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Posts Tagged ‘Solar’

Activeon launches Solar X action camera that’s powered by the sun

09 Jan

A solar-powered action camera that can take 70% of its charge from the sun in just 30 minutes has been announced by Activeon. The Solar X uses a 16MP CMOS sensor to shoot a combination of stills and video footage, and can supplement its two-hour internal battery with four hours of additional charge from a pair of solar panels mounted on its detachable charging case. In Burst Speed Charging mode the case takes half an hour to get the battery from flat to 70%, and then it takes a further half an hour to get it to 100%. 

The Solar X uses a 2″ touch screen for its menu system, as a viewfinder and for viewing footage recorded. Video can be recorded in what the company calls 2160p 4K resolution, but at a rate of 15 frames per second. The camera can manage six frames per second in stills mode, and users will have control of white balance, ISO and exposure values. The camera can also detect when it is mounted upside down. Built-in Wi-Fi allows the Solar X to be controlled via a smartphone app, and the company will launch an automatic cloud service for its users. 

The Activeon Solar X will be available from March at around $ 430. 

For more information see the Activeon website. 

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Marble Earth: 7-Mile Scale Model Timelapse of Our Solar System

20 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

orbital paths desert

Starting with a model planet Earth the size of a marble, a team of filmmakers set out to simulate our entire solar system in motion and capture the results in a compelling short movie.

timelapse earth

In normal images and models of the planets in our solar neighborhood, nothing is too scale – at scale on a piece of paper, planets becoming vanishingly small and effectively impossible to see on the page. Textbooks and other graphics misrepresent sizes almost by necessity simply because it would be impossible to depict things otherwise in a small visual field.

timelapse marbel planet

The resulting visuals distort our sense of the distance between celestial bodies. In the scale model featured above, set in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet give the viewer a much greater intuitive understanding of the separation and size of these spatial objects.

urbanus copy

“As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart.” said James Irwin, Apollo 15 astronaut. He is one of only 24 people in human history have seen the full circle of the Earth with their own eyes.

saturnm

Using LED lights, GPS calculations, a dirt disrupter and ultimately cars driving in circles to simulate the orbits at night, the team created a 1:847,638,000 scale model in which blips of light represent the various bodies in space.

timelapse sun

One of the participants climbed a nearby mountain to film it all from above, while post-production overlays create a key for the video. Process documentation was made in part with a drone flying overhead. According to its creators, this is the first scale model of the solar system ever constructed.

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Future of Fenestration: Every Window Will Generate Solar Power

28 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

solar power windows

Better, cheaper and easier than solar windows, this newly-patented flexible coating can be applied to existing glass and plastic surfaces, turning any aperture into a source of electricity. With this technology on all of its surfaces, buildings can generate up to 50 times more solar energy per structure.

solar energy polymer

Developed by SolarWindow Technologies, this inexpensive approach has a payback time of as little as one year (far less than the 5 to 10 years of traditional solar approaches. As the technology evolves and expands, it is only a matter of time until every window draws energy from light.

solar generation panel transparent

By adding it to the inside surface of a window, the process protects the tech from exterior sources of damage and simplifies application. The solution is also lightweight and adaptable, making it easier to retrofit existing architecture without cost-intensive shipping or labor-intensive installation processes.

solar sheet making process

These sensitive photovoltaics can draw power from lunar energy and artificial lights in addition to the sun’s rays. Their relatively low price per unit reinforces the sensibility of simply putting them on all sides of a structure, including those with less natural light.

solar window tech

Effectively invisible wires draw electricity from the exposed surfaces while a uniform and architecturally-neutral color tinting process allows for a variety of of looks and degrees of transparency.

solar light neutral color

This new substance can be deployed as a sticky film on a surface or potentially even painted on as a liquid. The organic (but secretive) constituent source materials of the core polymer include common elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.

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Course Correction: Deserted Golf Greens into Solar Power Plants

12 Jul

[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

abandoned golf green solar

Derelict putting greens will be put to greener uses in Japan, where an abandoned golf course near Kyoto is being converted to the area’s largest solar energy-generating facility.

Solar power production represents an ideal type of landscape reuse in this context for many reasons: expansive areas with little shade and high sun exposure are perfect for laying out panels for maximum effect and efficiency. Developed by Kyocera, “the plant will generate an estimated 26,312 megawatt hours (MWh) per year — enough electricity to power approximately 8,100 typical local households.”

golf green conversion

Also under construction, a similar project in the Kagoshima Prefecture is being located on an area originally cleared for a golf course that was never finished and occupied. Critical to a country facing power issues in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear incident, these projects are also a sign of land use awareness and changing times. Just a few decades ago country club memberships sold for millions in Japan, but “overdevelopment of golf properties during the real-estate boom of the 1990’s and 2000’s has led to hundreds of idle courses today that are now under analysis for repurposing or redevelopment.” 

green golfing

Of course, closed golf courses are also an international problem well beyond the Japanese archipelago, giving this solution potentially global applications as well, particularly in the United States. Together, these projects should help inspire other countries to turn some of the most environmentally unsound landscapes toward more productive and sustainable uses.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Abandoned Places & Architecture. ]

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Subterranean Solar: $100K Raised for Daylit Underground Park

25 Jun

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

low line warehouse section

With two weeks left to go in its crowdfunding campaign, the Lowline has already raised over $ 100,000 from over 1,000 backers, promising to turn an old trolley station in Manhattan into the Earth’s first underground park. Inspired in part by the High Line, an NYC park reusing old elevated rail infrastructure, this project aims to add space to one of the most crowded cities on the planet.

low line money shot

The design by Raad Studio is supported by a custom lighting technology being developed specifically for this project, specifically: a “remote skylight” combinating solar harvesting and fiber optics to pipe daylight directly down into the subterranean spaces and paths of the park below.

low line green trees

low line underground design

This system will pipe sunlight from the surface via mirrors and tubes, building on existing designs to route natural light to subsurface labs. As shown below, some tech prototypes have already been tested in an above-ground warehouse but there is still a good deal of research, testing and other work to be done.

low line test warehouse

low line canopy design

Built over a century ago but abandoned for over 50 years, this 40,000-square-foot Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal is in remarkably good shape despite years of neglect. Located in the Lower East Side, the project aims to bring a green retreat to a part of New York City sorely lacking in public landscapes.

low line tech image

In this phase, the funding will further support technological development as well as public exhibitions to raise further interest for the project: “Partnering with the solar device maker SunPortal, we are shipping cutting edge equipment via ocean freighter from South Korea to New York City, and will begin installation over the summer. These devices will track the sun throughout the sky every minute of every day, optimizing the amount of natural sunlight we can capture. These will be connected to a tube-based distribution system and 40-foot-wide canopy inside the warehouse, to help reflect natural sunlight into the Lowline Lab. Once this natural sunlight is filtered into the space, we can test for the quality of the light, taking specific note of spectrum, distribution and intensity.”

low line prototype idea

This campaign will also provide funds for exploring types of plant life possible in underground spaces: “Our design inspiration is Mannahatta– a verdant vision of the city before modern civilization– and we expect to feature edible plants, and a science fiction palette of greenery forming stalactites, stalagmites, and whimsical passageways.  Again, because we are testing in the fall and winter– the two toughest times to grow plants– we will gain valuable insight into which species will perform best throughout the year.”

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Marumi introduces fixed and variable neutral density filters, including ND100,000 for solar shooting

19 Feb

Japanese filter brand Marumi has introduced a collection of neutral density filters for its DHG (Digital High Grade) range including fixed density strengths of ND 8, 16, 32 and 64 as well as a variable ND filter with a range of ND 2.5-500. The company has also announced a ND filter for shooting solar eclipses. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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See-Through Solar: Crystal Clear Panels Are 100% Transparent

25 Aug

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

clear transparent solar energy

Applied to anything from the surface of your smartphone to the the sides of a skyscraper, the possible uses of this innovation for everyday surfaces are incredibly wide-ranging.

clear solar material scientists

Developed by a team of chemical engineers and material scientists from the University of Michigan’s School of Engineering, this solar concentrator leaves a clear surface while collecting energy.

clear solar power panel

Unlike similar previous attempts, this project avoids coloration and distortion entirely behind: “The solar harvesting system uses small organic molecules developed by Lunt and his team to absorb specific nonvisible wavelengths of sunlight.” The goal now is to iterate on the design, continuing to improve its efficiency, scale and cost-effectiveness toward eventual mass-production on surfaces both small and large.

solar energy see through

Operating out of the normally-visible spectrum, they look effectively transparent to a human viewer. The captured power is redirected to and collected at the edges of the panel, out of sight and out of mind, leaving in the center a transparent surface that could cover (or even replace) windows on a building or the surfaces of smartphones. The goal is for energy generation to disappear entirely – in the near future, you might never know that homes and phones are creating, collecting and deploying clean power passively all around you.

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Extreme X-Class Solar Flare Is Erasing Digital & Film Photos Worldwide

22 Aug

This mornings Solar flare corruption of my photography library

In a stunning event shocking NASA, the European Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency the Sun flexed its power last night with an unprecedented X-Class solar flare (Update: some astrophysicists are contending it’s the first detected Z-Class solar flare). Unlike extreme solar events like the Carrington Event this solar storm has erased film and digital photos world-wide. Prints, film negatives and digital files have shockingly been affected equally being erased into oblivion. Neil deGrasse Tyson was quoted as saying,

iPhone Image Library Corrupted by Solar Flare

“The sun once again has humbled us with its power. With a single awe inspiring brush stroke of  projected radiation, the Sun has erased our visual history leaving us to remember moments of times past with only our heart and minds.”

Completely confused this morning seeing blank sheets of paper where my favorite family photos and wall prints once existed I rushed to my computer and phone to see the state of my digital libraries. Everything was gone. In a fit of amazement and cursing I rushed to check my slides and negatives from the 90′s and they too are now history being completely blank. In hindsight I now wish I savored the moments I photographed to better remember them verses my fuzzy memory of these moments as seen through a small view finder. Now that this fast moving storm of radiation has passed new photos are now again possible. Even though I am now again able to take photos seeing the fragility of our imaging technologies it begs the questions…

Is humanity’s creativity, existence & legacy what we see, feel, or leave behind?

 

Copyright Jim M. Goldstein, All Rights Reserved

Extreme X-Class Solar Flare Is Erasing Digital & Film Photos Worldwide

The post Extreme X-Class Solar Flare Is Erasing Digital & Film Photos Worldwide appeared first on JMG-Galleries – Landscape, Nature & Travel Photography.

        

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  • By: A Roundup of April Fools' 2014 Jokes in the World of Photography by A Roundup of April Fools’ 2014 Jokes in the World of Photography
  • Indeed! Thanks for the comment by jimgoldstein
  • Glad you enjoyed the post Russ by jimgoldstein
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  • Beautiful abstracts Jim! Like something your son (I mean sun) … by Russ Bishop
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CityCharge: Solar Gadget Charging Stations Installed in NYC

19 Aug

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

CityCharge Solar Charging Station 1

Anyone passing through New York City’s Bryant Park can avoid the headache of searching for free outlets at coffee shops to juice up their phones, powering up at outdoor tables with built-in solar charging stations. Solar company Green Barrel Energy Inc. teamed up with street furniture manufacturer Landscape Forms and the Bryant Park Corporation to provide free power with cables that fit most electronic devices.

CityCharge Solar Charging Stations 5

CityCharge Solar Charging Stations 6

Each small round table is set on swiveling wheels (lockable, so they can’t be stolen), making them portable enough to move out of the way for special events or to keep the rotating panels in the sun throughout the changing seasons.

CityCharge Solar Charging Stations 2

CityCharge Solar Charging Station 4

The round design promotes social interaction, encouraging people to gather around and have a conversation as their gadgets charge. The six prototypes are currently being tested in Bryant Park, and six additional tables are coming soon, along with more in other areas throughout New York City and eventually, the United States.

CityCharge Solar Charging Station 3

The compact footprint makes it easy to fit the tables into existing public spaces, working with a variety of seating, umbrellas and ground surfaces. Waterproof and weatherproof, it can be left outdoors full-time without needing any special storage during rain or snow.

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[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

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Offbeat & Off the Grid: 15 Surprisingly Mobile Solar Gadgets

12 Aug

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

Mobile Solar Main

Solar power projects go truly off-the-grid in mobile applications that range from practical if goofy solar panel-equipped Ray Bans to donkeys that stroll around with photovoltaics mounted to their backs. While some are just for fun, others have the (solar) power to bring electricity to remote places, or get around restrictions that hold back renewable energy progress.

Shrub Rover Solar-Powered Camouflaged Car
Mobile Solar Shrub Rover 1

Mobile Power Shrub Rover 2

It looks like an ordinary shrub. Then it starts inexplicably rolling along the ground as if it has gained sentience a la the plot of a particularly terrible horror movie from the 1950s. The Terrestrial Shrub Rover by Justin Shull is a solar-powered, foliage-covered vehicle that lets drivers explore new territories in disguise (as long as you wait to actually drive it until after dark.) Cameras on the outside display the car’s surroundings on screens within so you can see where you’re going.

Pop-Up Solar Power Station
Mobile Solar Pop Up Station

Solar installations can be costly and time-consuming to install, but load them into a shipping container so that they can pop right out when it’s opened and you’ve got a convenient mobile solar power station. The Ecos PowerCube is available in 10-foot, 20-foot and 40-foot ISO shipping container footprints with solar panels hidden within protective drawers. Batteries inside the container store power. Once unrolled, the panels increase the size of the array to three times the footprint of the shipping containers.

Solar-Powered Wheelchair
Mobile Solar Wheelchair

The winning entry in a competition for inventions that can make a significant difference to people with disabilities, this solar-powered wheelchair can run continuously on the power of the sun. Designed by students at the University of Virginia, the wheelchair features a custom-built 11-square-foot solar panel that doubles as a sun shade and enables the wheelchair to travel indefinitely at 1mph without drawing power from the battery.

Autonomous Solar-Powered Lawnmower
Mobile Solar Mower

The equivalent of a Roomba for your lawn, this open-source robotic lawn mower runs entirely on solar power so you don’t have to sweat it out on a hot summer day. No need to even control it via remote, since it’s totally autonomous. If you’re handy with electronics, you can try making one yourself – instructions are available at Open Electronics.

Freshwater Floating Solar Power Plant
Mobile Solar Freshwater Plant

The world’s largest freshwater solar power plant will be installed over reservoirs and lakes in India’s southern state of Kerala in a $ 72 million, 50 megawatt project. Using freshwater gets around the problem of landowners overcharging for solar developments, with projects paying rent to the owners of the bodies of water. The total cost will end up being around 15 percent lower than equivalent land-based projects.

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Offbeat Off The Grid 15 Mobile Solar Gadgets

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