I've been talking about this for fans for quite some time. Battery-powered fans could be smaller, and thus achieve better runtime on the same battery, if they'd point right at the overheated worker.
One idea I had a while ago was that you could use these for saving energy by targeting exposed skin surfaces only. This would be particularly useful for offices: the office can be set to the lower temperature preferred by men, and then women can be targeted by the infrared heaters to keep them comfortable as well, so no one has to be uncomfortable while still saving energy. (It has to default to colder/male preferences because you save more energy by keeping the office as a whole at the lower temperature, and anyway, there's no such thing as an 'anti-heat beam' so you can't cool down a subset.)
Indeed, women in offices now tend to either suffer or sweater. They are solutions, but not good ones. Infrared trackers would allow one to have one's cake of attractive stylish (non-sweater) clothing while not suffering in the eating. So to speak.
If they were pervasive, they could allow institutional users to lower the temperature in their buildings a few degrees. One degree on the thermostat for a large building in New England could equate to a lot of savings in fuel.
It may surprise you but using a micro-controller and some servos is today often an easier and simpler solution than building a complex mechanism using cams and clockworks.
That sounds like a fun project, but economically impractical. When we installed panels on our roof it was cheaper to just lay them flat and buy extra panels to make up the difference, than to install them on static frames to angle them for most efficient energy generation. If static frames are not worth it, dynamic ones are definitely going to be too expensive.
Perhaps at scale, things would be different, but I doubt it.
I have visions of the author setting up a tracker with a simple ir motion sensor setup, testing everything works. Putting the heater on top, and then realising....
I'm kind of surprised these aren't more of a thing, for use in garages/cellars. Or for use in warehouses and other under heated work spaces.
I hope there is still some freedom of speech and this my comment won´t be censored and all readers of Hacker News could see it...Otherwise just ban my account...no need to play childish games...
send me an email and tell me I am out of this comments site also could be an adult talk...
Frewill always evryOne so if some of my comments , because of my operating system , or because Firefox is such a memory hedgeHog and make things slower and buggy or if I misclicked somewhere in the wrong place at the wrong time...All this possibilities are MotherNature telling me what to click and what to write or what to think and , above all in this little specific case, what to publish as comment or abort as unpublished and should be forgotten even by me myself unpublished comment...
So I am happy mother nature helps me...
this headline here, at first sound like a Scandal , really (mark twain aside) Scandalous(new style of avoid SHOUTY/caMelCaSe/spaguettish lack of ,,,comas,,,/ avoidance of verb times conjugations as in using avoid instead of avoidance/ aside, Aside)...
This headline sounded really scandalous for me, because I thought it was talking about weaponry aiming system for war or something, using body heat, and/or infrared lectures to positioning of target and aim. So I have a mental problem and am paranoid and see menaces where they dont exist and maybe hear voices in my mind that dont exist, maybe not, maybe my own minds voice go crazy many times who knows. Maybe similar to veterans who had pos-war traumas and listen to a little firework and jump on the ground thinking its an explosion or aerial attack, but I never had some trauma or shock like that , this is for sure, 100% sure maybe, but well, 100% sure I never been to war or policeman training or any training of this kind (stress and note and tonic on the sentence I said: I was never trained. Never, not even as a soccer player and I am one of the best in the world , yes, soccer player, no analogies or underlines here, but I have never, this is true, wear a professional soccer shoe and , this is true again, I have never played soccer in a soccer match or game or training with other people in a Real Grass Oficial Size or near Oficial Standard Size soccer field. And this is true. So , I repeat: I was never trained...) and I was never in a battle or fight of any kind...so it is not that mental disease as the veterans have, mine is different.
But then I read the article, and you got me, now you know I almost never read any article and only go directly to the comments. You know now that I click 1000 comments page link for each Article headline link I click...I almost never read the article...you know now...I just go directly to the comments page...1000 to 1 is probably a good estimation.
But this one was scandalous and I had to go read and You know I had to go read and they know I was going to go read , so , When I saw it was a parabolic electric heater instantly when I saw the picture, I laughed and smiled and knew It was just a kids Prank...
But then I see really (!!!!!!!!!) "targeting-aim-at-humans' autonomous artificial-driven pray-localization information-processing-system...
very well...
I would speak more about this and why this technology explained here is childish obsolete and naively architected and, at the same time, smart, lets praise the truth, nice one, nice hack, but its like sending a pigeon with a paper attached instead of using Telepathy ( of verbalized thoughts inside the mind) Its like this, when you have Iphone5 cameras and samsumg cameras, and Unity5 for free to process the pixel position info, but I applaude the use of raspberry pi, it is so complicated and obsolete that you need balls and patience and be a Great troubleshooter to make something like he did with home appliances, that said, you can just use phototransistors facing the mobile phone screen to command the opening and closing of the electrical circuits of the power source of your electrical motors ( dont even need steppermotor, actually...
The author seems to be unaware that there are cheap stepper motor controllers available that handle all the tricky details of moving an axis to a given position smoothly. And they are implemented in hardware, so you don't have to sacrifice any CPU cycles to this task.
The bottom level tends to be basic Arduino shields that just switch power, but don't have a current limiting controller. Those need digital signal lines to tell them when to step. They waste a lot of power and can't be used with larger motors.
The next step up is a current limiting stepper motor driver.[1] These can handle more voltage and current, and have the sensing to avoid burning themselves out. You still have to provide pulses for each step. Go for at least this level. Stepper motors use considerable power when stopped, and you need current limiting on all but the tiniest motors. Otherwise you get to choose between overheating and too weak.
Next are drivers and controllers on the same board. These accept commands over USB, I2C, or a few other data paths, and take care of operating the motor.[2] If you're not into really low level programming, this makes life simpler.
I'm not really a woodworker but I have probably seen every Mathias Wandel video since his first marble machines. I wonder how much time I have spent over the last years watching his videos. It's gotten to a point where I know all technical jargon he uses like dovetail joints, tenon and mortises and whatnot. My brother is an actual woodworker but I can't talk to him about it, because I only know the English terminology and he knows the Dutch slang because our mother language is Dutch...
I want to enjoy his videos but something about his presentation style is very off putting to me. Friends often forward me one of his videos but I have given up trying.
You may still enjoy his Web page at woodgears.ca - that's mainly how I know him. Haven't seen more than a couple of videos, but I've extensively perused the site over the years.
I've instrumented my place and used rrdtool to graph temperature in several places.
I found that the built-in forced-air heat (and a/c) seems to show up like a sawtooth wave, with an amplitude of about 3-4 degrees.
In the room with my computer desk, I've found that by turning off the forced air heat and using a vornado heater I end up with a very comfortable space with absolutely flat temperature graphs.
I use the one with the dial, not the LED controls, and it seems to have very good air circulation with well-tuned PID temperature controls.
40 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 63.4 ms ] threadYour user name makes that statement hilarious though. :)
If you’re dealing with “free” rooftop mounting space, it’s cheaper to just throw more panels at the problem.
And you’ll get better peak power with more panels.
Or get a manually adjustable setup and manually adjust them for each season.
Perhaps at scale, things would be different, but I doubt it.
I'm kind of surprised these aren't more of a thing, for use in garages/cellars. Or for use in warehouses and other under heated work spaces.
send me an email and tell me I am out of this comments site also could be an adult talk...
Frewill always evryOne so if some of my comments , because of my operating system , or because Firefox is such a memory hedgeHog and make things slower and buggy or if I misclicked somewhere in the wrong place at the wrong time...All this possibilities are MotherNature telling me what to click and what to write or what to think and , above all in this little specific case, what to publish as comment or abort as unpublished and should be forgotten even by me myself unpublished comment...
So I am happy mother nature helps me...
this headline here, at first sound like a Scandal , really (mark twain aside) Scandalous(new style of avoid SHOUTY/caMelCaSe/spaguettish lack of ,,,comas,,,/ avoidance of verb times conjugations as in using avoid instead of avoidance/ aside, Aside)...
This headline sounded really scandalous for me, because I thought it was talking about weaponry aiming system for war or something, using body heat, and/or infrared lectures to positioning of target and aim. So I have a mental problem and am paranoid and see menaces where they dont exist and maybe hear voices in my mind that dont exist, maybe not, maybe my own minds voice go crazy many times who knows. Maybe similar to veterans who had pos-war traumas and listen to a little firework and jump on the ground thinking its an explosion or aerial attack, but I never had some trauma or shock like that , this is for sure, 100% sure maybe, but well, 100% sure I never been to war or policeman training or any training of this kind (stress and note and tonic on the sentence I said: I was never trained. Never, not even as a soccer player and I am one of the best in the world , yes, soccer player, no analogies or underlines here, but I have never, this is true, wear a professional soccer shoe and , this is true again, I have never played soccer in a soccer match or game or training with other people in a Real Grass Oficial Size or near Oficial Standard Size soccer field. And this is true. So , I repeat: I was never trained...) and I was never in a battle or fight of any kind...so it is not that mental disease as the veterans have, mine is different.
But then I read the article, and you got me, now you know I almost never read any article and only go directly to the comments. You know now that I click 1000 comments page link for each Article headline link I click...I almost never read the article...you know now...I just go directly to the comments page...1000 to 1 is probably a good estimation.
But this one was scandalous and I had to go read and You know I had to go read and they know I was going to go read , so , When I saw it was a parabolic electric heater instantly when I saw the picture, I laughed and smiled and knew It was just a kids Prank...
But then I see really (!!!!!!!!!) "targeting-aim-at-humans' autonomous artificial-driven pray-localization information-processing-system...
very well...
I would speak more about this and why this technology explained here is childish obsolete and naively architected and, at the same time, smart, lets praise the truth, nice one, nice hack, but its like sending a pigeon with a paper attached instead of using Telepathy ( of verbalized thoughts inside the mind) Its like this, when you have Iphone5 cameras and samsumg cameras, and Unity5 for free to process the pixel position info, but I applaude the use of raspberry pi, it is so complicated and obsolete that you need balls and patience and be a Great troubleshooter to make something like he did with home appliances, that said, you can just use phototransistors facing the mobile phone screen to command the opening and closing of the electrical circuits of the power source of your electrical motors ( dont even need steppermotor, actually...
Mathias's projects when he was still in high school during the 80's:
Primitive plotter: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/plotter.html
Primitive 1-pin dot matrix printer: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/printer.html
Primitive Commodore 64 drum scanner: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/c64scanner.html
Home made wooden Joystik: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/joystik.html
The next step up is a current limiting stepper motor driver.[1] These can handle more voltage and current, and have the sensing to avoid burning themselves out. You still have to provide pulses for each step. Go for at least this level. Stepper motors use considerable power when stopped, and you need current limiting on all but the tiniest motors. Otherwise you get to choose between overheating and too weak.
Next are drivers and controllers on the same board. These accept commands over USB, I2C, or a few other data paths, and take care of operating the motor.[2] If you're not into really low level programming, this makes life simpler.
[1] https://www.pololu.com/product/2968 [2] https://www.pololu.com/category/212/tic-stepper-motor-contro...
In fact, a Commodore 64 or a TRS-80 Color Computer were some of the cheapest "microcontroller development kits" at the time.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLLYkE3G1HED6rW-bkliH...
I found that the built-in forced-air heat (and a/c) seems to show up like a sawtooth wave, with an amplitude of about 3-4 degrees.
In the room with my computer desk, I've found that by turning off the forced air heat and using a vornado heater I end up with a very comfortable space with absolutely flat temperature graphs.
I use the one with the dial, not the LED controls, and it seems to have very good air circulation with well-tuned PID temperature controls.
I can imagine a big market for these devices for installing in warehouses, churches, walk in fridges/freezers, outdoor venues etc.
The total power use to keep a few people warm with a directed IR heater is far lower than the energy needed to keep an outdoor space warm!
The IR heaters could be directed to gimbals which can scan between all people in a scene rapidly (say 10 Hz), so everyone feels warm.
Multiple devices could be installed in the same building so even if you don't have line of sight of one, you still get heated by the rest.