[HN Gopher] This website has 81% battery power remaining ___________________________________________________________________ This website has 81% battery power remaining Author : behnamoh Score : 685 points Date : 2021-12-12 16:51 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (solar.lowtechmagazine.com) (TXT) w3m dump (solar.lowtechmagazine.com) | moneywoes wrote: | As someone located in the PNW, I imagine Barcelona must have | perfect weather for this sort of thing? Great concept | sondar wrote: | We've had a few cloudy days these weeks but today I've been | playing volleyball on the beach and almost got sunburnt :) | dvt wrote: | Small technical nit: I love the dithered images and the retro | feel, but their CSS should specify `image-rendering: pixelated` | to make sure browsers don't interpolate the pixels. | stjo wrote: | Whoa, TIL. It actually makes quite a big difference. | Nevertheless I don't actually think being pixelated is much of | a stylistic choice. | | Here [1] they explain how they use dithering to minimise their | bandwidth and computational costs. | | [1] - https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a- | low... | arc-in-space wrote: | Except dithering is not great for modern compression | algorithms, making the endeavour mostly performative. | VyperCard wrote: | Yeah, I reduced their file sizes in their examples by just | setting jpeg compression levels to 7% and had actual | grayscale | mlok wrote: | AVIF and WEBP formats give pretty good compression : | https://squoosh.app/editor | | * original colourful image : | https://homebrewserver.club/images/lime2.png | | * dithering/PNG on this site : 34 kB | | * AVIF (quality 16 for similar "readability") : 21 kB | | * WEBP (quality 16 for similar "readability") : 24 kB | | But the "nice dithering style" is lost in the process, | obviously. | mlok wrote: | Lossless compression of their 4 colours dithering PNG (34 | kB) : | | * AVIF : 69 kB (+100%) | | * WEBP : 27 kB (-22%) | TobTobXX wrote: | > Uptime: 2 weeks, 2 days, 11 hours, 25 minutes | | This is the most impressive stat of the website! | 1cvmask wrote: | It's at 76% now. In 53 minutes since the post it has gone down | 4%. So say roughly 5% per hour as a back of the envelop | calculation. That's roughly 20 hours on a full charged cycle. | | It would be good to know if there is a fast charge capability of | the battery and how long would that be. An hour of full sun a | day? Or two hours of partial sun? | agilob wrote: | Avg. CPU load is 99.5% | ronsor wrote: | One can only blame HN traffic for its sudden decrease. | superjan wrote: | I clicked the link, curious what the what the power reading | would be now. Now I feel guilty. | vstm wrote: | Well the sun has probably set in Barcelona too, this won't | help either. | rzzzt wrote: | Indeed, there is a row in the "Power demand" table saying | "Solar panel active: no". | eyelidlessness wrote: | It's on the HN front page, I don't think I'd extrapolate | anything from its current power usage. | dsizzle wrote: | Ha. We better read it while we can! | r-w wrote: | Or, in keeping with the spirit of the post: think long-term | and give the battery a chance to rest, then read it later | :) | [deleted] | rodmena wrote: | Looking into the response headers, I couldn't find any cache | related header. I hope the site is using cache to prevent extra | unnecessary load. Brilliant idea by the way. | okareaman wrote: | How would I even host a website at home? 20 years ago I knew how | to get a fixed IP from my local ISP but I don't know how to do | that anymore. | lucb1e wrote: | Give them a call? Or switch ISP if yours doesn't allow it. | Otherwise you need a relay service, at which point you might as | well host with them directly. | okareaman wrote: | I'm in a weird situation, hence my confusion. I live next | door to an Xfinity hotspot. I signed up with Xfinity so they | sent me a modem. I couldn't get it to work, but I found I | could just use the hotspot. It works great but it serves | potentially thousands of users so it's not personal to me. | pletsch wrote: | Reverse proxy with a dynamic DNS server (DuckDNS for example) | karmanyaahm wrote: | You can use dynamic DNS if the IP address you're getting is a | public one. | Gigachad wrote: | There are also services which you can get a reserved IP with | all ports open, and then you wire guard tunnel it to your | server. | MayeulC wrote: | As another commenter pointed out, Lead-Acid batteries are | terrible for this. They are fine for backup power supplies that | you don't expect to actually use more than a couple of times a | year, but discharging them too much will completely kill them, | and even if you keep a margin and discharge them to only 30%, the | number of cycles is quite limited (1500 to 3000 cycles quoted in | [1] seems a bit optimistic, probably depends on the specific | battery). | | Lithium-based batteries such as LFP are becoming very affordable | [2] and can handle much more cycles. They can also handle more | current variation and are more efficient. | | [1] https://offgridtech.org/tech-updates-online/2021/lithium- | iro... | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28943741 | 41b696ef1113 wrote: | Technology Connections[0] did an episode where he talked | through some of the science behind why lead acid batteries work | poorly for the task. He used a marine deep cycle battery as a | compromise solution. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q4dUt1yK0g | vondur wrote: | Thanks to everyone here, it's now down to 66%! | sam0x17 wrote: | ICANN should make a .solar extension with the caveat that you | have to provide evidence yearly that all IPs mapped by the domain | were running on solar power | therein wrote: | Can't force me to disclose my subdomains. Maybe for the @ A | record. | Beefin wrote: | super cool idea, anybody have connects at ICANN? | ip26 wrote: | Nah, it would be .sol | messo wrote: | That ... is actually an awesome idea! The condition for getting | a domain name should be to have a public consumption and | battery status page. | justsaying9 wrote: | Yes, and it should cost $999/year for the registration fee, | funneled into the pocket of some giant virtue signalling | multinational corporation, who uses the proceeds to buy media | time calling for the excommunication of anyone who refuses to | bend a knee and pledge obeisance to Al Gore and the high | priests of the Carbon Cult. I approve. | callamdelaney wrote: | Which anybody could fake - literally pointless tld. What | business could benefit from this? | Beefin wrote: | encouraging innovation, dont be so negative | elwell wrote: | Maybe leverage "specialization + trade" and have some 'SCDN' | (Solar Content Delivery Network). | java-man wrote: | > This connection is a 100mbit consumer fiber connection with a | static IP-adress. | | Yikes! And me here in Palo Alto, in the middle of the silicon | Valley, cannot get any fiber because of AT&T. | driverdan wrote: | It's not because of AT&T, it's because of government | regulation. | java-man wrote: | AT&T offers fiber on the other side of the road. How is this | government regulation? | lucb1e wrote: | Just as a thought, that might be pretty cheap to have | extended to your house. | | In Germany, Telekom (the formerly-government-owned provider | and largest player afaik) offers to dig fiber for you for a | "nice" price. But if it's literally about 5 meters it might | actually be worth it. | driverdan wrote: | If CA laws weren't so restrictive there would be | competition. Without competition there is nothing | compelling AT&T to offer better service. The barrier to | entry for ISPs is so high that it's essentially impossible | in many areas. | cure wrote: | Riiiiight. | | I'm sure it has nothing to do with a complete lack of | competition (cf. how in communities where Google Fiber showed | up, the incumbents were suddenly quite capable of getting | gigabit fiber to households, and for a price that was | competitive with Google Fiber, and a fraction of the price | they were charging for inferior service before Google Fiber's | arrival). | | I'm sure it also has nothing to do with the billions upon | billions of subsidies AT&T and Verizon have received to build | out broadband and make it available everywhere, which they | pocketed and then didn't deliver on. Cf. | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken- | promis_b_5... | | If you really want to blame it on government, do it the right | way: the government has not been keeping AT&T and the other | giant telcos accountable for effectively stealing all those | subsidies, and it has not enforced competition at the local | level. Regulatory capture, and all that. | christophilus wrote: | Lack of competition is due to regulatory capture. Local | governments often disallow competition in the ISP space. | petters wrote: | It's hard to get even 100Mbit in Paulo Alto? Must be hard for | everyone working remotely these days.... | louwrentius wrote: | My own battery + solar powered blog [0] is 100% inspired by | lowtechmagazine. I am based in The Netherlands and due to my sub | optimal location, I have to cheat in the winter by recharging | from mains about weekly. I still do get some sun, but nowhere | nearly enough to get through the day, let alone the night. | | [0]: https://louwrentius.com/this-blog-is-now-running-on-solar- | po... | | And lead acid is also terrible for solar applications because no | matter the capacity, recharging is very slow. Even solar could | recharge the battery, the slow adsorption rate prevents it from | doing so. | | Lifepo or similar Chemistry is probably the better choice for a | project like this. | pengaru wrote: | > And lead acid is also terrible for solar applications because | no matter the capacity, recharging is very slow. Even solar | could recharge the battery, the slow adsorption rate prevents | it from doing so. | | This doesn't make sense to me. Surely you can reach a | sufficient rate by adding more lead-acid cells in parallel? | You're kind of forced to do this anyways since they don't like | being discharged below 50% of their actual capacity. So you end | up building in a shitload of excess capacity in parallel, in | the process attaining high aggregate discharge/charge rates. | | It's just annoying because you waste a lot of physical space on | underutilized batteries. But for a stationary system, it's not | such a big deal, assuming you're not trying to fit it into a | studio apartment. You end up with a dedicated battery shed or | cellar, at least they're cheap. | rightbyte wrote: | You want to top off lead acid with constant voltage to | prevent gucking. It is time bound not power bound. | | https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-403-charging- | lead-a... | louwrentius wrote: | This is exactly the problem. | louwrentius wrote: | I actually run quite a few of them in parallel, but that | doesn't solve the problem: | | As the other person stated: charging lead acid is time | constrained. And that means that you can't fully charge the | battery within the time period when you have sun. | | Lead acid deteriorates quickly if left (partially) | discharged. This is why lead acid works so well with cars | (almost always fully charged at all times). | | Depleted lead acid (50% charge) needs to be recharged within | 24 or serious damage will occur, accumulating over time. A | week of bad weather may thus be hard on battery longevity. | | Some more info: | | [x]: https://louwrentius.com/a-practical-understanding-of- | lead-ac... | pengaru wrote: | Can't you just alternate between sets of cells with | sufficient excess capacity then? They don't all need to be | in lockstep at the same phase of their charge:discharge | cycles if it takes so long. | | Perhaps that becomes cost prohibitive even with the low | cost of lead-acid, I've never attempted this. It just | appears obvious from a high level that excess capacity can | overcome all these limitations. | rightbyte wrote: | Lead acid have the advantage of being easy to buy and needing | no balancer. Also they don't get damaged by overcharging. They | handle full deplation way better too. Also lower initial cost. | driverdan wrote: | Lithium batteries don't need a balancer either. I've been | running a 3.6kWh pack of 12 cells for almost 5 years with no | BMS or balancer. | | I bottom balanced all the cells before building the pack and | setup my chargers to only go to about 98%. This leaves more | than enough leeway to avoid problems if one or more cells | drift. | | I've rebalanced a couple of cells once because they were off | by a few hundreds of a volt. They're probably about due for | another minor rebalance. | | That said, this is in controlled conditions with regular use | and monitoring. The cells are LiFePO4. I wouldn't run other | chemistries without a BMS. Next pack I build will be much | larger and have BMSes for safety and so I don't have to think | about it. | rightbyte wrote: | Hmm ok. My experience with Lithium batteries is with EVs. | Do you have a low discharge rate on your pack? Because the | EV battery pack needed balancing like every charge. | Otherwise it has to be a quality difference. | driverdan wrote: | Most EVs don't use LiFePO4 although some are moving to | it. There are also hundreds or thousands of small cells | in most EV packs. With that volume you'll get more | variation between the best and worst cells. You also need | it to be foolproof and require no maintenance. | | My average discharge rate is much lower than 1C which | does help. The max is around 0.9C but that is pretty | uncommon. | bnastic wrote: | It's a like a deja vu, this website. It's been linked repeatedly, | for years, having the same kind of discussion on HN over and over | busymom0 wrote: | I had a similar deja vu because just few days ago I posted a | comment asking similar tech: | | > Other than raspberry pi, does anyone know of an even lower | powered board which can run a very simply web server (only | needs to return a single html file)? I have an idea for a fun | hobby project where I want to connect my echo bike (for cardio) | to the board which charges it everyday and returns an html with | how much I charged it and daily cardio stats. Basically, if I | don't do cardio, then the board won't be charged enough to keep | the site up, so that gives me incentive to do it regularly. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29409339 | [deleted] | tzury wrote: | When the server is down you can get the offline version of it. | AKA the Printed Website. | | https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/12/printed-website-thir... | rvense wrote: | I bought both volumes last year and made a point of only | reading them outside by sunlight. | | It's great stuff, very thought provoking. One of the many | points that has really stuck with me is how the invention of | the typewriter allowed us to write five times faster... and as | a result we now spend most of our time typing, somehow. | btdmaster wrote: | They haven't yet responded, but I wonder if it would make any | difference in power consumption (CPU usage, to be more specific) | if redbean[1][2] could be used instead of nginx. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26271117 | | [2] https://redbean.dev | ajusa wrote: | I doubt it for two reasons: | | 1. nginx has had many more years of performance tuning (it's 17 | years old) than a project made in the last few years. | | 2. redbean is x86 only if I'm not mistaken (it's using x86-64 | from actually pdrtable executable), whereas lowtechmagazine | runs their server on an ARM CPU. I think switching to a lower | powered x86 chip might be costly or still draw too much power, | but I don't have as much experience in that regard. | tentacleuno wrote: | The power consumtpion of that server is honestly great already. | Sustained 2W, _even_ with the HN hug of death?! | Waterluvian wrote: | I love this experiment. The one comment I have is that when you | provide "CPU%" but you're using the special "per core" unit that | can go above 100%, you must list the number of cores. 128% of | what? | sz4kerto wrote: | CPU load is not CPU usage. Load is basically "number of | processes waiting to be scheduled to run". If load=cpu count | then you can't schedule more processes, your system runs at | maximum capacity (although it might mean that the cores wait on | some IO). | | Eg.: https://estl.tech/cpu-usage-vs-load-ecca22287b21 | OOPMan wrote: | How hard do we have to hit it to drain the battery ;-) | javajosh wrote: | Ironic that the content is solely about the server itself. It's a | bit like a blog about the libraries and tools used to make the | blog. | cmiles74 wrote: | I have to disagree. While the common thread is consumption and | sustainability I found the article about moving away from new | laptops to be interesting. | tomcooks wrote: | ironic? It's the literal raison d'etre of the whole website. | | It would be remotely similar to what you implied if the website | was librariesandtoolstomakeblogs.com | Shared404 wrote: | More like a blog post about it, Lowtech mag has an assortment | of other articles. | malwarebytess wrote: | > This was caused by a software upgrade of the Linux kernel, | which increased the average power use of the server from 1.19 to | 1.49 watts | | I wonder what change in the linux kernel caused the increased | load. Someone out there is responsible for this crime! | [deleted] | ralph84 wrote: | This is an area where Apple is way ahead of everyone else. A | code change that increases power usage 25% wouldn't make it | past CI at Apple. | CraigJPerry wrote: | How many more hardware configurations is Linux deployed on | than MacOS? Would it be in the region of 3-4 orders of | magnitude more hardware configurations? | | How long has there been a power consumption focus in the | linux kernel? The efforts to reduce power usage by the linux | kernel pre-date PowerTOP's first release and wiki tells me | that was 2006. | | Is Apple way ahead or is it just less popular? | jolux wrote: | > Is Apple way ahead or is it just less popular? | | They're definitely solving a narrower problem but they do | appear to have it solved. Is there even a subset of | hardware configurations for which this is the case with | Linux? (if there is I would love to know about it) | r-w wrote: | > Is there even a subset of hardware configurations for | which this is the case with Linux? | | That's not how cross-platform, cross-application software | works. Linux is used for everything. Every other change | for power efficiency will get balanced out by another | change for raw performance. | driverdan wrote: | [citation needed] | jolux wrote: | That's incredible. How do they measure that? Does their CI | somehow measure power impact on a set of real devices? | ruffrey wrote: | Apple is designing much of the silicon. Measuring power | usage is a core competency. | user_7832 wrote: | Sorry, what does CI stand for? | TobTobXX wrote: | Continuous integration -- Software development practice | based on frequent submission of granular changes | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration | | ... basically check every small commit, ideally end-to-end. | user_7832 wrote: | Thanks! | goodpoint wrote: | On the contrary. Linux runs on any Android or FLOSS phone, | almost every car and plane, TV, router, and plenty of | industrial devices. | | The amount of testing that Linux goes through is staggering. | | This has to be a specific bug on that platform in its | specific configuration. | jshier wrote: | I find that hard to believe considering everything else that | makes it past not only Apple's CI, but their automatic and | manual QA testing, their beta process, and multiple public | releases. I know they have to do something in their CI, but | I'd like to see any evidence of your claim. | davidcuddeback wrote: | Perhaps Spectre/Meltdown mitigations? | widdakay wrote: | I think this also shows how inefficient modern website hosting | is. The fact that this person was able to get a raspberry pi to | host the #1 website on HN powered by a small 50 watt solar panel | is very cool (meaning maybe 10w average power budget), but also | shouldn't be as uncommon as it is today. To put this in | perspective, a modern server uses 50-100 watts idle doing | nothing, and many more under load. To handle the top of HN, the | developer probably would use load balancing and other tech, | multiplying the power usage accordingly. Edit: fixing typos. | tyingq wrote: | I see a fair amount of stories here where the endpoint appears | to be a VPS, sometimes fronted by a CDN. It's hard to say | exactly how efficient that is, since configurations vary, but | it's likely pretty good. Sure, there's hungry servers under | there, but the multi-tenancy spreads that out. | gandalfian wrote: | Though topical thought, the Uk NHS site is text and blue | hyperlinks. Its still collapsing tonight because the prime | minister just announced booster jabs available for everyone. | (Guess what I'm spending my evening doing). So you can't always | win. | secondcoming wrote: | It'd be interesting to know what you actually are doing! | | Thoughts and Prayers, etc | gandalfian wrote: | Oh, actually, just browsing to kill time while watching the | open browser window at the side refresh on the NHS booking | site hoping it will work long enough to give me a booster | jab appointment. It alternates between "you are in a queue | ten minutes to go" and "our site is overloaded please try | later" for about two hours now. Everyone else between the | ages of 18-50 in the UK is basically doing the same thing, | hammering the site. Its not quite as life and death | exciting as I make it sound.... | ascar wrote: | The key here is that it's just a very simple website with very | low computational requirements. | zucker42 wrote: | And yet it provides the same amount of information as other | websites 10 or 100 times it's weight. | rabuse wrote: | It's a static page... not everything is a static page in the | web world. | micromacrofoot wrote: | a lot of the web would probably be better off if it were | giancarlostoro wrote: | I think so, WordPress that isnt cached to a frozen state on | the backend is kind of silly in my eyes, the only exception | would be comments, but you could hack around that by using | Disqus or something, voila. | beebeepka wrote: | Forcing people to use disqus is a fantastic way to fuck | over your userbase | Cpoll wrote: | > you could hack around that by using Disqus | | But that's not actually solving the problem, it's just | offloading it. Not to mention that you're selling your | community to yet another tracking company, and jacking up | user page load time. | mro_name wrote: | >> by Disqus or something | | depends on what you want, the low end is incoming | comments as emails and putting them semi-manually into an | iframe on the unchanged static article page. Doing it | myself at https://blog.mro.name/2019/05/wp-to-hugo- | making-of/ and sacrificed commenter speed. | | Others may easily be more sophisticated than above | brutalist solution. But still: comments in iframes align | well with static sites IMO. | | Edit: even better may be to phase in comments from HN or | the fediverse or whatever you care about into an iframe. | Be it copied or inline and re-styled. | charrondev wrote: | I'm a technical lead for a SaaS community forum product | and we handle billions of page views a month. Many of | them don't put any load on our servers though because | guest pages are cached with a short duration and the | cached page gets served up. | | Today that's cloudflare but in the past it was varnish. | | Otherwise it is very dynamic. Different users have access | to different content so we generally can't cache full | pages at the edge for authenticated users. | giancarlostoro wrote: | I like this approach, is there something specific you're | using to automate this at least in part? I feel like it | could be made into a simple service with very limited JS | to make it less "slow", unless you decide to manually | approve of a comment. | johannes1234321 wrote: | Even comments come quite rarely in most cases, so that | the complete page with comments can be cached. | MayeulC wrote: | I agree, but comments could also be static. Have a | service handle comment submission, regenerate the page a | bit later. If displaying to the user is an issue, do it | client side. Most websites use a moderation queue anyway. | | One could even generate a dedicated HTML page for the | comments, and include it in an iframe, although inlining | them is probably more performant. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Just POST to a PHP script that regenerates the cached | HTML including comments. | IncRnd wrote: | Comments are far from the only exception to static page | caches! There are often dynamic changes via plugins or | functions.php. There are shortcodes and a number of other | examples too. | DietPi wrote: | It is not a Raspberry Pi, but an Olimex Olinuxino A20 Lime 2 | and a 30W solar panel: | https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html#hardware | | But yes, web hosting, especially for small/mid traffic websites | has become very cheap (in power consumption and in money), | especially for static websites where CDNs can be used to serve | assets and static content from edge caches. A full x86 server | or PC is often total overkill and a little SBC sufficient | instead. | | It is a dual core CPU btw, to bring the average CPU load into | perspective. A very interesting project as a prove of concept, | also for others to adopt in countries with unstable electricity | supply and/or in relation high electricity costs :). | berkes wrote: | Did the author use a CDN? Because that's kindof cheating: you | are just having another (free) service burning the | electricity for you. | | I assumed the solar server serves the sites directly, because | of this. Maybe I was wrong. | goodpoint wrote: | There is no CDN, thankfully. | DietPi wrote: | True, in this case it is great, somehow mandatory, that it | is fully self-contained :). However, dynamic content like | the current power consumption and CPU load would still need | be served by the origin, or cached at the CDN with short | timeouts only. | | Using CDNs was more an idea/suggestion for others who take | this project as an inspiration to run their own website | even with small hardware, unstable electricity supply | and/or expensive/limited bandwidth, where a CDN can further | reduce server load and traffic. Also when speaking about | efficiency of the Internet in general, using small SBCs | where sufficient, a CDN usually serves assets/content much | more effective, given a network where a particular edge | server is usually closer to the visitor than the origin | server, and hardware that is specifically designed and run | for that purpose and can be assumed to be highly loaded | (less wasted power consumption). So as long as one trusts a | CDN, or the content is not of any security or privacy | concerns, it is usually a reasonable choice to make use of | it :). | agumonkey wrote: | i wonder how much information is really needed on wires today | driverdan wrote: | > I think this also shows how inefficient modern website | hosting is. | | I suspect it's the opposite. Hosting a static site like this on | a service designed for it is going to use less power than using | dedicated hardware. Single server can host hundred to thousands | of static sites. The power use per site is going to be much | lower. | dheera wrote: | I mean, that's because a lot of websites these days are built | on bloat on top of bloat. A periodically generated static HTML | page is pretty easy to take HN load. | giancarlostoro wrote: | It's mostly static files, if it was a modern SPA with APIs and | such, it would probably crash having to fetch the same data for | what is quite literally a static site. | anchpop wrote: | I think I've mentioned this before, but nothing about SPAs | require that level of bloat. My personal site | (https://chadnauseam.com/) uses React and SPA-type features | like preloading internal pages so they load instantly when | you click a link, but almost all of it works fine with js | disabled. It used to get a perfect score on lighthouse too | but it doesn't anymore :( | mro_name wrote: | embracing outages, though reducing them, is revolutionary, I | guess. | | Just not serving everybody all the time. | Eikon wrote: | > a modern server uses 50-100 watts idle doing nothing | | I'm really tired of hearing this. "Serverless because otherwise | server doing nothing", "very small virtual machine because | otherwise server doing nothing". | | The server is not doing "nothing" it's waiting for incoming | requests. It's like if you told "this cashier is doing nothing | because there is no customers in the store". | | When a server is loaded at capacity minus some margin, | latencies are going up, which may not always be acceptable. | Also, not every web workload scales linearly nor is cacheable | and traffic patterns may not be that predictable and some | requests may generate higher loads. | | Managing capacity is way more involved that just "this server | is doing nothing". | | Also, many of these technologies supposedly reducing "idle | time" such as "serverless" are usually incredibly wasteful | where handling a single request may start a completely new | environment and may pull resources across the globe. | IncRnd wrote: | If there are 100 servers but only one is needed to handle the | user traffic, then 99% of those servers are considered to be | "doing nothing" even if they are powered on and running | software. At the end of the day, running that software is | meaningless to the business and to customers. | MobiusHorizons wrote: | I think the point was that "ready and waiting" is valuable | to the end customer, even if it only makes a different | later when they are doing something. It's kind-of like how | firemen are valuable even when they are not getting calls, | because they are available for low latency response instead | of busy doing something else. The idea that this is just | wasted computation is therefore somewhat disingenuous. | MayeulC wrote: | Oh, but it could be improved. Linux can cold boot under | 300ms (easier if you control the BIOS and can tune it for | speed, like coreboot can), faster if resuming from RAM. | That should allow you to perform load-balancing while | powering off the extra capacity (using wake-on-lan). | | If load becomes too important for the SBC or close to | capacity, wake the server, and perform a handover once | it's up. You can either hold the packets and use the SBC | as a proxy, or change your router's config to point to | the newly awakened server (alternatively, just exchange | IP or MAC addresses). With a bit of magic to avoid | closing existing connections (I believe home ISP routers | should keep NAT connections open if a port forward is | changed), it would work. Obviously it's even easier with | a proper load balancer. | | edit: actually even a router might be able to handle low | loads | | There seems to be surprisingly little interest in this | (closest I found was | https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/89271 ). | | So yeah, it's still wasted power and computation in my | opinion. "Ready and waiting" should not take 100W per | server, but be closer to 0.1W (WoL), or lower if managing | state from a central node. I guess it's not worth | optimizing for most people, and big cloud probably does | something similar already. | | In a way, it's a bit like big.LITTLE with additional | latency: small, power-efficient vs big, fast, inefficient | for small loads. | LtdJorge wrote: | Modern CPUs go to lower power states super quickly and | draw almost nothing. The thing is, if the server is | running many VMs, there's no way it's going to a low | power state, eveb if some are doing nothing (others will | be). You also have 10 jet engines blowing air at the | front, which probably is more than the CPU uses when both | are idle. | marcosdumay wrote: | Still, if you switch 100 servers with 100 owners all | waiting for connections for 1 server hosting 100 sites | and 99 other in a low power mode waiting for traffic, you | save a lot of power and doesn't lose much. | | Anyway, it would be waste even if you couldn't save it at | all. "Waste" is simply a name for things we consume but | don't actually use. All industries use that term. | hpen wrote: | Yeah not like the requirements have changed at all........ | [deleted] | hinkley wrote: | We waste so many resources customizing each response to time | and observer and it's just nuts. Most people aren't going to | notice if a calculation is being debounced, amortizing it over | hundreds of seconds or requests. Instant gratification is the | most expensive thing by far. And debouncing has such a profound | effect similar to load shedding for traffic bursts, it really | should be front and center in the literature. | | When I was young I worked on a project that was so inefficient | that I was professionally embarrassed to have my name | associated with it. So I moved heaven and earth to fix it. Gave | myself an RSI before I learned to better automate some | transformations. | | Today I'm also working on another, lesser embarrassment, but | I'm not working weekends and holidays on it anymore. I'm not a | hero surrounded by villains, I'm an observant person drowning | in a sea of apathetic faces. | | The amount of hardware we have per user request should have | gotten someone fired. Most of the people responsible are gone, | but one is still here complecting anything that isn't nailed | down, and few others know enough to realize that the reason | they don't feel confident in the code is because someone | intentionally made it that way, and you should not be looking | up to those people. They are literally making you dumber. | tentacleuno wrote: | Hey @dang, you wouldn't happen to know anything about how | Hacker News is hosted, would you? Reading this has piqued my | curiosity. If time / your position permits, of course. | smoldesu wrote: | IIRC it's just stored on someone's Dell Inspiron that they've | got laying around in an office. Might be outdated info, but | it's really nothing special if memory serves. | justsaying9 wrote: | Yeah, and apparently the load is such a problem for them, | their web server will permanently autoban your IP if you | load too many articles at once, say 10-15 that you were | planning to save and read offline. | | Then if you email to ask 'Wtf', tiny violins will play as | they explain they are too broke and impoverished to afford | bandwidth enough to not do this, while helpfully suggesting | you go to a different internet connection to fill out a | form to unblock yourself. | | Must be tough times at YCombinator, spending all those | billions on junk Web Bubble 2.0 companies and none left to | spare for HN bandwidth, or say a proper index so you can | look up old articles. | detaro wrote: | From what I remember from previous posts by dang: It's living | on a single dedicated server with some hosting company (I | think you can look up the IP to figure out which) - at least | a while ago the code also was single-core, not sure if that | is still the case. (in the past it used cloudflare for | caching, but hasn't in a few years) | [deleted] | marricks wrote: | I hate to be that old foggy but, aren't websites just getting | worse and bloated with JS crap? | | I've had a couple websites I use daily for work just get flashy | new interfaces which causes 1/3 to 1/2 second delays in the | interface which used to not exist, previously they just had | normal page load delays. | | For example, SalesForce Lightning, their UI overhaul. Old UI is | mainly just flat HTML with some loading on fields. New UI | doesn't have as many page loads it seems but wherever you | navigate to takes far longer to load because of api calls or | just baaad JS. | | Slow for the user, slow for the server. It's almost like the | people who push website technology are the same one selling you | servers. Hate it and want to go back. | onion2k wrote: | _aren't websites just getting worse and bloated with JS crap_ | | Maybe they are, but that bloat is just some static files that | are sent to the user as far as the web server is concerned. | They should have no practical impact on the battery life of | the server. | | There are JS sites that render on the server as well, but | that's not the bloat you mean. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | And, heck, there's a solid argument that server-side | rendering is more environmentally efficient, since the work | is done in a data-center, which can (1) utilize caching to | avoid re-doing work and (2) be built in an optimal location | for electricity generation. | nathanfig wrote: | Conversely, you are losing the distributed computing | gained by rendering on the client, and therefore need a | bigger server to scale when needed. And HTTP caching can | and should be used for API responses as well. | chakkepolja wrote: | I think he is talking about badly written JS code serving | the APIs and the overhead of it. | | Of course it's hard to debate whether JS, Java or PHP is | most inefficient in that regard. | onion2k wrote: | I strongly believe that the efficiency of an API is 1% | down to the language it's coded in, and 99% down to who | coded it. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Yes and no; while it's still true that you can write | FORTRAN in any language, there are network effects that | mean the effort required to write efficient code is | different per language/community/framework. | labster wrote: | Corollary: The average API is far less efficient than the | languages you like to complain about their efficiency. | Beached wrote: | it's gotten out of hand imo. page load times take longer than | when I was browsing the web on dialup in many cases. | mro_name wrote: | Website Obesity crisis going on and on: | https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm | | Was here on HN several times, sadly still the case. | jmondi wrote: | What a false equivalence. You are comparing static sites of | the past to dynamic sites of today. Apples to oranges. | _jal wrote: | When you replace one with the other and notice a | substantial change in time-required-for-task, I think you | can make comparisons. | Nextgrid wrote: | The vast majority of sites don't need to be dynamic | though. | RussianCow wrote: | [citation needed] | | Websites have become significantly more complex in the | last two decades. | dylan604 wrote: | For the user's benefit, or for the dev's? | Nextgrid wrote: | Or the advertises/whatever assholes profit of | "engagement"? | netizen-936824 wrote: | I don't want my browser to be loading entire JS | frameworks and trackers and whatever other crap just to | read a bunch of text. That's absolutely nonsensical | damir wrote: | I'm using two browsers, one with disabled JS (primary) | and vanilla one. When and only WHEN page doesn't load on | non-js browser (and if I really, really, reaaaally want | that piece of content) then maybe I will use vanilla | browser... | | Browsing with js disabled is fast, pages load quickly, | almost no trackers and there are "old" or "text" versions | of sites still available... old.reddit, old.twitter or | nitter instances... | | Heck, even google has one... | | To be honest, I just use dillo browser most of the time. | Small, speedy and safer then most... | | Edit: typo. | Nextgrid wrote: | Let's look at Twitter for a real-world example. The core | concept of it hasn't changed, it still just has to | display a blurb of a few hundred characters at most. Back | in the day this was achieved by server-side-rendered HTML | and a simple form POST. I don't have the numbers for the | page back then but I'd estimate it at 100KB - nowadays | it's a multi-megabyte-sized pile of shit that often fails | at its primary purpose of displaying a block of text with | a stupid "something went wrong" message or endless | spinner. | | The "new" Reddit is also a good example. Even ignoring | all the user-hostile functionality changes, the actual | experience is still slower and less reliable. | kgeist wrote: | I don't know, we're currently rewriting our UI from the | classic "PHP renders everything with almost zero JS" to the | more modern "single page application with a crap ton of JS" | and the new UI feels much faster to me. The old way was to | resend and rerender everything on each click, which is | problematic for complex UIs with a lot of data. | robbedpeter wrote: | I agree. There needs to be a substantial effort in web | development to shed the bloat. Clean and small reduces issues | with resources, security, and maintainability. The status quo | is gross. | hattmall wrote: | I agree with this so so much. | | The problem is too much reliances on frameworks and add on | libraries. | | Developers will import an entire framework that for the | benefit of a single feature. It's mind blowing to look at the | amount of js includes for seemingly simple sites. | | Stackoverflow answers that direct you to import a library or | framework should be banned in most cases. | | I will often have to scroll past several answers that say to | import a library before finding a simple and functional | answer that uses only a few lines of code down near the | bottom. Which in my eyes is the real answer. I often wonder | if there's a behind the scenes effort on SO to promote | certain includes. | | The entire ecosystem of some languages / implementations | relies on this far too heavily. | | We are seeing some of the consequences other than just | bloated systems from this style of coding with malicious node | packages. | throwaway11602 wrote: | I am guilty of this, and I feel bad for it. I am not a | front end developer, but I have built a few web sites for | various projects here and there. I certainly don't NEED to | use a front-end framework, but I don't want have to spend a | ton of time crafting CSS rules and figuing out how many | divs to nest. To get something done quickly, my choices | pretty much boil down to plain, unstyled, pages, or a full | blown framework like Vuetify. So far, I haven't found | anything in between. I would love to find a CSS library | that I can just import and be able to create simple, nicely | styled pages, e.g. that look Material-esque, without | jQuery, node, npm, gulp, grunt, sass, and all that jazz. | mro_name wrote: | do you know the matrix movie quote "but there is no | spoon" - maybe the framework you look for is vanilla CSS. | Write sensible markup to hold your content (almost no | divs), CSS it and be good. Sounds that feasible? | throwaway11602 wrote: | > ... vanilla CSS... Sounds that feasible? | | Vanilla CSS is the other end of the spectrum, but the | problem is there is apparently nothing between hand- | crafted CSS and a full front-end framework. People, like | me, who are not good at design will choose the | convenience of the latter over going through the tedium | of the former, even if we don't really want to. | mro_name wrote: | You won't be a sculptor if you avoid the chisel. If in | rome, do as the romans do. If you want to swim, you'll | get wet. | | There is no design in/for the web without html+css, is | there? | | Edit: by removing 3rd parties from your project you | remove a lot of overhead and current and future risk. But | be warned: Maybe your company sells exactly that for a | good margin and you ruin the business model. | chakkepolja wrote: | What's your opinion about bootstrap? Unfashionable I get | it, but doesn't it serve the purpose? | throwaway11602 wrote: | It's been a long time since I looked at Bootstrap. I | don't remember it being anywhere near as easy to create a | nice-looking page with it as it is with Vuetify. | mattl wrote: | Bootstrap is unfashionable? | citizenkeen wrote: | In the same way that Corollas, Applebee's, and Walmart | brand jeans are unfashionable, yes. | simion314 wrote: | >and bloated with JS crap? | | CSS animations too , especially the ones that use infinite. | marricks wrote: | I like a good clean CSS animation! They can be very short | and meaningful. Maybe not for daily driver UI but | somethings I like them. | | Infinite scrolling could be annoying with animations | though, I grant you that. | simion314 wrote: | My issue is with infinite animations, constantly | moving/blinking stuff. They also do not have same effect | on different system configurations so you might not | notice any effect on your dev machine and on users it | makes the page unusable, and some are super distracting). | scrollaway wrote: | Nothing to do with site hosting. css animations don't eat | the server's CPU; nor does JS bloat (other than bandwidth). | Retric wrote: | JS bloat can have significant server overhead when data | is loaded dynamically. It's generally more efficient to | have one GET request that can be heavily optimized than a | lot of tiny XMLHttpRequest that need to be parsed | separately. That may flip around when someone spends a | long time interacting with a SPA, but there is plenty of | truly terrible code in the wild. | RussianCow wrote: | > It's generally more efficient to have one GET request | that can be heavily optimized than a lot of tiny | XMLHttpRequest that need to be parsed separately. | | Without context, this statement is misleading at best and | downright false at worst. You're right that splitting up | a single request into multiple would incur a small | performance penalty, but you also generally gain other | advantages like more localized caching and the ability to | conditionally skip requests. In the long run, those | advantages may actually make your app significantly more | efficient. But without discussing details like this, it's | pointless to make wild assumptions about performance. | Retric wrote: | The context was JS bloat, so we are specifically talking | about the subset of poorly written sites. When it's | possible to shoot yourself in the foot many people will | do so. | | That said, if you ever actually profile things you will | find the overhead per request is actually quite high. | There is a clear tendency to request far to little data | at a time. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | I've built embedded web interfaces serving up static | pages that were precompressed with gzip and then used XHR | to fill in dynamic content. I kept it under 100K for the | uncached download (zero third party scripts). Everything | worked well and was reasonably lightweight as long as you | avoided framework bloat. Not having to compress anything | on device helps a bit on energy usage although that | wasn't a concern. | simion314 wrote: | yes, I wanted to add that css (especially | infinite)animation also eats the client energy and CPU. | culi wrote: | You're not alone in feeling this way | | https://handmade.network/manifesto | BostonEnginerd wrote: | We've recently transitioned to Salesforce for a project. It's | remarkable how laggy the interface is. Removing a line from a | quote takes three clicks and four seconds. The UI also | doesn't always refresh the items in a reasonable period of | time, requiring a page reload. | | Reloading the page is like 20MB as well. Great when you're | tethered to your phone. | flatiron wrote: | The new lightning makes it such a pain to do my time cards. | Try to open my sub projects to see how many hours are left | and have a tab open with my time card and constantly errors | out. I can't be the only person who checks hours left on sub | projects when entering my time. | brightball wrote: | Fwiw, the top of HN isn't all that stress. It mostly comes down | to disk I/O and efficiency of the language. | | I've been at the top of HN for extended hours a couple of times | on just a Heroku hobby dyno with no caching at all, but I had | Cloudflare out front absorbing all the traffic that would have | come from serving static assets. | unclebucknasty wrote: | Not to be contrary, but if your site is largely static _and_ | you 're fronting it with Cloudfare, then you're essentially | saying Cloudfare can handle load. | | Not much revelation there, right? | divbzero wrote: | That's a fair point for GP's Heroku + Cloudflare | deployment. The OP solar site is a better example of | efficient static hosting as it is run on a lightweight | server [1] and not fronted with Cloudflare. The reading at | the bottom of the website indicates 2.70 W power usage at | the moment and over two weeks uptime. | | [1]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about.html#hardware | tazjin wrote: | Cloudflare really doesn't make much of a difference for HN. | The last front page traffic I saw (~a week ago?) was still | at most a handful of QPS. Any nginx instance with default | configuration serving static files from any modern computer | should be able to handle that (given that your link is big | enough). | | Now if you reach the top of a large subreddit, or have a | viral tweet with a link to you, that's a different order of | magnitude. HN is just not that large. | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: | Then why do people talk about the "HN hug of death"? | digitallyfree wrote: | I know people who host a static website on a home dsl | connection with 5Mbps upload, using Cloudflare. The CDN | literally does all the work. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | It's not all so simple. For one, this A20 is connected to a | router which is connected to the grid. The connection used is a | 100 Mb fiber which - thanks to small average page size and very | little JS - is more than enough. The whole thing is in the | owner's home. I have a similar setup, and I wouldn't say "This | is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes | offline" but "This website is served from someone's home, which | means it sometimes goes offline." | goodpoint wrote: | > this also shows how inefficient modern website hosting is | | And this is in a world without distributed, locality-aware | caching. | amelius wrote: | Wouldn't it be way more efficient to run it on some | (virtualized) node in a datacenter that is optimized for it? | hiptobecubic wrote: | Yes but it only matters if you ignore all the constant | factors and sunk costs that exist. For example, I already | _have_ an rpi _and_ a solar panel. My crappy google home mini | wastes more power than this doing absolutely nothing. It 's | kind of pointless to hyper-optimize efficiency of a little | server like this given all the waste around it. | rackjack wrote: | Relevant, and from the same website: | | https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is... | londons_explore wrote: | Interesting and non-obvious fact about solar panels... | | The optimal angle for generating as much power as possible from | the panels is very different to the optimal angle for powering | something year round. | | If you want to power something year round, it's the power in | winter you need to maximize - so you angle the panel very steep | to collect winter sun. In the summer, this angle is far from | optimal, but due to more hours of sunlight there will still be | plenty to power whatever device it is you want to be always | powered. | obblekk wrote: | *Technically*, this is very cool, impressive, and generally an | elegant work of art. | | *Pragmatically*, I see 2 flaws in their thesis (as explained on | the about page): | | >> "The entire network already consumes 10% of global electricity | production with traffic doubling roughly every 2 years" | | I think the implication is electricity consumption will also | double roughly every 2 years, but Moore's law actually operates | on approx. same timeline, so traffic can continue doubling at | this rate without an increase in energy consumption. *This is why | technology is brilliant.* It allows us to do much much more with | the same resources. We should want more technological innovation. | | >> " These black-and-white images are then coloured according to | the pertaining content category via the browser's native image | manipulation capacities" | | This essentially shifts some of the burden of computation from | the server (PNG compression) to the browser (dithering | interpretation). This may save some energy, or it may increase | energy as most personal computer processors are much less | efficient than server processors, and don't benefit from energy | savings from caching. I'm not sure where it nets out, but just | solely focusing on reducing server compute time isn't necessarily | a path toward sustainability if it shifts more computation to the | client. | | Very happy to hear if I've misinterpreted the thesis. Again, I | commend the technical work itself. | y4mi wrote: | Check out the upcoming ATX power consumption and compare it to | what we're using currently... | | What you said was true for a very long time, but Moore's law | has slowed down a lot over the last 5yrs and power consumption | has increased significantly, and is about to become | unreasonable in my opinion. | | Maximum power draw of 2.4 kw for about to 10% of the uptime is | ... sadly going to be reality soon. | rob_c wrote: | Very cool :D | Jamie9912 wrote: | This site loaded instantly for me.. I also get 210ms RTT to | Barcelona from Australia. That's a first | pym4n wrote: | This is cool! Now I know what to do with some old PIs! :D | pezzana wrote: | This is a fascinating site beyond the power indicator. For | example, a recent article discusses low-tech solar panels: | | > ... To start with, ever since the 1950s, solar panels have been | unfit for recycling, resulting in a waste stream that ends up in | landfills. This waste stream will grow significantly during the | coming years. Solar panels are discarded only after at least 25 | to 30 years, and most have been installed only in recent years. | By 2050, researchers expect that almost 80 million tonnes of | solar panels will reach the end of their lives. 1 2 3 That is a | significant waste of resources and a danger to the environment - | discarded solar PV panels contain toxic elements and present a | fire hazard. | | https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low... | stephen_g wrote: | We have some solar panel recycling companies coming online here | in Australia already ([1] for example, but there are at least | three or four other companies I've heard of starting up), and | I'm sure that will be the case elsewhere as well, so I don't | know how accurate that is. | | It's worth putting it in perspective too - huge amounts of | waste are generated in power generation that solar is | replacing, like coal power. One source (quoting research from | IEA but the original document link is dead now) puts the amount | of coal ash produced each year at 3.7 billion tons [2]. Here in | Australia, it makes up more than one fifth of all waste | produced in the country, and most of it is just dumped (in some | places around the world it's used as an additive in concrete). | But coal fly ash is full of highly toxic elements, including | heavy metals. | | 1. https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-first-solar-panel- | rec... 2. https://www.envirojustice.org.au/wp- | content/uploads/2019/07/... | culi wrote: | To put that in perspective, in 2019 we generated a total of | 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste.[0] By 2050, we expect to | be generating 6 million new metric tons of e-waste from solar | panels alone.[1] | | [0] https://ewastemonitor.info/gem-2020/ [1] | https://grist.org/energy/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-wh... | onethought wrote: | How is PV unfit for recycling? | | It's pure silicon, with something like Boron on it. Losslessly | recycling might be challenge, but you could definitely reuse | all the Silicon and remake another panel. Which toxic elements | do you mean? What's the fire hazard? | justsaying9 wrote: | It is believed they over time slowly absorb rays of smugness | from virtue signalling urbanites in the surrounding vicinity, | gradually rendering the panel material radioactive and unfit | for future use, even after recycling. Some believe this | effect can be mitigated by first sprinkling the unit with the | used oil from a sacrificed Chevy 350 engine, while walking in | a counterclockwise circle and chanting a priestly | incantation. More scientific study is needed to confirm or | deny the efficacy of this approach. | culi wrote: | While solar cells might be almost pure silicon, the panels | themselves use a lot more materials to work. For example, 2% | of all global copper production was just for panels 2018. The | frames and the cells both use aluminum (the actual most | abundant material overall). Silver, the most expensive | component, has been pushed from about 400mg per panel in 2007 | to about 100mg per panel today.[0] | | Each solar panel contains about 14mg of lead which means | around 4.4k tons were used in the production of solar panels | in 2018.[1] This is much smaller than, say batteries (which | solar panels drive a huge demand for), but is still | significant considering lead has been found to leak into the | environment from solar panels even from regular rainfall.[2] | | In 2017, a study found that as much as 62% of the cadmium | from cadmium telluride models were leached out at room | temperature depending mostly on acidity of the solutions.[3] | | "Even only one day of leaching of two module pieces in 1 day | of acid rain and neutral solution is sufficient to exceed the | World Health Organization (WHO) drinking water limit: for Cd | the threshold limit is 3 ug=L.33) Even under alkaline | conditions (pH 11), it takes only three days to exceed this | limit. After nearly one year, the Cd concentration cCd in | acidic solutions is almost 20000 ug=L (62%)" [4] | | [0] https://www.freeingenergy.com/do-we-have-enough- | materials-to... [1] https://www.freeingenergy.com/are-solar- | panels-really-full-o... [2] | https://www.zmescience.com/science/solar-panels-lead- | plants-... [3] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.7567/JJA | P.56.08MD02/me... [4] https://sci- | hub.se/https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.756... | scrose wrote: | Semi-related --- does anyone have recommendations for where to | find small hobbyist solar panels and/or kits to experiment with | for small devices like a Pi? | | Also curious about how a setup like this compares with using a | traditional electricity source in terms of cost per hr of running | the site off of solar with batteries. What is the break even | point against utility costs over there(if there is one)? And are | there any concerns about the sustainability of a setup like this | if it's adopted on a larger scale? | noman-land wrote: | Adafruit has a variety of them. | | https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=solar%20panel | louwhopley wrote: | Sparkfun is a great goto place for electronic stuff like this. | However, I'm sure there's more specialized solar panel sources. | | Https://sparkfun.com | folmar wrote: | For hobby/experiment use decomissioned panels from upgaded | farms, sometimes you can get two years old panels that were | swapped for more efficient ones for a fraction of the original | price. | | For setup with batteries there is (depending slightly on local | electricy cost) no long time break-even - the battery | deprecation due to discharge cycle costs more than electricity | from the utility. | stephen_g wrote: | I'd look for solar panels intended for camping. | | Probably eBay or Amazon is the easiest place to look for cheap | gear. Hobbyist electronic stores might be a good source too | depending on the country (here in Australia Jaycar has some | fairly good value panels and PWM solar charge controllers). | strickvl wrote: | If you're in the UK, Pimoroni | (https://shop.pimoroni.com/?q=solar) has some good options as | well. | driverdan wrote: | Unless you don't have the space there's no reason to go smaller | than a 100W panel. You can find them used for $50 or less. For | smaller panels the cost per watt goes up enough that it ends up | costing the same for less output. | DavidGetchel wrote: | For small panels, check sites already suggested by others. If | you want to experiment with larger panels, craigslist or | similar have good deals. Used panels or new leftovers from a | pallet. | | I've paid $130ish each for 4 panels 280w-315w. And since it's | local, you don't get dinged for shipping. | unbanned wrote: | I love this. I want to see more things like this hitting HN. | ed25519FUUU wrote: | This is such an amazingly simple thing to do that I'm surprised | it shows up so consistently on HN. | | A raspberry pi or similar, a solar panel, a charge controller, | and a battery. | | Running everything off it (router, modem) would be cooler, since | that's likely powered from the home and connected via WiFi. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-12 23:00 UTC)