Thanks to the generous donations I’ve received from various friends and family-of-friends, this project is going forward, full steam ahead. I contacted thirty distributors today throughout Asia Pacific, plus one in America. The Intel distributor in America is this projects safety mechanism of sorts: I have already used motherboards from this supplier before, and they are perfect for the project. However, considering the motherboards and CPUs this project uses are being fabricated in Asia Pacific in the first place, I feel like I could get a better price sourcing components straight from the manufacturer, or from a distributor closer to the supply, therefore I have contacted distributors in Nepal, India, Hong Kong and Shenzhen (in China). We will await their response!
Also, Muni and I went out to buy batteries today for the computers. We picked up three dry cell batteries (which can be discharged without damaging the battery like a deep cycle battery, unlike the standard wet cell battery). The store owner was a nice man who spoke very good English and great technical knowledge of battery technology. He said that he didn’t sell deep cycle (also called marine batteries) variants, although these new Panasonic 46amphour batteries will do something similar for a much cheaper price. I believe the difference between “dry cell” and “deep cycle” is that a deep cycle battery has non-porous plates, which in usage terms means the battery will output a steady 12V regardless of remaining capacity. With a standard wet cell battery, once the battery drops to perhaps 60% or so, the output voltage may only be 11V or less — not enough voltage to power the computers. A fully charged 46aH battery will be able to run the battery for almost two days straight without any extra charge, as the computers draw just over 12W under full load.
That’s all for now.
Charles
I was born in London, England. At the age of ten, I moved to Hong Kong, which opened up a whole new part of the world: Asia. Since then, I have enjoyed traveling to different locales around the world. Having graduated from High School, I am taking a gap year to work on a computer project in Nepal, and later a cultural immersion trip in Ghana. This is the blog I am using to keep the world notified. 