Traffic Squeezer - Go Green

People already discussed and realize importance of the green initiatives and green technologies but not much happening really in action. There are many reasons for this:
* people might not have awareness about going green.
* people might have awareness but feel that green technologies are not cost effective as of now.
* people might expect ready made solutions provided from organizations not really think how far they can easily make themselves
customized cost effective solutions.

Traffic Squeezer - Go Green

Go Green is a new eco-friendly initiative from Traffic Squeezer team to acknowledge that Traffic Squeezer project as a part of production uses green technologies as far as possible. Also its mission is to create awareness about protecting our environment and so saving our dear planet earth.

Its not about how much bucks you can save by going green, its all about what the difference you can make to this planet and its environment while also providing energy efficient solutions and make this planet safe and comfortable place for the life to exist. The challenge in shifting to green technologies is that these green technologies should be able to provide the same or even much better solutions as that of the current existing conventional/non-renewable options and also ensuring a cost effective solution.

Climate change is in the news. I can bet the summers in my childhood days is much comfortable than these recent ones. Luckily, many little steps and little initiatives we take now can stop further climate change and global-warming. So let's start now!

Traffic Squeezer - Server Console Lighting with LEDs

Here is yet another creative use of LED lighting.
Everyone knows the fact that LEDs consume less
power and also the life of these LEDs is far many
times longer than CFLs. Once they are installed
they may not need no further maintenance for
many years!

Here are the list of parts used:

   * A fragment of bread-board (bus-strip)
   * Cable tie
   * Resistors 1/2Watt (overall value of 47Ohms)
   * White LEDs
   * USB Cable with male interface

The bread-board powersupply attachment (also called bus-strip) is stripped from a usual multipurpose standard breadboard. Using a bread-board gives lot of flexibility in using LEDs. Based on the requirement we can add LEDs and also the angle of insertion of these LEDs can be changed. Some white LEDs and resistor(s) preferrably 1/2 watt. The USB power output is 5V, 500mA. So its better to use a current limiting resistor of around 47Ohms. If no single valued resistor found many smaller resistors can be connected in series and together a resistance of 47Ohms can be made. I had two 22Ohms resistors, so I connected in series to get approximately 47Ohms. Since this breadboard strip has two pairs of linear rows. The two top rows and the two bottom rows are conected with couple of wires forming one row for +ve and one row for -ve. The USB cable +ve (red) and -ve (black) alone are used and connected to one corner of the bread-board. To prevent any loose connection the USB cable is firmly secured using a cable tie. Finally all the components are mounted on the breadboard strip formed as a simple circuit as shown below:

Traffic Squeezer - Solar Emergency/Backup Lamp & Mobile Charger

Here is a ready-made solar lantern which is used as a emergency/backup lamp. In a city like Bangalore, India the grid power goes off and on very frequently. So instead of getting the usual rechargeable emergency lamp or simply hooking a CFL lamp to the UPS I got a new solar lantern shown below is hooked up permanently in the room where the TS machines are placed. It should be able to provide bright light as any normal CFL (in the photo it may look dark/dull since I limited the camera exposure for a better picture quality) and can work for 3-hours upon a full-day's charge.

I custom soldered a female-USB port. To which the usual USB to mobile phone charger cable can be connected and simultaneously I can also charge my mobile phone along with the lamp. Refer the pictures below.

Thanks to the BusinessCom since the lantern and the panel set is one among their contributions.

Powering up Laptop, Computer Speakers, DSL-Router, Wi-Fi-Router, Network-Switch and External TV Tuner

Here is some serious project and also worth doing it. So no more issues with power-cuts usually happens a lot in India during every summer. Simply clean renewable power source all day and night. Whenever I am at home all these gadgets are turned on most of the time and all of them I connected to my 600VA UPS. Usually laptop I connect to the UPS non-battery backup surge protection port. So that even if there is a power failure, my laptop won't consume UPS battery power. So here is the power consumption per device:

Computer Speakers (4.1 Surround)           15 Watts        (being a music lover I better love speakers which are big and can produce excellent sound quality)
Laptop                                                    35-90 Watts    (on a full charge it consumes just 35Watts but when its battery is getting charge it should consume 90Watts)
Wi-Fi Router+Wired Switch+DSL Router     10 - 15 Watts
External TV Tuner                                    6 Watts           (whether I turn on or off, anyway its power-adapter is on, so its the "phantom power" which is sucking power)

Total Usage: 66 - 126 Watts
UPS Load when there is power: 66 - 126 Watts
UPS Load when there is no power: 36 Watts (since laptop works on its battery)

Unfortunately I have not found any ready-made commercial solution which can specifically address this energy requirement. Either the solution is too expensive and far bigger than what is required or simply the small scale solutions which are not flexible enough if I want to upgrade or scale-up in future. So I thought let me design a clean energy solution myself.

Using an unused working old 12V Sealed Lead Acid Battery rescued from a faulty UPS. If needed even a new much more bigger battery can be used. Or even a old car battery would solve the purpose. Using a old battery is not a good idea, but again after-all if it solves our purpose with respect to our power needs its fine. Go-Green also means one should avoid wasting any resource or utilize the most of any resource before it is dumped.

Here is the most messy part. Finally the power-strip gets power from the inverter. In the picture you can see my wired Ethernet switch on the left side and my external TV tuner box on the right extreme end. And all these are hooked-up to the power-strip as I mentioned in the basic setup picture. You can see the LEDs in the power-strip are on and so I can get power completely from those panels disconnecting whole thing from the grid power-supply.

Here is a most frequently needed handy tool to check the amount of consumption of any electronic device. Some devices such as embedded device adapters will have the Output voltage and Output current ratings. But they miss the vital power consumption ratings of the device such as amount of watts it can consume. Whenever when the devices are connected to the grid power supply, then often this information is not much required. But when they are connected to renewable micro/portable energy sources such as Solar/Wind-power sources then its very important that we should have the proper knowledge how much each such device would consume. Using this information we can get to know how much Watts of power supply we need to get from those energy generation sources. Also it helps us to select appropriate backup battery and inverter/UPS capacity. When people has already such a system in place, then when they want to upgrade the current solution then this tool comes handy in getting the values.

So with the total power production of 94Watts is just self sufficient to power-up the load which can consume anywhere around 66-126Watts. If the power production goes up beyond the usage in that case an extra battery can be added to store that additional juice. Which can be used for other purposes too. Since currently the load is much more than the power production and even the battery capacity, I have not got yet any charge controller device/circuit. But getting a simple charge controller to charge the batteries is quite suggested since it should improve the overall battery life.