+1

Might be worth looking into, bit pricey compared to Arduino though.

But the starter kit comes with a mainboard and a 4" LCD touchscreen which is pretty decent for small projects. The hardware is largely made by GHI Electronics...

http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/297

Not sure if this would be suitable or not...

Sure if you factor in the cheap panels from China the averages look favourable; but as I mentioned in another post if you look at the quality panels, over time the change is not as drastic.

I have personally been watching the prices of panels to buy for an installation, and the quality panels have not come down that much in any sources I have seen. Maybe I am looking at the wrong suppliers, or maybe I should just buy some chinese panels of questionable quality, I don't know.

While I would use the word "steadily" versus "precipitously", I agree.

Thanks for the chart, it is essentially saying we got until around 2017 before this shit starts getting to be realistic price-wise for everyday people.

I don't believe this to be accurate, while China has been flooding the market with cheaper panels in the last couple of years, you always get what you pay for.

If you look at the good quality panels from companies like Sharp the prices have not dropped anything like what you have suggested. The prices on them have come down, and the panels use better technology now, so you can get some bigger wattage panels which is nice, but they are still not yet price efficient for your average household (at least up here in Canada).

I would be interested to know what size installations your neighbours have, what kind of backup they have in place (grid tie or generator), and how often they rely on that backup.

Trying to generate enough solar to live at the same level you are when connected to the grid, requires either a backup ($$!) or to be way over-engineered (also $$!) compared to a location further south. The downside to living up north is we not only get less sunshine/day, in the winter when you really need it, it's really cold out as well, which generally drives up power demands.

As someone who has been watching the price of panels in the last few years, I don't believe that to be entirely accurate.

"the price of a residential solar electric system fell 17 percent" - be that as it may, the price of panels has most certainly not fallen 17%. If anything they are marginally cheaper.

Man how many times have we seen these stories already - "cheap solar power discovery, will make solar pv affordable" but then years later nothing has changed.

It would be great if some of these things actually got productizd, I would set up solar pv all over my property if it was just a bit more cost effective...

The move to apps is, I think, a much larger issue. It's forcing us back into walled gardens where Apple, Google, MS etc are the gatekeepers and control (and get a cut out of) everything.

Meanwhile most everything can be done in a browser nowadays, we should just continue on with what we were doing, building web apps.

Ugh, I feel like we are regressing back to the Prodigy/Compuserve/AOL days.

If its faster and better than whatever out there, why not give it a shot?

From what I understand the mobile js frameworks out there so far still leave a lot to be desired.

Further to this, if this works better than current satellite internet, it's still going to be way better than dial-up for users who are in rural areas where there is no DSL/Cable/Fibre...

Um, if you use the Steam client, it pops up a window with the statement from Newell....I'm not sure they can do much better than that!

I recently gave my 90+ year old grandmother one of the HP Touchpad's I got from the HP firesale. Much to my surprise, she took to it right away. I set up her email, skype, few games, etc. and supplied her with a dock and bluetooth keyboard. She was even using it in the hospital last week when she was in getting a pacemaker, the nurses were quite impressed apparently.

Am certain an iPad, or Android tablet would be just as suitable, they are all pretty easy to use and if you preconfigure it for them, they'll be all set..

Or, you know, pare back that absurdly large military industrial complex, which is probably the single thing responsible for breaking the US's bank.

I don't really believe this, Linux isn't a threat to Microsoft, never really has been on the desktop, so it's not worth any effort by Microsoft to do this.