Alternate uses for heat.

[mickster04]

This thread is for people to give alternate uses for the heat that is produced. heat sink's are all well and good but they are a bit wasteful.

Ideas.
1) coffee/tea warmer. instead of buying a usb heater, just use the fit -pc,
I haven't added anything special to it so surface area is a bit off ("fit pc" embedded doesn't quite match the underside of my cup )

errmmm...so that's the only idea I've had, but if people come up with different things to do with the heat and any attachments that can be used to make use of the heat rather than loosing it

[benjgil]

Hate to put a dampener on this enterpreneurial spirit, but i'm afraid you probably wont have much luck heating anything with the energy from Fit PC.

The PC feels warm/hot to the touch, but that's only conductive heat over a relatively small surface area - once you start adding other devices to sink the energy away you'll find it's a lot less energy than you expect.

To illustrate the point, a standard kettle is 80-150W, Fit PC uses 10W, and that is not all channeled through any one facade of the enclosure, so it will very likely not warm a cup of water more than a degree or two (if that).

You may be able to use it to warm your hands up for a couple of minutes after coming in from the winter cold, though again you may find the PC cools down quicker than you expect!

But a great initiative - there's loads of waste heat in our houses and we should try to capture as much as possible (temperature-difference material on windows to capture energy used to heat a house?).

[mickster04]

that's a fair point. I shall conduct some experiments later
I think the top of the fit-pc2 doesn't help much, it isn't ecaxtly designed to help disipate heat nor does it have a flat surface:/
I use an SSD so could over clock it to make it warmer and still not worry about it dying