Loons, Wi-Fi and ever-expensive hardware

You have to give credit to Google for picking a name for its ambitious Wi-Fi project that will more than likely make many people snicker: Loon.

You may have heard about Project Loon in the news. Google is using balloons — huge balloons — to float over New Zealand in a pilot project aiming to test the delivery of Wi-Fi to places where conventional wisdom would hold it’s too difficult and/or expensive to reach.

Project Loon

www.google.com/loon/

Google has long had an interest in extending its operations beyond the screen and into other areas, and one of them is providing

Wi-Fi.

I’ve written before about Google Fiber, its project to serve up uber-high-speed Internet and TV services, starting with its pilot location, Kansas City, Kansas and moving along to such recent rollouts as Provo, Utah, and Austin, Texas.

Loon changes things quite a bit.

During the weekend, Google launched a series of huge solar-powered balloons over New Zealand, where a few dozen testers will be seeing what kind of Internet service they get. The balloons won’t merely be floating around. Quite a bit of engineering and know-how has gone into making sure the balloons move with the winds at the stratosphere.

Because they are all networked together, they collectively will be able to provide a broadband Internet service below.

As the kids would say, mind: blown.

Well, that’s if it works. There’s a social imperative here, of course. Newfoundland and Labrador is far, far from the only place to be struggling to provide broadband access to rural and remote locations. In fact, the majority of the humans on the planet — at least five billion — are in the same position.

If Loon works, it opens up all kinds of possibilities, and you see why it picked this promotional tagline: “Balloon-powered Internet for everyone.”

We use the phrase “blue-sky thinking” all the time to describe imaginative problem-solving. It looks like Google’s famed X Labs took the advice to heart.

The project just launched, literally, and there’s no way to tell what the immediate applications will be. But I imagine quite a lot of attention will be focused on what Google finds out — and then on what Google expects to be paid for a commercial service.

Those pricey tablets

A friend of mine was asking me for some shopping advice recently. I’ve become attached to my iPad and an advocate for tablets in general, so much so that I carry mine around during most of the day. I use it for note-taking, writing, emails, recording audio, reading, playing games … the list goes on.

So, my friend has been doing some comparison shopping, and just about fell over when he saw how expensive an iPad can be these days.

Apple is pretty savvy: it lures potential consumers in with the basic prices. An iPad Mini currently starts at $329, while a pared-down version of the older iPad 2 goes for $399.

But you can spend a whole lot more than that. A top-of-the-line iPad, with its high-def Retina screen, can cost as much as $929. My buddy told me his eyes practically left their sockets when he saw that. Why the difference? There are two main reasons, and let’s use a car analogy: a whole lot more zoom under the hood, and a whole lot more room everywhere else.

All of the latest iPads have a new processing chip (called an A6X), which Apple says doubles the capacity of what it had been previously using.

You’re paying for that, no matter which model you choose, but you are getting some pretty sophisticated capacity, especially with graphics.

The higher prices are also determined by storage. I whined in this column a while back about running out of space, and pretty quickly.

That happened largely because I’ve moved a number of magazine subscriptions to the digital space, and some of them come loaded with so many bells and whistles that a single issue can suck up a gig of space.

The highest-end iPad now comes with 128 gigs of memory, and the $929 price tag is attached to the version with a cellular plan. If you want to rely on Wi-Fi alone (as I do), the cost comes down to $799.

The question is this: do you really need that much storage? The full lot will allow you to put (depending on the quality you prefer) 30,000 songs or at least 100 movies (fewer if you’re dealing with Blu-Ray quality). That’s more than many people ever put on their home computers, so the range may be a bit much. Even I would have a hard time filling it with all of those magazine issues.

If you’re a mega-user, though, or a company dealing with many types of very large files, you may like that space. The average consumer could easily scale down their model.

As much as I like Apple products, I advise my friends to check out other manufacturers. The tablet revolution has meant an incredible advance in the quality of handheld devices.

Plus, if you’re still not sure about what’s in the marketplace … just wait. Prices continually drop, and new products emerge (albeit with, yes, hefty price tags for those new innovations

Google's Loon Uses Solar Power to Connect the World

Google wants to bring wireless internet service to the whole world through its airborne Loon network. The pilot project got off the ground on June 15th, launching from Christchurch New Zealand.

A Loon is a helium-filled mylar balloon floating about 20 km (12 mi) above the Earth’s surface, carrying an internet router and associated gear. Each unit can provide internet access to a 40 square km area. Google plans a network of Loons that communicate with the ground and with other Loons. Hundreds of Loons combined could provide wireless internet access worldwide. Communication uses the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands which are publically available without a special license. Internet speeds are roughly equivalent to 3G speeds. Although cell service can already reach many remote areas, Google thinks the Loon network could provide internet access to areas where cellular companies haven’t penetrated, as well as locations that have been struck by natural disasters, knocking out cell service. Since it uses low-cost balloons instead of satellites, the total cost will be much lower than the $7 billion that Motorola invested in its Iridium phone network.

Instead of being tethered to the ground, the Loons move on air currents. As one floats out of range, another should float in range. Each Loon includes a solar powered fan to pump air in and out of the balloon, allowing the Loon to change altitudes in order to maintain its position relative to the other balloons in the network. And if the Loon should malfunction and fall from the sky, a built-in parachute will deploy. The Loon’s case has a label saying “Harmless Science Experiment” along with contact information and a “Reward if Returned” notice.



The Loon sports four lightweight photovoltaic panels (see photo below), which provide enough electricity to power the on-board computers, navigation system, and communications hardware. During peak sun, the PV panels generate 100 watts, much more power than necessary to operate its electronics. Some of the excess energy is used to generate heat, which keeps the electronics running at optimal temperatures, since it’s very cold at 20 km. The remaining energy charges the Loon’s batteries, roughly the equivalent of ten laptop batteries.


To reduce energy consumption, the Loon uses very low-power electronics. Its computer runs on about one-tenth of the power of a standard laptop. The Loon has three identical onboard computers, providing triple-modular redundancy in case one computer fails.

Solar panels work a lot better at higher altitudes. At 20 km, there is much less atmosphere to absorb the sun’s rays. In fact, the air mass at 20 km is only 5% of the air mass at sea level. Above the Earth’s atmosphere, the solar power available is 1366 w/m2. At sea level it’s 1000 w/m2. If a solar panel is 1 m2 in area with 10% efficiency, it will generate 100 watts at sea level and 136.6 watts if it’s positioned above the atmosphere. At an altitude of 20 km that panel will generate approximately 130 watts.

Considering the wireless nature and the altitudes involved, solar power is the obvious choice. But this innovation could spark a number of other airborne technologies, all powered by photovoltaics. Widespread use will drive solar panel prices down for consumers, making the cost of solar power even more affordable. In addition to bringing the internet to the world, Google is also helping to bring solar power to the world. There’s nothing “loony” about that!