April 29th, 2005
No More Electricity: New PC Uses Ethernet For Power
We covered this once before with an ethernet powered clock, but Power Over Ethernet or PoE as its called is getting even more popular. Today it was announced that even an entire computer can be powered by the Internet and not your wall socket.
“UK firm DSP Design has made a PC that gets electric power via a network cable rather than through a wall socket. Before now power via a network system has only been used for devices such as wireless access points, CCTV cameras and (Voip) internet telephone handsets. DSP said it expected their new PC to find uses where it was hard to lay any kind of cable other than computer network cables.
“The net-powered PC has come out of a project to create specifications for powering almost any kind of computer hardware through Ethernet cables. Ethernet is the name given to the most widely used way of connecting computers together into local networks.
“Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) works because when data is sent down network cables it is represented by voltages. Some PoE equipment uses spare wires in cables that link computers back to network hubs and pump power down these. Others pump power down the same lines as the data traffic. The current PoE specifications have an upper limit of 15.4 watts.
“This is enough for Voip handsets, network hubs, webcams, smart card readers and even video servers but it is far too low for most desktop PCs. But DSP Design has produced a PC, called the Poet 6000, that draws only 12 watts by replacing a monitor with a flat-panel screen and using low power components.
“The Poet 6000 has a touch screen and DSP expects it to be used in kiosks, at trade shows and other places where laying power cables would take too long, be too expensive or too difficult. Ordinary laptops could also soon be getting their power from network cables as work is starting on specifications for Power Over Ethernet Plus which will be able to deliver 30-35 watts. “Source: BBC News
rich says:
The phrasing there is awfully misleading. Power over ethernet does not power computers “from the internet”.
A normal low-wattage power connection for a computer has a cable from the computer to an external power supply brick, and then another cable from that to the wall. A computer powered via PoE does *exactly the same thing*, except that the cable between the computer to the external power supply brick happens to be the same cable that is being used for data. At the other end of the data connection is a device with a power supply which plugs into the wall. You can’t use PoE if you don’t have something at the far end of the data connection providing the power; it’s not using some sort of latent power found in all ethernet cables or pulling electricity out of the air along the cable run or anything magical like that.
Power over ethernet is handy (especially for things like IP-based desk phones, outdoor wireless routers, and so forth), but there’s nothing particularly spectacular going on: the only development is that the power cable and the data cable are both enclosed in the same insulation and share a connector.
April 29th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
James says:
Wow. What we really need now is power over wireless ethernet!
April 29th, 2005 at 1:17 pm