised production kicking off in Q3 2011.
MSI have announced a new, eco-friendly version of their Wind Nettop, the MSI Wind Nettop CS120. The CS120 measures just 11.1 x 9.45 x 2.56 inches but manages to include a slot-load DVD burner, Intel Atom 230 1.6GHz processor, 160GB hard-drive and 1GB of memory (maximum 2GB).
Marvell have been talking up their SheevaPlug reference design, a wall-wart power plug that actually hides an entire Linux PC. Priced at $99, inside the SheevaPlug there’s an ARM-based 1.2GHz Sheeva embedded processor, 512MB of DDR2 memory, 512MB of flash storage, gigabit ethernet and USB 2.0; in fact the development kit is available now.
You can tell some people about being considerate to the environment until you’re blue in the face, but they’ll still flagrantly waste power. At that point, maybe it’s time for the light switch to fight back: Peter Russo and Brendan Wypich of Stanford University have developed the SmartSwitch, a light control that gives tactile feedback as to how much energy is already being used, whenever you try to flick it.
Video demo after the cut
Fujitsu have announced a compact server that uses less energy than a desk lamp and offers a variety of RAID setups for home-office and small business users. The Fujitsu PRIMERGY TX120 S2 resembles a compact desktop PC, but uses Intel’s latest power-saving Core 2 Duo processors paired with up to 16GB of RAM and remote ServerView Server Management control.
Both the P8400 (25W) or T9400 (35W) CPUs are available, using 25-percent less power than rival systems. As for storage, the TX120 S2 can be fitted with either four 320GB SATA or 146GB 15,000rpm SAS hard-drives. Nonetheless, according to Fujitsu it’s still whisper-quiet at 27dB.
As well as their more mainstream devices, Samsung also announced the first in their new Blue Earth series, an eco-friendly handset made from recycled PCM plastic, which is extracted from water bottles. On the back there’s a solar panel, which Samsung are saying generate enough electronic power to “call anytime anywhere”.
Take one Nintendo DS, a handful of solar panels, some spare time and this Instructable, and you could end up with this: a solar-powered DS that you never have to plug into the mains again. By strapping four 60 x 60mm panels – each capable of a maximum 3 volts at 40 ma power output – to the top and bottom outside casings of the DS, you can actually create a trickle-charger potent enough to avoid ever needing mains power.
That T-Mobile would be offering the MOTO W233 Renew was not much of a mystery, considering Motorola’s CES press shots of the recycled handset clearly showed the carrier’s logo, but we now have an official announcement, release date and price. The device – the casing of which is made from 100-percent recycled water bottles – is available from today, complete with 22-percent less packaging and paperless billing.
Shelby Super Cars (SSC) have unveiled their Tesla-trashing Ultimate Aero EV, an electric-powered sportscar apparently capable of 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds thanks to 1000 hp and 800 lb‐ft of torque. Keep your right foot planted and SSC claim you’ll see 208mph. Given that normally you’d expect to punctuate such performance with a few hours of recharging, what’s even more exciting than the speed stats is SSC’s promised 10 minute full battery rejuicing, courtesy of their “Charge on the Run” system.
SlashGear Japan
