Helium.co: Connect devices to the web without Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Cellular

Re:Helium.co: Connect devices to the web without Wi-Fi, Blue... by diydsp on Thursday July 03, 2014 @04:21PM (#7985509)

AmpHours are not similar to units of energy. They are not subtly different from units of energy. They are completely different. The difference between a drawing of a house and a house.

Note that lead-acid batteries are rated in amp-hours AND a voltage. With those two pieces of information together, one can compute their power capacity. Your boss only had people show A·h in the tool, b/c most people working with lead-acid batteries know the voltage of their batteries. The voltage of the Helium device under question is unknown.

The fact that people are downvoting EEs below makes me weep for the future.

Note that your boss was also overly pedantic. One can clearly see Ah is valid on the wikipedia page [0]. It follows the same form as Nm or N·m being valid for Newton-meters [1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere-hour [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_metre

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Re:Helium.co: Connect devices to the web without Wi-Fi, Blue... by vacri on Friday July 04, 2014 @01:03AM (#7987416)

Amp-hours or joules, you still need to know the voltage of your battery. It seems the strangest criticism being made against me: "Aha! If you're using amp-hours, you must also know the voltage!", as if this is an otherwise irrelevant detail. The exact same people pinging me would have an equally apopepltic fit if I said "just hook up any old battery, voltage is unimportant, as long as you've got a lot of joules!".

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