08/12/2000 - I was down at Hampshire last Wednesday and took a minute to pace the distance between the windmill and the closest Enfield buildings. The distance was, very roughly, 170 feet. Apple's Airport base station claims a maximum range of 150 feet. Other base stations have higher ranges. In any case, an antenna may be required on one or both ends. Fortunately there isn't too much in the way between the two structures. Trees do unfortunately block that side of the windmill. I happen to be getting an airport for my personal LAN so I'll be able to use that to judge what will be required to have a reliable wireless connection. MacInTouch has an old story about a guy who successfully connected to his network from 8.5 miles away when in the line of sight. He was using hefty directional antennas on either end, but it still is good example of what is possible.

08/10/2000 - I was surprised to see this story on Slashdot yesterday. It's about SolarHost, a web hosting company that uses solar to power all it's servers. They claim high reliability and even have a cool "This site powered by the sun" logo on their web site. Here is the story that Slashdot links to.

08/07/2000 - Hopefully my job just got a lot easier. The Linux Router Project is a group that's crammed Linux onto a Floppy. Although the documentation is scarce, there appears to be a package for the Apache Web Server and the WaveLan wireless cards.
I've also been spending time learning electronics fundamentals that I should have learned years ago. The local bookstore carries Home Power magazine which I bought and read through. Lots of interesting articles on the life alternative power homes.

08/04/2000 - WANTED - Your Old Laptop. Although I don't yet have data, I'm feeling confident that a wind/solar/battery setup will provide enough electricity to power a laptop reliably. So I'm now in search of a laptop. A 486 or low speed PPC would be ideal. A must is that it needs to have a pcmcia slot for a wireless network card. A machine with a broken screen, but video out would be great, as a screen won't be needed once it's all set up. If you have an old laptop that you would like to donate (tax write off) or sell for a very low cost please let me know.

08/03/2000 - I've started to poke around for funding. Lemelson and others may be willing to providing money to do the project right. I'd rather not sell my soul, but the windmill repairs and hardware purchases are going to be more than I can afford of my own pocket.

08/02/2000 - Quite a bit of progress has been made in just finding out what this project is going to take to be possible. The number of resources available on the Internet have begun to expand. Once a couple good resources were found, links to others quickly followed.

Many people, including John Reid, the original windmill builder, have now been in contact. Everyone has been very helpful and excited about seeing the windmill come back to life.

Now that some content is available, the web site has been broken up and can be viewed using the navigation on the left. Much has been learned about how the windmill works, it's history, and where to go from here.

In my travels, it was discovered that Green Mountain Power of Vermont has a wind power facility in Searsburg, VT. It has 11 huge wind turbines which provide enough electricity to power approximately 2000 homes. Occasionally they offer tours of the facility and I plan on visiting as soon as the next tour is offered.

07/24/2000 - Although this project idea has been floating around my brain for a few months now, I've just now started doing preliminary research to see if this project is even feasible. And if I find it isn't feasable, I'm going to find out what it takes to make it feasible.

I'm still unsure how little power a computer will require and how much power the windmill will provide. Two pretty vital pieces of data. I expect the amount of power needed is going to be large and the amount available small. Because of this, I'm looking into a embedded, low power computer. I'm not sure if there are any existing embedded solutions that support the 802.11 wireless standard. And to provide additional power, a hybrid wind/solar set up may be required.

From my early research it appears that a vertical axis windmill is not as efficient as a horizontal axis blade windmill. The current windmill is also surrounded by a number of trees, which I'm sure decrease the amount of wind that reaches the windmill.

I have sent out various emails today, to investigate, what the current state of the Hampshire windmill is. I'm not even sure who to ask, before doing any work on the windmill itself.