Technology
Merlin Solar bets the curvy panels will help it land on roofs everywhere
Solar panels are almost everywhere. There’s likelihood one among your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big store down the street. As you drive there, you could see a field of them displayed along the road. With such ubiquity, you would be forgiven for pondering there isn’t any room for improvement.
Venkatesan Murali would really like to prove you unsuitable.
Murali, founder and CTO of the company Merlin Solarhas been working on a brand new approach to solar energy for nearly a decade. He founded the company in 2016, after Solyndra’s spectacular implosion in 2011, as Chinese manufacturers pushed panels down a dizzying cost curve. Murali, nonetheless, remained unmoved, although he learned lessons from this defeat.
“Don’t scare people with something new,” he told TechCrunch. “No new particles, no new physics.”
Instead, Merlin Solar turned to an existing and widely used solar technology, monocrystalline silicon. Solar cells constituted of this material are inexpensive but fragile; to forestall cracking, corporations typically encase monocrystalline silicon in two panels of glass surrounded by a metal frame. This makes the panels heavy and limits where they might be installed.
Murali wanted flexible solar panels, but using monocrystalline silicon was a challenge. “Everything crystalline will eventually crack,” Murali said. “Can we be sure that every electron will find its way, even if a bullet goes through it?”
To answer this query, the company modified the way the cells are connected in the panel. Merlin increased the variety of joints at the front and rear, and between the links made the joints springy in order that they may bounce when bent.
“Suddenly we had a product that was not only crack-resistant, but also electrically crack-resistant,” he said.
Merlin panels are much lighter than a typical glass panel, and their flexible nature changes the way and place of their installation. The panels have adhesive on the packaging, so that they might be stuck to the surface like a toddler’s sticker. The curved design follows the contours of assorted surfaces, allowing for installation on, for instance, the roof of a Winnebago Airstream trailer.
Merlin claims its panels cope higher with partial shading than traditional panels. In a conventional panel, when something like a leaf shades the corner of the cell, energy production drops dramatically. Merlin’s network of connections allows more power to be distributed around the shaded cell.
The added flexibility, light weight and skill to handle shading have made Merlin panels a favourite amongst recreational vehicle owners. The company also sold panels to corporations reminiscent of Perdue, Daimler and Ryder to be used of their trucks, which allowed them to scale back idling or use of fossil fuels to power on-board fridges.
Merlin’s improvements mean its products cost greater than typical solar panels, which has forced the company to get creative with who it sells to. “We are entering spaces where we don’t compete solely on cost,” Murali said. “When I minimize vehicle idling time, I expose myself to the dirty and expensive energy produced by burning diesel fuel. So when I go against it, my return on investment is usually a year and a half.”
In addition to RV owners and shippers, the company can be the rooftop photovoltaics industry, where a good portion of solar panels are installed. To scale its operations, the company recently raised $31 million in Series B funding led by Fifth Wall with participation from Saint Gobain and Ayala.
Merlin hopes that Saint Gobain, one among the largest roofing corporations, will grow to be one among the startup’s largest customers and its panels will go into Saint Gobain solar shingles, said Laura Allen, Merlin’s chief operating officer.
Technology
US medical device giant Artivion says hackers stole files during a cybersecurity incident
Artivion, a medical device company that produces implantable tissue for heart and vascular transplants, says its services have been “disrupted” resulting from a cybersecurity incident.
In 8-K filing In an interview with the SEC on Monday, Georgia-based Artivion, formerly CryoLife, said it became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” that involved the “compromise and encryption” of information on November 21. This suggests that the corporate was attacked by ransomware, but Artivion has not yet confirmed the character of the incident and didn’t immediately reply to TechCrunch’s questions. No major ransomware group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
Artivion said it took some systems offline in response to the cyberattack, which the corporate said caused “disruptions to certain ordering and shipping processes.”
Artivion, which reported third-quarter revenue of $95.8 million, said it didn’t expect the incident to have a material impact on the corporate’s funds.
Technology
It’s a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard and it’s called Raspberry Pi 500
Manufacturer of single-board computers Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer keyboard device with higher specs. Named Raspberry Pi500This successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is just as powerful as the present Raspberry Pi flagship, the Raspberry Pi 5. It is on the market for purchase now from Raspberry Pi resellers.
The Raspberry Pi 500 is the simplest method to start with the Raspberry Pi because it’s not as intimidating because the Raspberry Pi 5. When you take a look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you do not see any chipsets or PCBs (printed circuit boards). The Raspberry Pi is totally hidden in the familiar housing, the keyboard.
The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is you could connect a mouse and a display and you are able to go. If, for instance, you’ve got a relative who uses a very outdated computer with an outdated version of Windows, the Raspberry Pi 500 can easily replace the old PC tower for many computing tasks.
More importantly, this device brings us back to the roots of the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi computers were originally intended for educational applications. Over time, technology enthusiasts and industrial customers began using single-board computers all over the place. (For example, when you’ve ever been to London Heathrow Airport, all of the departures and arrivals boards are there powered by Raspberry Pi.)
Raspberry Pi 500 draws inspiration from the roots of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit organization. It’s the right first computer for college. In some ways, it’s a lot better than a Chromebook or iPad because it’s low cost and highly customizable, which inspires creative pondering.
The Raspberry Pi 500 comes with a 32GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. It costs $90, which is a slight ($20) price increase over the Raspberry Pi 400.
Only UK and US keyboard variants will probably be available at launch. But versions with French, German, Italian, Japanese, Nordic and Spanish keyboard layouts will probably be available soon. And when you’re in search of a bundle that features all the things you would like, Raspberry Pi also offers a $120 desktop kit that features the Raspberry Pi 500, a mouse, a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable.
In other news, Raspberry Pi has announced one other recent thing: the Raspberry Pi monitor. It is a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that’s priced at $100. Since there are quite a few 1080p portable monitors available on the market, this launch is not as noteworthy because the Pi 500. However, for die-hard Pi fans, there’s now also a Raspberry Pi-branded monitor option available.
Technology
Apple Vision Pro may add support for PlayStation VR controllers
According to Apple, Apple desires to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive for gamers and game developers latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The Vision Pro was presented more as a productivity and media consumption device than a tool geared toward gamers, due partly to its reliance on visual and hand controls moderately than a separate controller.
However, Apple may need gamers if it desires to expand the Vision Pro’s audience, especially since Gurman reports that lower than half one million units have been sold to this point. As such, the corporate has reportedly been in talks with Sony about adding support for PlayStation VR2 handheld controllers, and has also talked to developers about whether they may support the controllers of their games.
Offering more precise control, Apple may also make other forms of software available in Vision Pro, reminiscent of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop.
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