EEVblog #632 - Solar Roadways Are BULLSHIT!

[lpaseen]

I think there must be some sort of data display in the green box. People keep on stopping to look at it.

That is the kiosk. It has a slide show that is duplicated on the City of Sandpoint website.  It's simply an all in one PC in a box. No interactivity.

http://cityofsandpoint.com/visiting-sandpoint/solar-roadways#ad-image-7

Scroll down to the "virtual kiosk."  They are identical.

And on one of those slides it states that you can go to the url "solarroadways dot com slash pilots"  "and look at the energy generation from this site right now", and that url truly seems to reflect the power generated - missing (and adding the url to this forum causes gateway502 error).

[Brumby]

I hope somebody has a recording of today's attack. That guy didn't wander over to check out the pretty lights or anything like that. He literally ran into view just to jump on them as hard as he could. The only thing going through his mind was "I'm gonna smash this!"

Check my link above, someone on twitter captured video of teens trying to smash it with a skateboard.

While such actions are worthy of a facepalm response - is anyone really surprised?

My bet as to what might break a panel is a somewhat above average 9 even for the USA) woman, wearing a nice fashionable pair of narrow point stiletto heels and who walks across the panels while yakking on the phone. My bet is the heels will crack the glass on an edge, and the panel will shatter.

No, I think that is highly unlikely.  The glass will be a lot stronger than that.  There are many glass floors on skyscraper towers, etc. and they don't break...  It is a question of when you get road debris, gravel, etc and then drive over it with a 5-ton (or even heavier) truck, do they hold up?  What about a rock or other debris falling from a truck?  Can they take the kind of constant pounding that a road (or even a pathway) get on a daily basis? 

I think they would scuff and become rather opaque quite quickly even if they don't often shatter in real use.

It is interesting to speculate about what might cause a catastrophic failure.... but I am waiting for some absurd and/or obscure cause that is going to sit the manufacturer back in their chairs thinking 

[Habropoda]

Maybe it is buried somewhere in this thread, but have they addressed the kryptonite of super strong tempered glass?  You can jump on it all day or pound it with a fire extinguisher and it won't break, but punch it with an automatic center punch, tap it with one of those car safety hammers or fling a broken piece of spark plug ceramic against it and it flies into a million pieces.  I imagine a car with studded tires would leave behind a ribbon of glass sand.

[ataradov]

Here is the current state of this abomination.

[LabSpokane]

It's all down to:

[EEVblog]

Here is the current state of this abomination.

Yep, half another tile down, just fixed on several RED LED's on max brightness?

[jonovid]

its a 2016 Dance Portal to a 1977 Disco  but you must be wearing flare jeans & Playing Saturday Night Fever by the Bee Gees.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Fungus]

Yep, half another tile down, just fixed on several RED LED's on max brightness?

How robust are these things if people can affect the LEDs with their feet? I can't imagine trucks driving over them all day long.


Gotta say: This is some entertaining viewing. Especially now the "beer can carrying" sector of the public has turned up.

[jonovid]

  more

[mexakin]

just got linked to something very similar in croatia, zadar
I havent heard of this before, but those guys did the same as the solar hobbiyst from blinking roadways




it begins at Minute 1 to show how this works.

Looks slightly advanced in comparison to the roadways, oh but yes I forgot, those modules at zadar are not in the road...

[rs20]

Yep, half another tile down, just fixed on several RED LED's on max brightness?

I had a look back over my recording, and unsurprisingly, it's impossible to tell exactly when this happened because it's impossible to see through the reflections during the day. So instead, I made a pointless timelapse:



I'll grab a recording of the failures/repair-by-stampings that have occurred since, and post them shortly.

[ChunkyPastaSauce]

just got linked to something very similar in croatia, zadar
I havent heard of this before, but those guys did the same as the solar hobbiyst from blinking roadways




it begins at Minute 1 to show how this works.

Looks slightly advanced in comparison to the roadways, oh but yes I forgot, those modules at zadar are not in the road...

Been operating since at least 2011

[coppice]

just got linked to something very similar in croatia, zadar
I havent heard of this before, but those guys did the same as the solar hobbiyst from blinking roadways




it begins at Minute 1 to show how this works.

Looks slightly advanced in comparison to the roadways, oh but yes I forgot, those modules at zadar are not in the road...

I don't think Zadar is in any way comparable to the solar roadway work. Zadar is an artwork. It has no need to meet economic or efficiency goals. If the group of solar roadway tiles installed so far were installed as an artwork, it would probably succeed as a fun light display. However, it isn't supposed to be an artwork. Its supposed to be a scalable, affordable, futuristic road + energy source.

[rs20]

As promised, the "repair" by a member of the public, as spotted by Fungus:



If you're wondering why it doesn't look slow-mo like the actual webcam feed (which actually is in 0.65x slowmo!), I've sped the video above up to compensate. So what you're seeing is actually real-time...

[mexakin]

i know that one is an artwork and the other is supposed to be something else..

But lets be honest, does anyone in here believe that first public test is anything else, than a road heater with lightning?

Maybe they did put some inverters in there to put the little solarpower outpit into the grid, since there are a lot of prebuild options, but other than that...

No innovations seen here.. never was never will be

[kalleboo]

These guys should have bought their LED panels from the that Jaycar warehouse sale - those had fewer broken lights than these do

[Fungus]

As promised, the "repair" by a member of the public, as spotted by Fungus:

Yep, that's the one! 

Next time I see something funny I'll remember to preserve the timestamp instead of cropping it out. 

[EEVblog]

As promised, the "repair" by a member of the public, as spotted by Fungus:

 

[w_leds]

you will have a link that runs in France; youtube dailymotion LiveStream or other, I want having fun with you

[ataradov]

But lets be honest, does anyone in here believe that first public test is anything else, than a road heater with lightning?

It is fine when first test don't have the efficiency of the final product, but first samples should not self destruct on a regular basis under normal use. This stuff is possible to figure out in a private test - just put this BS in front of the office entrance and see how they hold up over time. But that does not achieve main goal - scamming public out of money.

[jonovid]

But lets be honest, does anyone in here believe that first public test is anything else, than a road heater with lightning?

its outside the Sandpoint public toilets.

[Fungus]

its outside the Sandpoint public toilets.

I saw a lot of people going in and out of there, spending a couple of minutes inside. I suspected it was a toilet but I wasn't sure.

[drussell]

Scott Brusaw is there right now... 

They just reset the panels at midnight local time.

[EEVblog]

Why the lame arse full colour patterns on the panels?
Why can't they have "Solar Roadways" scrolling or something?
It's not even a half impressive LED demo 

[rs20]

Why the lame arse full colour patterns on the panels?
Why can't they have "Solar Roadways" scrolling or something?
It's not even a half impressive LED demo 

When he rebooted the panels at midnight*, they were in lock-step for a little while, but then started falling out of sync. So they're actually individually going through the same fixed loop/routine, but evidently their clocks aren't synced. In other words, yes, it's about the lamest possible implementation, no randomisation, nor any communication between panels at all (except for cutting power )...

* I'll post a video at some point, maybe once I have a bit more interesting content