[OLPC India] [Community-news] OLPC News 2007-10-20

[Arjun Sarwal]

Ajay,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Our approach was to not look from a motor/dynamo etc. point of view. Our
approach was to develop power solutions around locally available mechanisms.
At the village (pilot site near Mumbai) we explored the ideas of using solar
power (in Mumbai sunlight is not consistently strong) , running water (we
couldn't find any local water bodies nearby), wind power (no wind in the
that area), mounting small dynamos on bicycles (we found out that in that
area bicycles aren't that common at all, esp in that village) ....but the
village had an abundance of cattle - that were being used in the fields. So
we decided to design something around that.

Having  said that, the solution is of course not a one-for-all solution, but
is an example of how locally available mechanisms can be leveraged  to
charge the laptops. The mechanical and electrical design would be re-usable
in a way that other driving mechanisms at other places could be used to
drive a dynamo/alternator by following a similar design approach.

We considered using a small motorcycle/moped engine , but that would lead to
recurring costs of petrol/diesel for the villagers, hence we decided against
it. Minimizing costs, is also an important factor for easy replicability ,
as you would agree.


Thank you for your suggestions and interest , we appreciate them.

Regards,
Arjun



-- 
Arjun Sarwal ( arjun at laptop.org )
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