Abstract: The solar powered soffit fan includes an electric fan mounted over a soffit vent. A roof-mounted photovoltaic solar panel aimed at the sun delivers power to the soffit fan. During daylight hours, the photovoltaic solar panel provides sufficient electrical power to activate the soffit fan, which provides forced attic ventilation through the soffit vent. At night, the fan automatically powers down when sunlight no longer impinges the solar panel. A thermostat and/or humistat can be included for additional control of the unit. The fan can accept power from an optional rechargeable battery. Multiple soffit fans can be configured to service larger buildings.

Abstract: In a passive optical network (PON), multiple optical network terminals (ONTS) transmit data to an optical line terminal (OLT) using a common optical wavelength and fiber optical media. Various components of the PON, including the OLT and ONT(s), can malfunction. Centralized techniques for maintaining or diagnosing fault conditions may be ineffective in large networks or in relatively small networks because of vast amounts of information and limited storage capacity for the information. Thus, fault conditions may occur and not be diagnosed due to lost or overwritten information. Therefore, a distributed approach based on information related to ranging of ONTs within the PON is employed in an example embodiment of the invention. This distributed approach can improve monitoring and diagnosis of fault conditions that may lead to instability of the PON.