So, I'm on this "low energy" kick. I've kind of been here before but this time
it's more than just a nifty tech experiment. I want to start to be more
intentnional with my uses of computer technology. One thing led to another and
well, it's also kind of a neat tech experiment, so... more fun for me!
I'll be leaving tomorrow for a week long bike trip. During the treck we won't
have a lot of access to the power grid. In preparation for this, I swapped my
smart phone's SIM card over to a BLU Zoey II [0] feature phone. In addition to
having an outrageously good battery life, it has a very small battery and a very
small power input requirement for charging which means I can charge it using a
small solar panel during the day if I want.I changed over a few days early
because, well, my Google Pixel 2 has been giving me some trouble recently. The
battery has been "dying" with 25% left and the phone starts to frequently crash
when the battery drops below 70%. I've ordered a replacement LiPo for it and
will be replacing it but it kind of got me thinking again about my reliance on
the thing. Could I actually stop using it? This was two days ago. I've now been
using the "dumb" phone almost exclusively. I've managed to find a workable
system that allows me to keep my "smart" device usage to a minimum. The goal is
not to totally remove it from my life but to help reduce the mindless use as a
distraction from more important things (reading, family, hobbies, work, etc.).
So far I've been able to reduce my reliance on mobile smart devices by about
95%. Due to the nature of my work as a computer systems engineer, I almost
always carry my laptop bag with me. In addition to my laptop I have taken to
carrying an old Android tablet and my Google Pixel 2 in teh bag, all turned off.
This allows the battery life to be greatly expanded and provides a bit of a
barrier to usage (allowing time to power up the device before I use it). In
time, I think I'll reduce the device count down from three to just two by either
removing the tablet or the phone. It will probably be the phone that gets cut. I
read ebooks almost exclusively and find reading on small phone screens more
difficult than on e-ink or tablet devices. Almost all use of these smart devices
is completely optional. There is, however, one exception. My employer requires
multi-factor authentication for several online properties including the employee
portal, VPN and ssh authentication. I was able to switch most of these over to
using a physical token. Four of them, however, require the use of an app and do
not support the physical token. This is the 1% use case where I need to power up
my Pixel 2, open the app, get a code, and then shut it down again. Thankfully,
this only has to happen once or twice a day in most cases.
This long winded story leads me to this final thought. My new side project; My
"casual" project, if you will. A personal challenge. How can I be more
intentional about my digital life in other areas. Not just with regards to my
use of mobile devices but also at home, my use of my desktop computer, my use of
the power grid, my use of television, media consumption in general. More
generally, how can I LIVE more intentionally. Not in the philosophical,
religious sense, but just in the living sense. My time is limited, I should do
meaningful things with the time I'm given and the resources I hvae, don't waste
time and energy on things that don't being me joy or meaning. I started looking
around my life to identify the low hanging fruit I could tackle first.
The next most obvious place was my desktop computer. I have a big, hulking
gaming PC. I used to play a lot of video games but in the last year I picked
up some new hobbies that take up most of my time and I haven't played anything
seriously in over a year. I decided to turn the desktop PC off to save some
electricity and heat generation (it's really hot here in the summer). But I
still want to have a desktop PC in my office to use for looking up information,
listening to music, checking email or watching Youtube tutorials on while I
build and paint my models. For this, I said "Ah, a Raspberry Pi is more than
enough". I have a couple of Raspberry Pis (ok, a lot of Raspberry Pis) sitting
around, once used for this project or that, and I decided to repurpose one for
this endeavour. In about 30 minutes I had it up and running and connected to my
desktop monitor. I'm still getting the software setup completley but it's
already been a more than acceptable solution. My office is now cooler and
quieter, but I can still do everything I need to 99% of the time. For that 1%
when I do want to play a video game, I can turn the big hulking desktop PC on.
I think my first goal is going to be:
Run my home office off of 99% solar
This goal, in theory, seems achievable. The main energy consumers in that room
are the window mounted A/C unit, my homebrew router and my desktop PC. With the
desktop PC "solved" (it's "trivial" to run a Raspberry Pi exclusively off solar
power with a battery backup system for nights and cloudy days). The router
"problem" is solve-able. I will need to potentially buy something that consumes
less energy (maybe a Raspberry Pi, who knows!?) but the software stack (PFSense)
is fully capable of a "lift and shift" to some other device without much work.
The A/C problem may proove to be the most difficult to overcome. The location of
the office is not ideal for insulation from the elements. It's located above my
garage and has very little insulatable space between the ceiling and the roof
of the house. In addition, the windows are old and poorly insulated. The ideal
situation would be to completely remove the need for the window mounted A/C
unit but the costs involved in doing so may prove prohibitive. Running such a
power hungry device off of solar seems impractical as well, likely increasing
the power draw on the system by several orders of magnitude requiring larger
panels and bigger batteries. This will probably require more thought, but I
have confidence I can come up with something.
So, anyway, I've rambled enough for now. I'll try to post one more entry before
I leave for my trip tomorrow and, if conditions permit, I'll try to post some
trip updates during the week as well.
[0]
https://www.pcmag.com/review/336309/blu-zoey-ii-unlocked
