Hello Everyone! My name is Ken. I have been a long time fan of bit-tech and following this forum for so long. I have always been the only one who has not worked on a cool project: until now. Even though it is not as cool as everyone else- the crazy red Rogue by Craig, and the sick PrometheusCU by Jesse, it is still considered a cool project, and actually important step into the new computer industry. I am currently a Computer Engineering student at Rochester Institute of Technology. Me and a small team of other fellow engineers are making a kiosk that will monitor the energy consumption of the building my department is currently residing (the Engineering building). This building is considered very "Green", so this kiosk will be place in the main entrance that will allow people to go through the building's history. Alright, enough boring stuff. Here is a plan. LCD Touch Screen monitor Large 32" TV/monitor small computer (dell mini studio?) the kiosk stand podium wiring and insulation and mounts here are some prospective parts: Elo Touch - touch screen monitor Samsung UN40B6000 Dell Vostro 220 Slim Tower I am trying to get a large TV/monitor that can take HDMI so it can be used for audio and video through one cable. Also it has to be as energy efficient at possible (omg right? ). the slim line computer is also very basic, but we are going to make a very simple GUI for this and run it off Linux hopefully. The computer will turn off when the building is out of commission, aka really late hours (1am - 7 am), building is closed, breaks, and holidays. This will also talk to the HDTV and control it also. I discovered that most modern TV's are serviced through a serial to USB cable to the back of the computer (I saw this on Samsungs and SONY's). I will use this to communicate with the computer. More to come!! If you have any suggestions, PLEASE BRING IT UP =]!! -Ken
My first thought was "You can do a lot better than that Dell." Think a VIA mobo; a Nvidia graphics card; a flash disk; and you're ready for bacon at roughly half the power draw. Or if you're wiling to sacrafice the HDMI for DVI (basicaly the same video output but audio is a second cable) and use a lower HD format you could lower your power costs even further with something like this VIA mobo "average operating power consumption of less than 14W" of corse it's going to be more than that in a real life application, but VIA lead the way in low power computing... And yes, yes, yes; although Intel's Atom uses less power than the C7, it's all about the northbridge, Intell paired their awsome little chip up with a power hungery beast they borrowed from their existing lineup, where-as VIA match their northbridge to their processor. Is the 39" going to be an integral part of the kiosk, or a semi-seprate (wall mounted or something) part? And are the two monitors going to be displaying the same image or will the big one be looping some fancy video about the development of the kiosk and how cool and green the building is, while the touchie is for browsing the history of the building and it's greeness? On a side rant I have to say I'm impressed with the discription from Samsung "Resolution : Widescreen" Hmmm, I know that resolution is directly related to aspect ratio and that this determins the basic discription (widescreen, portrat, etc.) and that as a 1080p it's not rocket science to work out it's native resolution (if we assume an aspect ratio of 16:9 [a fair asumption] then the resolution should be 1920x1080), but never-the-less widescreen is a discription of the format not the resolution. Rant over. Regards, Alex.
