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Energy Source

Example: Most homes have some sort of roof. When it's raining you could “use” the rain to get some energy. This type of ideas are certainly not new. Because the door strike isn't using the energy the whole time - just when you want to open the door, it would be wise to use a battery or a Capacitor or you would be “wasting” the water, because you would need to produce the amount of energy continuously, to power the chip and to release the strike. 80mA (Sonoff) + 660mA (strike) = 740mA. We could calculate the amount of water needed, or we could use online tools available from the community. The amount of water is heavily dependent on the efficiency of the turbine and the generator. To build a generator at home is easy. To build an efficient turbine is a whole different level.

For this purpose, we will use a mini turbine available. Priyabrata Adhikary, Pankaj Kr Roy and Asis Mazumdar from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, did a Case Study. I did some basic measurements myself. According to the mentioned case study, the technical documentation for the turbine and my measurements, is the minimum pressure about 0,05Mpa. The International System of Units states that in terms of units the MPa = m-1·kg·s-2. For some people it’s easier to imagine in bar. 0,5bar is roughly 5 Meters of Water (mH2O). It’s clear we need to either ensure a relatively high ground to store the water or we need to collect high amounts of water. We are going to use the online tools to calculate how much water is needed.

With the help of the online community tools we get the amount of roughly 1m3 of water per day for the module. Only 1 week period when it’s not raining, we still would need to “collect” 7m3 of water for the week only for the module. With a 200m2 roof we would need an minimum annual precipitation rate of 7m3*52 weeks = 364m3 for only the modules. Because the water “gains” energy that can be “collected” during a free fall in the atmosphere someone trying to “collect” the energy with a higher hight of the Gutter would need an accordingly higher height of the Gutter. Collecting these amounts doesn't make sense even because of the evaporation effect. To “collect„ or store the energy in some other form, requires other resources and as it isn't raining the same rate continuously, poses another challenge. The students’ work from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) offers quite interesting insights into this topic.

The Wind is far less dens. With the help of the online tools we could get the surface we would need to power the module and the strike. Be sure to “realistically” insert the efficiency of the turbine. You also have to find a decent product in terms of the turbine. Many companies offer mini wind turbines, sadly from my experience only a few are in some way useful. Energy harvesting is easier today than ever before - well, better to say in the known history. But still if you step up from promises to the physical reality, you'll find that there are not many products that are useful. Even if you're thinking you'll do good for the environment there is a broader concept, not as easy to interpret as someone would think. First thing to consider - How Green is ‘Green’ Energy? What resources and how much energy its needed to produce a wind turbine VS how much energy could you extract from the turbine in its lifespan should be the first question to ask if you are considering buying a wind turbine to “help” the environment.

To choose the “right” energy source isn't as easy as someone would think. There is so much controversial research that it's hard to really know the “truth”. If you're not concerned about all the problems on how humanity is using the energy and the resources, then it's just a matter of choosing a product that fits the bill. It's basically more or less a question on how pessimistic or optimistic is your world view and what obligations you think we have to future generations.

Chip, able of Executing 1 Command and can Communicate Through a Network

The modules I am using in the examples below have the ability to stay on; after initiation stay on for a second, then switch off; stay on for a preset period of time. Doing it stationary, would mean to use a so cold relay (electrically operated switch). The chip only sends a signal and the rest does the relay or the software on the device from witch the signal is being initiated. For the sending of the signal, we will be using an existing device, so first we need to figure out how existing devices are communicating. For this type of communication MQTT protocol is mostly used in the time of this writing. The MQTT protocol is a so-called client – server model. The device we are trying to design “only” needs to be able to communicate with the server / Broker. To be able to communicate with an MQTT Broker over WI-FI we would also need to establish a Wi-Fi connection. How are existing devices communicating over Wi-Fi? The so-called IEEE 802.11 is used in the time of this writing. How many bits for IEEE 802.11? How many bits for MQTT? If your English or German speaking there a lot of resources available for someone who wanted to learn about the hardware implementation. It’s all happening on the binary level. At least on deterministic machines. Nondeterministic machines apply a fundamentally different approach.

Most devices in the time of this writing operate with the help of Boolean logic. The binary implementation is done in the time of this writing through integrated circuits on semiconductor chips. Someone willing, could represent the logical gates using transistors. Many people shared their implementation of logic gates with transistors. We should keep in mind that according to this source since the 1960 there was an increase of logical gates implementations in calculators from 12 logic gates in the 1960´s to more than 1000 logic gates in the early 1970`s. World known players currently designing Wi-Fi chips.

Server / Broker

Examples

Work in progress…