Aleutia - The Creation

From AleutiaWiki

Contents 1 Story 2 Problems 3 Solution 4 Locations 5 The Future

Story

The Aleutia adventure started somewhere deep deep down in Gambia, Oliver Ossei Gerning started a internet cafe in Takoradi for an NGO, Twenty three years old HP desktops were sourced locally at a rate of 500$, all consuming so much power it became a ongoing battle to keep the project alive. We took the challenge.

Problems

• Power: How does one bring computers to the people in a country without relying on the grid for power(what grid?)
  • This start pretty much rules out regular computers as an ordinary office computer consumes around 150 Watts(power measurement)

• Ruggedness: Regular computers would surely die in the conditions of Ghambia(desert).
  • Their big noisy fans would suck up dust like a vacum-cleaner, and let it acumulate until their fans stopped working which would lead to overheating(not a good thing).

• Speed: The speed was and is important
  • Computers like this had been made before(referencing to the RISCOS Solo which uses very little energy), problem was, the power(hardware) of that setup makes it slow as hell. Also, comparing an ancient project with a present day one isn't fair-ish.

• Flexibility
  • Today, to survive a buisness needs to create a product the largest amount of customers could and would be interested in, a learning institution would be interested in a setup which let's them run it off of already setup systems(Venting, Power cabling), this is also true for many buisnesses (as it costs money calling in an electrician to rewire the system for more juice), The military is always out after computers that just works, everywhere if possible, sysadmins in governments is always on the lookout for systems that makes their days easier.

• Size
  • Today, size is important. since space is scarce, the more we produce of ourselves(babies) the less space our apliances need to take. Not stating that we should stop reproducing, but pointing out that we need our apliances to get smaller, so that we have enough space for more of them and us.

• Design
  • Believe it or not, looks are important, people wants things that look good, stuff that give them that feeling that they're using something cool.(just look at the iPod, it is a compilation of no new and magical technologies, but it looks cool)

• Support
  • People wants their equipment to become an investment, if it dies, they want to have somewhere to turn to get it fixed, at none or a low cost, they also want somewhere to go if they have a problem with the software.

• Interface
  • The learning curve needs to be as small as possible to get people learning in the shortest amount of time.

• Stability
  • In Ghambia, calling for a replacement computer might be hard. Concidering It's in the middle of no-where, this means that the system needs to be stable, and resillient against viruses and other technical annoyances.

Solution

To list up the things that needed consideration:

1. Power independent(No connection to the power grid)
2. Ruggedness(It needs to handle dust and other harsh environments)
3. Speed(In the time of the instant, speed is important)
4. Flexibility(To profit one must have a base product which can be customized to meet the requirements of the consumer)
5. Size(In a classroom 15-30 computers cannot consume all the space available, or there will be no space left to teach the students other things than computers)
6. Design(It must look good, the design must also be functional)
7. Support(If it breaks, it should be up and running ASAP)
8. Interface(No learning curve=Good learning curve)
9. Stability(A functioning system is a happy system(and end user))

Now came the phase of solutions, Since speed is important we needed a operating system that uses it's resources intelligently. This points us towards Linux.

Was there any Linux distribution that works using the least amount of resources but still gives a complete desktop? Several. Ok, that narrowed down the choices a bit. Still in the process of choosing an operating system, we need a system that can give this with extremely small amounts of resources. So, that narrows the choices down even furter, We chose Puppy linux, It featured an amazingly small installation(~90 megabytes), It loads everything into the RAM, which gives you the speed of the RAM as the limiting factor(after it is loaded) This also somwehat fixes our need for a low-power system, the RAM needs very little power to sustain itself Only by choosing an Operating system we eliminated many problems connected to computers, also we opened up the door to the rest of our solution. The Operating system partly fixes: Speed, Stability, Interface, Flexibility. Now, we need to work on a hardware that gives us: Speed, Easy support, Low energy consumption(both in production and use), Design, Size, Flexibility, Ruggedness. Many of these can be fixed simply by choosing size, in a computer one usually needs a couple of base parts: CPU, Main-board, Sound-card, Graphics card, Storage, RAM, Ethernet. One of our problems solve the choice of size, it's gotta be small. Then to get a small computer, we need to use a motherboard with as many as possible of the computer-parts we mentioner earlier into one, when we combine the computer parts into one, we also save energy(in production and usage) the size of the motherboard decides the size of the computer.

The Aleutia E1 these technical specs:

• <Insert E1 Specs Here!>

The Aleutia E2 have these specs:

• Processor: 500MHz x86 VIA EDEN ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) CPU.
• Memory: 512MB DDR2 RAM (Onboard).
• Storage: 4GB Compact Flash Card (Sandisk Extreme III with 30MB/second Read/Write Speed, 200X)
• Video: VIA UniChrome Pro II for 2D and 3D graphics with MPEG2 and MPEG4 decoding accelerator; up to 128MB shared memory.
• Audio: Microphone (Audio In) and Headphones (Audio Out) ports. VIA Vinyl VT 1708 audio chip (handles AC97 2.2 codec – HD audio).
• Expansion: 3 x USB 2.0 ports (480 Mbps transfer rate), 1 x PS/2 port (for keyboard, mouse), 1 x 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port,VGA port to connect LCD display (supports resolutions up to 1920 x 1440), 1 x Compact Flash card slot.
• Power consumption of 8W with CPU and SDRAM running at full speed. With external devices (USB DVD-RW, USB-powered hard drive) power consumption only rises to 11W

We found out that the Aleutia E2 was able to run the slightly more complex and more user-friendly operating system Ubuntu by using a custom version of Ubuntu,we managed to make the system more user-friendly and easier to receive support on, more programs and software generally.

To get a finished product we need to finish up our problems, the last remaining problems was Ruggedness and Design, the main-board compliments ruggedness as it contains no moving parts or fans, which makes the pc able to tolerate a drop, which was unintentional,but hey, it's a good thing... The case or as we desktop computer guys call it the "tower" needs to be strong, and lightweight, a metal that fits this need is Aluminum, as it is light and strong. Therefore the case was made in aluminum. On the top of the case we made the surface with rills, to help dissipate the heat produced inside, which gives us a nice design, instead of a flat surface we get something that looks interesting, Since it's design helps dissipate heat and visually looks good. We have achieved the goal.

Locations

Today, the aleutia can be found in the harshest of environments, In its daily work, it meets many hazards which it overcomes:

• Norway - Polar Bears, Frost, Killer Salmon
• Gambia - Desert Storms, Hunger, Curious Adults
• Great Britain - Angry football supporters.
• Amazonas - Monsun rain storms, Hunger, Killer mosquitoes.

Aleutia cannot guarantee that the hazards mentioned above is the only hazards in theese countries that the Aleutia E2 can handle.

The Future

In the future we envision the new Aleutias to become more effective, faster, have more power, but still stay on the same low-energy consuming scale, as our customer base grows we will be able to increase the production and power of our appliances.

We are also working on integrating the very low-power and high efficiency rated ZigBee wifi standard into our Aleutias