HI SYN!

I’ve come up with a plan to reduce my footprint but it’s going to cost me a few bucks to get it done to really cut down on my power usage.

If I create a small EPIA computer to take over Wireless Access Point and Firewall/VPN duties and keep the power consumption under 12W that will reduce the footprint for those two items from 50W to <12W.  (Power Saved: 38W)

Next up is the computer situation. My laptop isn’t going anywhere. However the systems I use can be tweaked.  I can’t remove the gaming system, but I can stop using it and shift watching anime, listening to music and some basic gaming stuff to the Ubuntu box. As for the Ubuntu Box, I want to lower it’s footprint complete.  If I get a LCD monitor that will lower the footprint some.  Then if I build a new’ish mini-ITX system I should be able to do everything I am now and then some with a much lower power consumption.  How much? I don’t know just yet, time to research parts + prices (Power Saved: 180w+?)

As for my file server, I think I’m going to leave it shut off most of the time and use it to back up files to. I’ll keep all my mp3s on my Ubuntu box and install a bit torrent client on the Ubuntu box so I can download to it in the background.  (Power Saved: 50W)

Crazy plan? (268w+ power saved!) Yeah possibly, but the power savings could be huge if I have a 50W server off all the time, a 180W gaming rig off most of the time and reduce my Ubuntu box’s powah footprint.

I see this as the first necessary step to reducing what I use for when I have a house and I can have a solar + wind power solution in place. I should really see a difference in how much power I use through my monthly bill.

The more I think about this power reducing idea, I should really consider reducing my computer footprint as well.  It will actually help my electric bill/consumption indirectly!  Most of my equipment does give off a good amount of heat.  Heck, my bedroom closet is typically warm in the morning because of the door is closed over night and the fileserver warms the temp up to ~80F.

So, for the past few weeks now I’ve been trying to figure out how lower my power footprint in the world. To do so, I’ve been writing down the power consumption of nearly every device in my apartment. I also have switched my web hosting from a dedicated server to a VPS host (which hisyn.com resides on now) since my usage of the server had dropped considerably.

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I got a Wii yesterday and to my surprise this is the platform I’ve been desiring (and trying to build myself) that fills my needs for a low power platform.

Unlike the PS3, it allows image viewing off a SD card (not mention it plays music and some video playback off the SD card). I found an app called “Media Center X” a couple of weeks ago while looking around for a way to stream mp3s to a PS3 for a friend and it also works for the Wii.

Once I’m able to install Media Center X on my CentOS server and give this a go I should know fairly quickly if this is truely my low power (10W-17W) killer Media Center App!

more later…