Visualized: pedal power lights Christmas trees the eco-friendly way

Visualized pedal power lights Christmas trees the ecofriendly way

When many are increasingly conscious of how their lighting impacts the environment, Christmas tree lights can feel like giant bundles of excess energy consumption. We're not advocating that anyone shelve a centuries-old tradition, but we've noticed a growing trend towards alternatives that help save the Earth... at least, if you don't mind cutting a tree down. Take Electric Pedals' two new trees outside London's Southbank Centre, for example: ten pairs of pedals keep the Vivid Design Works installation shining through energy 'donated' by visitors. We've also seen an even larger pedal-driven tree in Beirut, Lebanon, and we're certain that others are lighting up the night as we speak without consuming more of the world's resources. The concept isn't new, as there's been foot-powered trees in recent years -- we'd just like it to see it spread.

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Source: Electric Pedals (Facebook), Wall Street Journal

ARM server running on pedal power demoed at Red Hat Summit

ARM server running on pedal power demoed at Red Hat Summit

With x86 and a few high-powered RISC chips dominating the list of the most powerful computers on Earth, you might be wondering what's the big deal with ARM and it's push into the server space. Well, this is the big deal. The image above is of Jon Masters powering a Calxeda-server from HP with nothing more than a bicycle. OK, so there's a bit more to the setup -- including a 400 watt inverter, a 35 Ah battery, a UPS and a Pedal-a-Watt -- but the gist of it is that Masters was able keep 32 ARM cores humming along just by pedaling his road bike at the Red Hat Summit. The demo was mostly meant as a proof of concept, but we can easily imagine our future robot overlords putting us to work keeping their network of servers running. On the plus side, pedaling to power the Internet might help solve our global obesity epidemic. For a quick tour of the rig, check out the video after the break.

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ARM server running on pedal power demoed at Red Hat Summit originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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