News PotatoP Laptop Project Sacrifices Performance for 2-Year Battery Life

[Admin]

PotatoP demonstrably runs better than a potato, but uses a 96 MHz CPU and mono reflective display to facilitate its 2-year battery life.

PotatoP Laptop Project Sacrifices Performance for 2-Year Battery Life : Read more

 

[InvalidError]

Add a second solar panel on the left side and you have an off-grid computer!

 

[Dr3ams]

Why not use a Kindle Paperwhite display?

 

[ezst036]

Can it run Crysis?

I'm sure the Doom port is well underway.

 

[cyrusfox]

Seriously though

Why not use a Kindle Paperwhite display?

e-ink, for text based work would be awesome! Only wish the form factor could come down in footprint, and as long as there is an easy way to push content on and off, This would be great. I think anything over 1 week active battery life is overkill, but awesome to see people making custom devices! WOudl be interested in the BOM to make something similar.

 

[Sluggotg]

384K of memory. That seems a bit small, (my Amiga 500 came with 512K). Is that enough to do modern Coding? I would also think using the back of the display for the solar panels might be a good way to go. You could upgrade to a larger display with the larger Solar Panels. The display he is using is cell phone sized. That would be fine for me... 20 years ago. ( Losing your close up vision happens in a matter of months and is very shocking). My issues aside, Good For this Guy to make his own Laptop. Very Cool!

 

[AnendTech]

This reminds me of the WikiReader (offline text Wikipedia in a pocket device) and earlier Palm/EPOC32 OS PDA (Palm III series, Psion Series 5) or even the popular early 1980's Tandy TRS-80 Model 100/200 with a proper keyboard that run on AA/AAA batteries. The key is non-backlit LCD and no (heavy) GUI.

SparkFun has a ultra low power Wi-Fi module that coincidentally uses the same ARM Cortex-M4F cores as the PotatoP itself. I doubt the PotatoP can handle even a WAP browser, but obviously that's not the point of the project/concept.