@DaftFader 561678 wrote:

Thought you might like this …. 🙂

15-year-old Kelvin Doe wows MIT. [VIDEO]

I remember seeing that a few years back, (he is using a version of that 1980s Dutch FM TX too!) what made his project special was how he dealt with limited availability of power for the communications equiment.

I think its equally cool that his country’s PTT / Communications Ministry didn’t give him any trouble and probably helped him get to school/uni overseas. He is now working on a solar powered WIFI communications project in Canada, which will eventually be deployed back in his home country and across Africa.

European boys (and girls too) did the same things not so long ago, but many of todays “Western” youth aren’t interested in the less “cool” aspects such as power supplies, cable monkeying, working at the comms rack and struggle with hauling servers or UPSs with big accus. Many don’t even want to work at companies in the USA which are hiring because they only make “boring” things like routers, network switches (without which none of the cloud apps and smartphones would work at all!)

At work my two younger staff know everything about smartphones, apps and all sorts of computer games, but when we did a office move they both had to have a 5 minute break after hauling each big UPS. (2 x 12V accus about 15AH, 25 kilos).

They were genuinely physically exhausted by this, not slacking off, but when we first got the UPS units delivered, the Fillipino cook and the janitor who are older than me but around the same height/build effortlessly brought one each up two flights of stairs. The boxes did say “MADE IN PHILLIPINES” so maybe they felt patriotic as well as strong – and in PH the girls probably assembled the UPS, including the heavy accu!

I ended up saying to these lads that it wasn’t so long ago they would be hauling at least two more accus of similar bulk (4 x 12V for -48V) and before that it was 24/25 of them (24 or 25 X 2V) for the telephone exchange alone.