At the iPad’s launch I wasn’t extremely impressed. The device seemed interesting, but it didn’t appear to have a tangible spot between my smartphone and my laptop in day-to-day use.

That changed fast.

After playing with the iPad for a few hours, it has certainly secured a new place in my tech arsenal. The hardware is able to handle all of the applications that I’ve used with smooth graphics processing and very quick responses to touch input (especially multitouch).

Typing on it is much better than you might imagine. After using the iPad through a full IM conversation, my typing speed was comparable to my speed on a standard keyboard. It’s a bit less comfortable, but it gets the job done well.

Multitasking? Yeah, it can’t run MSN, Facebook, Photoshop, and play a movie simultaneously. But do you really want it to? Remember how the old Windows phones handled multiple tasks? It was unbearably slow. Hopefully Apple has an elegant solution to our multitasking needs in OS 4.0, but mine are very rare. Push IM can get me all of my messages effectively, and I can play music on my iPod in the background. I’m not settling for less. I’m working with a completely different type of device.

I’m very excited to do work, watch movies, play games, and explore the iPad in a traveling situation. The battery has held up great today.

It’s time to do some research on equipping this thing with a solar panel!

I started talking about these numbers with my roommate today. I mentioned that the MBP battery lasts a good 5 to 6 hours on casual use. This means that with a 34W panel, you could successfully USE AND CHARGE (simultaneously) a MacBookPro with that solar panel. If you dropped the panel in size to a 17Watt, you would be looking at a 5hour time for full charge. – But that means that you could use the laptop while charging, and essentially counteract the battery’s ‘uncharging’!

A 17W panel could be made small. Maybe as small as my MacBook Pro’s lid. Exciting…

This is a collection of theoretical data and calculations for the charge times and feasibility of using a custom 40W solar panel to charge Apple products.

To make the most efficient charger, I want to use specific solar cells in my panel. Each device has a different charging voltage, and for efficiency sake I want to get as close to that voltage as possible with my solar cells. This is because, when I regulate my panel to the voltage I need for charging, the excess voltage is being given off as heat. If I’m regulating down a lot, I have to be concerned about heat sinks, and my panel is even bigger than I need it to be. Stupid, right?

For example, my MacBook Pro’s AC Adapter puts out 16.5Volts at 3.65Amps. If I make a 40Watt solar cell array that puts out 20Volts @ 2Amps, and then I regulate it down to 16.5Volts, I’ll be loosing (assuming my DC regulator works at 90% efficiency) – (90% * 2Amps = 1.8Amps) .2 amps for every volt that I’m outputting. This means that instead of having a 40Watt panel, I’ll actually have a 1.8*16.5 = 29.7Watt panel when everything is said and done. And that’s just from the efficiency of the regulator!

When you factor in the 3.5Volts that are being regulated away, you have (3.5*1.8 = 6.3) 6.3Watts that are being given off as heat. That’s hot and unnecessary.

So, lets say that I get my panel to put out 17Volts at 2Amps. That would be a 34W panel. I would only be loosing (.5*1.8) .9Watts to heat, and I’ll have a smaller panel in the long run. After using a 90% efficient regulator, you pull 10% off that 34W (3.4W) and you have a panel that puts out 30.6W in full sunlight. Then, shave off the .9Watts that is lost to heat and you have 29.7W again. That would take (73/29.7 = 2.46) a bit less than 2.5 hours to fully charge my MacBook Pro from a completely dead state. Not too shabby.

You can see that the best way to increase efficiency is by finding the closest voltage possible and then bringing up the amperage. That’s why it’s important that you choose the best wiring circuit for your panel! (Series or Parallel)

Here are some stats for the batteries in the newest Apple products. You can see how this hypothetical 34W panel would run them.

For the iPad and iPhone, the input voltages are completely different.

I think you can safely charge an iPhone with 5Volts at a 1Amp maximum. 5V is the USB standard, and our computers put out .5Amps at that 5V. Not wanting to go too much higher than that for the iPhone, you could make a 4.5W panel at 6V and .75Amps – regulated down to 5V @ .75A that would charge the phone fully in 72 minutes.

As for the iPad, we’ll have to see what the input voltage is when it comes out!

Here's the shed for the FreeStore!

Yesterday my friend Trenton showed me a blog about a new FreeStore that just opened a few months ago right next to our college campus.

A FreeStore is a place where you can bring things that you don’t need, and take things that you do. It’s a community-run trade market that is open to everything.

We headed over to this FreeStore – The Hammer Time Tool CoOp and met the owner Garrett. A few months ago, Garrett opened the FreeStore in a small shed attached to his garage. It’s open 24/7 for anyone to go in and make a quick exchange, find something they need, or drop off something they don’t. – What a killer idea, right!?

Yesterday, Garrett held the final opening of the actual Tool Co-Op. The HT Tool Co-Op is a center (The actual garage) where anyone can come and work on their own projects with all of the available tools. What another superb idea.. The Tool Garage is open on Mondays and Thursdays, from 4:00PM to 9:00PM.

-The Tool Garage is also heated! A woodstove made out of a Beer Keg with a bike crankshaft as the lock and handle. – SUPERB.

At first I was a bit skeptical, but now I love the idea of the FreeStore and the Tool Co-Op. It will be a lot of fun using the store and tool area, and helping build and promote the central idea of a community-run FreeStore.

Head over to HammerTimeToolCoOp to check out the new developments!

The Brain Project is a website that I started working on for my  ’Intro to the Grand Challenges of Engineering’ Class. The project requirements were pretty broad:

Do a project on the Human Brain. Show that you’ve done your research and that you learned something new in the process.

Over the past month, our class has been looking at the Human Brain from a reverse engineering perspective. We’ve discussed ways in which humans have studied the brain, and how technology is advancing that research.

I decided to build a website that would label each region of the Human Brain, show (neatly) what we know about it, and give links to recent research/development articles about that region.

I’m quite excited about how the site looks so far. I’m still adding the content – take a look and let me know what you think!