OLPC India/Khairat Technical

Khairat school, OLPC India

XOs at Khairat getting charged (Picture by Carla)

Credits

1. All photos are by Carla unless otherwise mentioned.
2. Most of the textual matter is by Arjun

Deployment of Laptops in general - reaction, expectations and feelings

The kids love their XOs and remain with them all day. The parents of the kids spend time with their kids and the XOs and have started to take an interest in learning about the various things their child learns from the XO. I observed that -

• Most of the parents are familiar with the term 'Computer' and consider the XO to be a computer. However, since they have never worked on the computer, they
• The green color and the various visual design elements make the XO an attractive and easy to take to machine. For example the green color of the XO is a symbol of prosperity in India and in the Indian Flag.
• The parents are very keen to use the internet from the XO. Currently only one newspaper is distributed in the village which arrives late in the day as the village is far from the city. The parents are excited about reading many Marathi newspapers for free on the XO.

School server - default setup and road ahead

picture of school server

School server - power solutions

The power solutions for the school server would be different for alternative power solutions for charging the XOs. This is because the power consumption of the school server is more than the power consumption of the XOs.

Providing internet in the remote village

Currently a dialup internet connection through a fixed wireless phone that has been provided by Reliance Communications connects to the school server. See here for details about the connection provided. There is a plan to connect Khairat with a faster internet connection. However the remote location and a small number of users make it difficult to arrive on a quick solution.

Localization, Keyboard and Fonts

The current XOs have English keyboards. However latest software builds also support rendering and display of Hindi, Marathi and various other Indian languages.

Overview of observed Bugs

Alignment of power adapters

The power strips available in India require the power adapters to be at 90 degrees to the current alignment. This issue has already been resolved as there are now two variants of power adapters being manufactured.

Touchpad

Kids were facing difficulty in having a good amount of control on the cursor using the touchpad. There are three attributes to this -

• Kids use more than one finger - sometimes 2 to 3
• A variety of different conditions under which the keyboard is used - sometimes sweaty hands, hands with a little amount of mud etc.
• Jumpy mouse bugs - most of which as of today have been resolved. See

5799 and 4183

The journal

Some XOs on the 613 images had their Journal gone. Image 616 fixed that bug. Once the teacher lost his files. As a result an automatic backup script was written by Amit in the site. (Carla) Ticket #3978 tracks this. As of today, this bug is fixed.

Small text and buttons

Some text and buttons are too small for the kids to be able to click easily. Ticket #4070 tracks this.

Alternative power solutions

Electricity supply at the village is not reliable and in a day the power cuts can range from 4-20 hours.

Comment by Carla - The power supply in town is not very reliable, so many days we didn't have power, or had it intermittently. The children tried to bring their XOs charged, but still some needed to charge them at school.

Solar power

We tested out a solar panel at the project site by taking current and voltage measurements. We got about 12V 400mA output in maximum sunlight intensity. This value changes if the orientation/slant of the solar panel is changed. The power obtained is thus about 4.8W which is close to the theoretical limit of 6W of the solar panel. This solar panel costs about $10.

Cow power

First prototype

We explored the development of alternative power solutions in the village. Our approach was to develop power solutions around locally available mechanisms. At the village (pilot site near Mumbai) we explored the ideas of using solar power (in Mumbai sunlight is not consistently strong) , running water (we couldn't find any local water bodies nearby), wind power (no wind in the that area), mounting small dynamos on bicycles (we found out that in that area bicycles aren't that common at all, esp in that village). But the village had an abundance of cattle - that were being used in the fields. So we decided to design something around that.

Read details about the Cow Power solution and updates [Cow_Power|here]

XOs are getting charged

Children working while charging

Cow Power Design Notes

Mechanical design prototype

22nd December, 2007

• Pranay, Sairam and Raghav - These are some of my friends in college with whom I've recently been having some detailed discussions regarding next steps for the design. Many thanks to all of them.
• Gear box - I scouted Chawri Bazaar and Meena Bazar (places in East Delhi) with Pranay to look around for gearboxes that we could find and also to look for suggestions from local people. We got to have a look at the gear box of an Enfield (mini Bullet model) motorbike - but after manually rotating the gears on it realized that the maximum reduction that we could get with this was only 3 (in gear 1). The person was selling the gearox at Rs 1100/- We also got to know about gear boxes used in cars , but came to know that these are immersed in oil so
• Planetary Gears - One of the options that Pranay has suggested in to use Planetary gear system. Some good links to understand the concept are here

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/gear-ratio4.htm http://www.howstuffworks.com/automatic-transmission1.htm

However it seems that this might not be what we want to go in for because we are looking for existing gear boxes and don't want to build a customized solution. Perhaps some gear boxes used in cars...

• Alternator vs Dynamo - In the local market people told me that contrary to the dynamo, the alternator would start giving current below its rated speed also. Although, the alternator would require some starting current, it seems that I would need to seriously consider this option.
• Tonga wheel - On my way back I saw a Tonga on the road. I observed that it has a large wheel. I am now thinking how I may use it to my advantage :)

See here to know what a Tonga is.

• Meeting Mr Vipin -
• Increasing rpm ratio - It seems that adding a 80cm radius pulley with flat belt drive may be the best solution. Mr Vipin said that one could get it from the junk market at the rate of metal (by weight). He estimated it to weigh 70-80 kgs.

24th December, 2007

• I sat down with Amit and the two new recruits at Reliance for the

OLPC project - Sandip and ___. I explained all details about the project - electrical and mechanical to them to get them upto speed with the progress till date.

• Me, Amit,__ and Sandip went to Khalambuli(a place in Mumbai) today.

We talked to the local car mechanics there. They suggested to use the alternator used in trucks because, as compared to the alternators used in cars (for example that used in Maruti 800) those used in trucks can be started with a much lower starting current.

• At the repair garage in Khalambuli, we also carried out a simple

testing of the alternator. It seems that even by rotating with one's hand, one could generate current ranging from 300mA to peaking 1.3A intermittently.

• A conventional car battery was used to provide the starting current

for this experiment. A partially used XO battery which was giving an output of 6V wasn't able to start the alternator.

• We would be testing the alternator output after fitting it with the

rest of the mechanism tomorrow at Khairat Village.

25th December, 2007

• We took Mr Prabhat from Khalambuli to Khairat Village. We took an

Alternator - it is the one that is used in trucks inIndia. It is the one used in Tempo 407. It is rated to give 35A at the rated rpm of 2400rpm.

• At Khairat village we replaced the dynamo with the alternator.
• Upon simple testing by rotating the shaft with the hand one could

light up a bulb that we connected - we measured current on the ammeter ranging between 700mA - 1.5 A

• We then took detailed dimensions of the whole setup - something

which we hadn't done before

• We did calculations at the OLPC project lab in Reliance, DAKC.

linear velocity of cow = 0.7m/sec
w(in) = 2.8 rpm
lenght of shaft required = 2.37m
reduction ratio (big wheel R=21cm, small pulley r=4cm) y=5 X 5 = 25
w(alternator) = 70rpm

With the modified design - adding two more belt pulley in
cascade(planned to be implemented now)
--------------------------------------------
<diagram>
reduction ratio = 25 X 25 = 625
w(alternator) = 1700 rpm
This would produce about more than 10A

At the last belt the force in the belt = 3000N. Thus we need to find a belt
suitable for this purpose. We plan to put a flat belt here -
currently all our belts are V belts.

• We are still considering using a Tonga wheel in case our proposed

design doesn't work out

• Pictures and illustrations to follow ...
• Merry Christmas!

Electrical design

Requirements

1. Regulate current. The XOs at Khairat school have LiFePO4 type batteries. Let us chose a 1A charging current so that with the given capacity of the dynamo, we can charge about 15 XOs simultaneously. See Battery Charging for more details about all kinds of batteries that are used in the XO
2. Regulate voltage. The XO power supply accepts voltage from 9V - 18V . The charging circuit switches on at 9.85V. Let us chose to fix the voltage that we give the XO at 12V

Design approach

• Using L200 as the central component - it is cheap, easily available and most of all robust
• Referring to this sample circuit and deriving parameters from this design guide
• To avoid effects of shorting or reversing of supply from dynamo to the L200 circuit a simple full wave bridge rectifier using 1N5408 diodes has been used. Also, a 100uF 35V decoupling capacitor is being used after the rectifier.

Deriving circuit parameters

1. For values of R2 and R1, I referred to table in right column of Page 4 of design guide. Selecting Vo=12V +-4% I get R1= 1K ohm +-1% and R2=3.3K +-1%
2. Since Isc = 0.45/Rsc (according to sample circuit design), I chose Rsc=0.47 ohm 1/2 watt
3. Current in R2, Ir2=(Vo-Vref)/R2 where Vref = 2.77V. Hence power dissipation in R2, Pr2 = 25.8 mW
4. Current in R1, Ir1=Vref/R1 = 2.77mA . Hence power dissipation in R1, Pr1 = 7.7 mW
5. Hence R1 and R2 can be chosen to be 0.25W type

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to Richard Smith for help in the electrical design.
• Thanks to Pranay, Raghav and Sairam for their inputs on the mechanical design.

--Arjs 00:35, 26 December 2007 (EST)

Sharing Experience

In the classroom

Amit and I, together with the teacher and the children, did some testing on the Mesh by sharing activities. Children were working on the laptops and did different kinds of sharing to work with their classmates. The Sharing Activities wasn't that intuitive, we weren't really successful with it. Nevertheless, the children who shared activities were super-happy. --Carla 16:56, 30 October 2007 (EDT)

Comment by Carla

I was very involved with the technical side with Amit, until Manu and Arjun arrived. I still was in the loop but more involved with the educational side. So, I'll focus on the aspects that had an impact on the educational side Khairat Chronicle. We worked with the developers daily to tackle these issues.