Some geeks in the U.K. have created a potato-powered Web server/computer. The Temple ov thee Lemur group put together the machine on a bet and have gotten some great coverage, including the dreaded Slashdot effect on Monday and an article yesterday on BBC Online.
The system consists of around 12 potatoes (changed every couple of days), a cannibalized 386 processor with very low power consumption, 2 MB of memory, 2 MB of ROM with the webpages and server software (customized by the group) burned in, and ROM on a network card for booting. There are no moving parts in the machine.
The science is pretty simple: potatoes can act like batteries because of their thick skins and salty “meat.” By plugging zinc/copper electrodes into the spuds, power is produced by the electrochemical reaction and then used by the chips.
The pages the Spud Server is serving are simple, but the low power means lots of folks can't look at them at the same time, so the server software limits the number of simultaneous connections.
Here are the links:
- Spud Server's Web pages
- Temple ov thee Lemur Spud Server info pages, including FAQ, pictures, and design
- BBC article, including some more info and other alternative power Web servers
Thanks to Jonathon Ratcliffe for the heads up on the BBC article.
What a great concept! I particularly love the impetus behind this project: the FAQ's first question is “Why Bother?” The answer is “Someone bet us we couldn't.” If that isn't a great summation of geekdom I don't know what is :)
Nitrozac's wonderful geek comic After Y2K had a similar concept in the fourth “strip” from way back on February 10, 1999. The fifth one is great, too. Maybe if we keep genetically engineering our food we'll get to power real machines off these babies some day!
I saw this item on Slashdot back on Monday but didn't want to contribute to the fried potatoes too much traffic might cause (I wonder how those would taste …), but when I heard about the BBC article I figured I could talk about it now. Take a look … it's pretty cool and will give you an interesting topic for your next social gathering :)