Nissan Leaf: The First Affordable Electric Car?
If you’re wondering when we’ll finally have an all-electric car that’s both affordable and dependable, Nissan may have the answer. The all-electric, five-passenger Leaf sedan goes on sale in December in select markets, with nationwide availability starting in 2011. The Leaf is highway-capable, as it can top 70 mph, and its range (about 100 miles) more than covers average commutes. But what really sets the Leaf apart from other electric cars is its price. Starting at about $33,000, the Leaf’s price tag can fall to as low as about $25,000 after tax incentives. Actually driving the Leaf will cost significantly less than a comparable gas car. Recharging the Leaf can cost less than $3 per “fill up.” Sound promising?
Since I moved to the new house, I took all my solar stuff down, all that is left is some conduit, and a few other things that make holes in the roof. I’ll remove these when I’m ready to put a new roof on, later this year.
I’d like to avoid mounting panels on the house, this time. First of all I have plenty of space, so I shouldn’t have to, second, the roof has a much steeper angle, and will make work much harder, and the panels less efficient. Third, I think it will look better not having panels obvious from the street. For these reasons I am looking into ground mounting panels. Examples:
This will make placement much easier, and maintenance much easier. They will also run cooler as they wont be attached to a hot roof. Now just to see how hard this will be to get drawn, approved, and purchased.
FAMiLab is a non-profit community-based art and technology collective running out of Orlando, Fl (i.e. a hackerspace). The ultimate goal of the FAMiLab is to provide a safe space where hackers, makers, and crafters can wield their imagination in any way they see fit. Think of the FAMiLab as a club for geeks! Be ye art geek, LARP geek, code geek, lab geek, or any geek in between–we would like you to join us at the lab and teach a workshop, lead a lecture, or simply work on a project while surrounded by awesome people. If you can think it, and can find the supplies, it’s fair game at the lab.
http://www.familab.org/
From the paper this week…
Turn ignition from OFF to RUN 8 times within 10 seconds, with the 8th time ending in
RUN. All doors will lock then unlock to confirm programming mode. Within 20 seconds,
press any button on 1st remote transmitter. Door locks will cycle to confirm programming.
Within 20 seconds, press any button on 2nd transmitter (up to 4 transmitters total possible).
Turn ignition to OFF. Locks will again cycle to indicate end of programming mode
A lot has changed just in the past 30 days on this project. I’m running on the B-Rad fork of this, and currently my WDTV has:
Ethernet via a wii usb net adaptor, and thus it has IP.
Webserver
FTP Server
Telnet
Samba
Cron
It can also now mount CIFS or NFS shares for streaming goodness
Rss Feed reader scrolls across the bottom
Weather widget (for 5 day weather and temp high low)
Quick and dirty instructions
- Copy files to root of thumb drive
- plug thumb drive in
- plug network adaptor in
- boot
- finds new firmware
- install
- reboots
- note IP address on boot. (it will do strange things during its first boot)
- http://ip address/osd/weather
- Put in city and F
- save
- note cron error
- click to install cron
- http://ip address/osd/rss
- change rss feed
- http://ip address
- shares
- cifs shares
- enter share info
- Done
- Seems as though you need to leave these files in the root of an attached thumb/hd, otherwise it cant run the webserver/etc I just have a 1 gig thumb drive connected, but i’ve also putthe files on the hd that was attached.
You can find my archive at http://www.robpatton.com/wdtv/WDTVFiles.zip
I’ve also realized tonight, that this thing can play an .iso image of a dvd as well as a .mt2s (direct rip of a BD), an .mt, and mkv, divx, mpg1,2,4, h264, etc etc etc. I’m not sure what it CANT play, but I’m looking..
Netflix bringing movie downloads to Wii? US rental firm sounding out Wii users about online films
We all know that Nintendo is intent on bringing movie downloads to the Wii console, but it may be coming sooner than we thought.
Reports are suggesting that Nintendo is already in talks with US movie rental firm Netflix about a Wii-specific download service similar to that available for the Xbox 360.
Survey says maybe
A survey sent to Netflix customers raises the possibility, saying: “Imagine that, as an added benefit to DVDs by mail, Netflix offers its members the ability to watch movies & TV episodes instantly on their TV via their Nintendo Wii.”
While the Xbox 360 supports Netflix downloads through the Xbox LIVE online service, the putative Wii service will require users to load up something called a ‘Netflix Instant Streaming Disc’ whenever they want to take the console for a spin round the online store.
Firmware issue
In the absence of any official word from Nintendo on the Netflix deal, that could, of course, change to see the streaming software included on the Wii firmware in future.
Posted by: RobPatton in Tech
My parts (most of them, at least) arrived Thursday night, and I just couldn’t stop myself from putting it together. I don’t have a case picked out for it yet, but its running anyway. Even with Vista Ultimate 64, its pretty fast.
Currently, it is:
EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
SAPPHIRE 100259L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
mushkin 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit
Corsair 750watt power supply (this thing will be hungry for clean power)
This motherboard is the most impressive board, I’ve seen. Onboard 2 digit display for post test codes and proc temp. Power switch, Reset switch, and NVRAM reset button. All very impressive to diag the board…
I sure do manage to use/use up a lot of batteries, so I end up with a graveyard of ones that need to go to the EWaste section at the Transfer station. About now is when other people find similar things they want me to haul off for them. You’ll notice the big blue battery is one of the group that was in the old Solar Power project. 75% of batteries just isn’t enuf.
Well, This is it. The final set of hardware, ready to install. Its capable of completely working as is, just wouldn’t pass code due to lack of conduits, and one or two instances of incorrectly sized wire (that aren’t a problem, but could be, I suppose)
You’ll notice the XW6048, midnte solar epanel, 2 Xantrex XW Mppts. and the brand new 250Ah batteries.
Not seen, Apollo T80 Charge controller, Xantrex T40 CC, and SW5548 backup Inverter.