Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hutzlibu | Hacker News Reader

I did this for years, but in the form of backpacking/hiking/cycling and still do it on occasion (when my family lets me).

Meaning much bigger constraints in weight. 10 years ago, it was really expensive getting the equipment, I used a solar gorilla/power gorilla pack. Very nice, but also heavy. I think around 500€.

Today I use 2 Anker 21 solar W and 3 power banks for half the price and at least triple the power. (downside is only USB charge, meaning not possible for many laptops, unlike the power gorilla)

Also laptops really improved in battery life and power efficency, meaning, when I started doing it 10 years ago, I could only really work consistently, when I had a real power source nearby. Otherwise it was maybe 2 days of full-time working.

Today I can work forever off the grid, on my cheap rugged Asus Chromebook, as long as the sun shines from time to time and I have a safe place to put up the solar panels. All in all my mobile office equipment is 4-5 kg. For short trips with laptop, 1 panel and 1 powerbanks, cables,.. 2.5 kg. Which is managable, even when you carry also your tent and food.

Combining working in nature really helps my creativity and I can recommend trying this out. The tech really is ready today, unless you want to do heavy video editing or 3D Design.

But coding, in my case mainly with chrome dev tools and node, really works fine off grid. There are new insights to be gained, from top of a mountain, tree, or next to a river, compared to your never changing office wall.

Bonus points from developing on slow hardware: you really have to code efficiently, as you notice, when something is going wrong and takes more time, than it should

Also I now like the combination of computer with pen and paper. So sketching design things or algorithms on paper, before implementing them as code. (started doing so, to save batterie)

If you don't mind me asking, which Chromebook do you have and how much coding do you get out of the 1 panel/2.5kg trips between charges?

I also use devtools and node. I would love to find a device that focuses on low power consumption. I wish I could find something like this, but with a larger screen, usb charging, and ideally a single unit.

http://blog.yarm.is/kindleberry-pi-zero-w.html

I have a Asus C213. I think C214 is the current version.

I really love the hardware. It is indeed rugged and water resistant, it had to endure much on my travels, fell down a lot or things on it. Moisture, sand, heat, ice and snow - and is also made for maintaineance, I could quite easily replace the touchscreen, the only thing that broke, which was really my fault for stepping on it (but getting the replacement part, I had to order from china)

And how much coding I get out if it, well depends on the situation. If there is strong sun all the time, then forever. Also with just 1 panel and batterie.

The batterie on its own last 10+ hours (now after 4 years of intense use obviously not anymore)

Meaning if you code during the day, your power bank gets charged in the meantime. Can get charged full from empty in the right conditions in some hours and one power bank gives me around 1.5 laptop, charges. More power than you need.

Meaning just with 1 extra batterie I get 25 hs of coding. Meaning on short trips of limited time and unstable sun, I just bring a second power bank and have 40 h of work without needing to recharge.

But since the sun does not shine all the time and I spend weeks and at times, months off the grid, I upgraded to 2 panels and 3 batteries to really not care about power anymore.

Before I learned to be energy efficient. Which also lead to interesting results, like I only opened up the lid, if I really knew what to do. So intense short burst of coding and then stop and thinking about the next step, or the current problem, that showed up. It is efficient and also healthy, giving your eyes only limited screen exposure with lots of rest, but still getting stuff done.

edit: about device, before that one I had a cheap windows convertible. For 200 € you get already 10+h of work, lightweight and USB charging. But I really can't stand windows. And stock linux drivers are too buggy in that segment. When I open up my chromebook, it is immediately awake and I can resume exactly where I closed it. On my bigger powered manjaro laptop, I have to wait at least 10 seconds, which disturbs my flow.

The pi 400[0] sounds pretty close to what you're afer, sans screen though.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/raspberry-pi-400-the...

What kind of internet bandwidth/latency do you get? And how do you get it?

Mobile connection obviously. The further remote, the less signal(usually). But most of my work can be done offline, so that is not an issue for me.

How do you manage(d) working with npm modules?

My chromebook is in dev mode, so I can use chromebrew and just install npm. But I just use and do not create npm packages, so I don't know if theres a limitation there.

(in theory I could boot a full linux in embedded VM, but that is too ressource intensive for my taste)

In general, ChromeOS sucks, but the driver and firmware is really optimated, which means fast sleep/wakeup and long batterie life and with my basic tools running I am quite happy, even though my control over the system is much restrained compared to my manjaro laptop for example.

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