Solar power is the future. How do we know? Because it’s beaming the internet to regions that don’t have the IT infrastructure, allowing always-on access without any power supply. As the sun shines you can stream the latest SNL digital short via youtube to your hearts content and with a rechargeable battery the entertainment continues well into the night.
The new Meraki Solar Internet Mesh system makes this new solar powered internet possible. The standalone unit sets up a WiFi network, and when I say “no power supply” I mean it. No “assistance”, no “reduced load”, none of the small-print or “*(see the bottom of the page)” shenanigans, this thing runs entirely off the free energy from the sun just set the unit up and forget it.
The allure of, Meraki and their products is their simple, effective and elegant solution to a problem Google couldn’t solve, city wide wi-fi distribution. More importantly in regions where power infrastructure is relatively scarce, daisy chaining these wi-fi routers will allow seemingly isolated communities to be “plugged in”. Each router system includes a single solar panel. In effect Meraki has eliminated wireless’s one wire…the power cable.
The system is simple enough to set up where it doesn’t require expensive IT professions to wire up. It’s a simple endeavor to launch. Enough router systems need to be purchased to cover a given network area. Next A simple dsl or cable modem needs to be hardwired to every 4th or 5th router system. Upon starting the system up, each of the routers form a mesh network which enables them to broadcast the broadband signal to the all areas in range. In one case that meant a $20,000 system was able to cover 48 acres.
It’s only a matter of time before cellphone systems catch on to the same power-efficient trick. When your gadgets whole entire purpose is “Stand outside and consume electricity”, it’d be pretty foolish not to realise that the stuff’s falling out of the sky. In many lower-light locations solar contributions can still act to cut costs, or eliminate them altogether for those few really sunny days of the year. So you can smile in the sudden sunshine, knowing that it’s not just sunlight that’s falling – it’s your fuel costs too.
