EEVblog #632 - Solar Roadways Are BULLSHIT!

[Fungus]

Some guy just came along and opened up the grey control box. He pulled out a PC/keyboard/screen and is doing some hacking.

[Fungus]

Now he's pulled out some sort of sensor on a wire and he's waving it around over the floor trying to get a "reading". It doesn't look like it's working too well.



Move the PC down to floor level and try again...



Still no good! Move the PC closer to the center.


And try it there...


Now walk around for five minutes shaking your head with a "this makes no sense" look on your face.

....


Then he went back to his car, a woman got out to stand guard over the PC, and he's driven off somewhere.

[LabSpokane]

Some guy just came along and opened up the grey control box. He pulled a PC/keyboard/screen out and is doing some hacking.

That is the owner of Solar Roadways, Scott Brusaw.

[daqq]

And here is a solution for boosting energy output at night!

That's called recycling, duh! 

[Fungus]

Comedy gold!

Some guy just ran in out of nowhere and started jumping up and down on the road trying to smash it, with hacker guy sat in his car a few meters away and the PC still on the floor.

I didn't capture the moment of glory but it was funny as hell. I hope somebody was recording it. 

[Mr.B]

LOL.
Its 2am in Sandpoint.
Do they really think they can get away with a quick fix while the world is watching on a webcam...

[Fungus]

Now he's gone away and it looks like he switched four of the panels off

[EEVblog]

As with every one of these types of projects, the goal posts were quietly moved to "electric disco sidewalk" while retaining the name "Solar Roadways."

They can't pivot the product and change the name or in any way show they are giving up on the road solution, the funding and grants would dry up quicker than a dead dingo's donger.
They can keep  for a long time to come I suspect.

[bktemp]

Some guy just ran in out of nowhere and started jumping up and down on the road trying to smash it, with hacker guy sat in his car and the PC still on the floor.

I didn't capture the moment of glory but I promise it was funny as hell. I hope if somebody is recording this. 

That was funny, here 3 more screenshots when the guy jumped.

The repair attempt wasn't sucessful: At the end he simply disabled 4 segments.

[EEVblog]

Comedy gold!
Some guy just ran in out of nowhere and started jumping up and down on the road trying to smash it, with hacker guy sat in his car a few meters away and the PC still on the floor.
I didn't capture the moment of glory but it was funny as hell. I hope somebody was recording it. 

Someone needs to record this 24/7!

[Fungus]

Some guy just ran in out of nowhere and started jumping up and down on the road trying to smash it

I didn't capture the moment of glory but I promise it was funny as hell. I hope somebody is recording this. 

That was funny, here 3 more screenshots when the guy jumped.

You got him!

[Fungus]

Are we taking bets on how long it takes for the vandals to get organized and come back with proper glass-breaking tools?

[EEVblog]

4 panels still down:

[kalleboo]

I love how he brought a full tower PC and monitor. Couldn't spend any of that cash on a laptop?

[Fungus]

4 panels still down:

"Hacker guy" (Scott Brusaw) just disabled a few of them when he had his PC hooked up to the array.

[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.

[EEVblog]

I love how he brought a full tower PC and monitor. Couldn't spend any of that cash on a laptop?

They spent it all on big boys toys:

[Fungus]

I love how he brought a full tower PC and monitor. Couldn't spend any of that cash on a laptop?

Maybe it has a special interface card in it or something.

[Fungus]

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

Who'll get organized first, the flash-mob dancers or the vandals? 

[EEVblog]

Some guy just came along and opened up the grey control box. He pulled a PC/keyboard/screen out and is doing some hacking.

That is the owner of Solar Roadways, Scott Brusaw.

I wonder if he's got one tab open with this thread? 

[EEVblog]

Who'll get organized first, the flash-mob dancers or the vandals? 

I recon if I did a video there would be enough viewers near enough to do flash mob 

[rs20]

I didn't capture the moment of glory but it was funny as hell. I hope somebody was recording it. 

Damn it! I've been recording footage (getting the MP4 frames direct off the server, none of this screen-grab rubbish!), but the freakin' webcam feed got busted partway through today and I stopped recording (out of the kindness of my heart?!) to prevent DDOSing the webcam provider. I apologise, I shall not make that mistake again.

I do, however, have footage of the "repair" (from 3 broken panels --> working, looks like they basically turned it off and on again).

I have footage from 2016-10-03 19:10:00 thru 2016-10-04 19:25:00, and have started recording again now commencing 2016-10-05 02:38:00. Feel free to send requests my way!

EDIT: Part of the reason that the stream jumps around is that the webcam footage is actually in slowmo (0.64x*) -- compare your local computer clock to the timestamp in the video when you refresh (it syncs up nicely), and then look again in ten minutes. The clock in the video will have fallen just over 3 minutes behind, and the discrepancy only continues to adds up over time. Odd.

* Camera is generating 31 fps, but the stream is tagged to run at 20 fps, so it falls behind.

[Fungus]

OK, conspiracy theory time:

Before Hacker Guy's visit, all the panels were "working" (lit up).

Question: Why did he switch four of them off?

Maybe he was looking at the wattage logs of the day and those four panels were below par. He switched them off so he can claim they're 'broken' and raise the overall average wattage being produced.

I wonder if the "sensor" he was waving around is some sort of UV light that gives him feedback on the panel's efficiency. He could have been looking at output readings on screen when he was messing around with it.

[Fungus]

Who'll get organized first, the flash-mob dancers or the vandals? 

I recon if I did a video there would be enough viewers near enough to do flash mob 

We could organize a bunch of people in white coats poking at the tiles with multimeters and shaking their heads.

Then hold up some signs with formulas on them and a big "Bullshit!" written underneath.

[EEVblog]

I thought a big thing with these tiles was the ability to have them communicate and generate large scale pattern etc. But the animation on them seems to be totally independent per tile.