Brute Force and Ignorance

2012-01-29T23:07:00.001+01:00

It occurs to me that I never actually posted here what's going on.

There's this group, called Open Source Ecology Europe, wanting to build various kinds of free technologies in the vein of energy, food, structures, whatnot.

http://oseeurope.org
http://oseeurope.org/forum
https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcologyEurope

And so on.
I've been working with them on a couple of things, looking at setting up an online open source resource management engine, developing some tech, checking some locations, building a bit of infrastructure.
Right now I've got about a three week window free, so I've come back to Spain to do some work setting up the first on the ground project space, in Extremadura.
Basically by the time I leave here I want to leave a six meter geodesic dome, a greenhouse and at least one hexayurt. Also possible a solar oven, composting toilet and some kind of potable water source.
Coz, you know, three weeks is like forever.

And you're more than welcome to come join in.

Blog and general info: http://openeland.org
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/334671186553928/

2012-01-18T00:51:00.000+01:00

3D maps of the Open Source Ecology Europe Extremadura location. At some point I'll be doing overlays for these, such as slope angle, insolation, etc.
These will be downloadable 3d objects, once I figure out how to do that...

2012-01-16T20:06:00.003+01:00

If you're having problems with the Quicktime VRs below, here's the non fancy versions (click for larger):

2012-01-16T18:36:00.000+01:00

Back in Madrid now after checking out the first potential Open Source Ecology Europe living and project space in Extremadura. Got a bit of data and information about the place which I'll be posting over the next couple of days. Here's the first of it: (These aren't the best quality, but you'll get the idea.)

On the flat area in the bend of the creek. With good soil and access to water, likely the best place to start farming. Click and drag to view. You'll need Quicktime, available here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/Download this panorama:http://www.solarflower.org/stuff/extr_flat_pano1.mov

On the top of the rise. Flat ground, good drainage, good place to build structures. Nice tree.http://www.solarflower.org/stuff/extr_hilltop_pano1.mov

Access road front gate.http://www.solarflower.org/stuff/extr_road_pano1.mov

2011-11-02T19:01:00.004+01:00

Looking for a crew of coders wanting to do something of value.
Basically if you're familiar with Couchsurfing.Org's couchsearch engine... that's what we need an open source version of.
We're setting up various networks and infrastructures around Europe and the world, as well as databasing resources, but what's currently missing is a nice simple engine for filtering the data by geography, profile information, keywords etc.
If you know anyone interested in getting involved with something like this, please let them and me know.
This is important.
Thanks!

2011-10-10T23:24:00.001+02:00

Second one done.

2011-10-06T12:25:00.002+02:00

So here's the first finished tutorial animation.
The other five are rendering, when they're done I'll post them all with step by step text descriptions to the website. Hopefully that'll be finished by the end of the month.

In other news; I've been in Leipzig the last three weeks since leaving Ireland, staying with some friends and checking what's up.
Short version: not much. Bunch of housing projects and various volkskoche (people's kitchens) each night, found a weekly juggling jam, been hearing about a couple food production projects... Not nothing, but was hoping for slightly more.
It is insanely cheap here tho, walked past one of thousands of abandoned buildings the other day, big stone tenement, for auction with a reserve of €9,000. I don't think it sold. If you come here with a business plan the city will give you free office and work space. They're that desperate.

So if you're around, and want somewhere to get something of the ground, you could do worse.

2011-09-03T14:10:00.000+02:00

Just a quick update so yall know what's up. I've been in Ireland, wwoofing on a farm in county Cork last couple weeks while the construction tutorials continue to render and I get my breath back from the last two years' work hanging out with some much beloved friends from Edinburgh. On the 13th I'm back over to Germany, either Leipzig or the place I was last year in Saxony Anhalt to spend not more than a little time playing round with a couple ideas I want to test the overall viability of. Namely a very simple dehumidifier (Irish houses are staggeringly badly built) and more importantly a liquid piston magnetohydrodynamic steam generator (I've been practicing saying that) for use with the solarflower. That one's going to be of extreme interest if it works out, but I'm only looking for a proof of concept at this stage.
Then I think I might bounce round Europe for a couple months checking out what's happening and what innovation and generally cool goings on are going on. Maybe pitch in on some projects of others' if I find something interesting.

But the next big step is the tutorials, and they're pretty close to done now, my little netbook is doing a surprisingly admirable job with the rendering. You'll know when they're up; I'll be spamming the internet.

Peace.

Daniel.

Chicken mesh and plywood radio/wifi reflector dish.

2011-07-08T00:21:00.010+02:00

One of the first problems I had to solve staying in the valley in New Zealand was how to get internet into the place. There was dialup, but only ran at about quarter speed of dialup, and even then dropped out half the time. There was also supposed to be a pretty high tech microwave repeater link going in over the hill, but when I arrived that was still in the planning phase after a year, so I elected not to pin my hopes on it.
My father had the idea of some kind of reflector with a Telecom (unfortunately the only mobile provider in the area, my god do they suck, don't even get me started) 3G mobile USB modem dongle thing. To test the principle we did a lap of the community with a borrowed dongle and a frying pan, and managed to get a basic connection within ten minutes of hunting.

So, confident that it would work with a larger reflector my wwoofers and me set about making this:

and, because no one had told us about the spare jigsaw we could've used, all the curves of which were cut with this:

A process which nearly killed all four of us.
Use a jigsaw.

But the dish works beautifully. We didn't even bother aiming or optimising it, just chucked it out, pointed at a tree, with the dongle kind of in there somewhere, peaked out at over 100 kilobytes per second. Nearest cell phone tower was I think about twelve kilometres away, down a rather bushy river valley.

Cost about NZ$20 in materials (plywood, mesh, cable ties, screws), took a couple days to make, but really only because of the lack of proper power tools.

And in the interest of open source, here's the schematic: (click for large view and or download the jpeg)

Construction is pretty simple.

First, mark out the templates on plywood. You'll need 4 of the red one, 4 of the blue one, and 2 of the green.This is if you want to make the 1.5 square meter dish, you'll need to scale the numbers for different sizes.

To draw the parabolas the easiest way is to get yourself some light chain. When a chain hangs it makes a catenery curve, which is reasonably close to a parabola.
1. Mark off a length of chain as described on the template (135 cm for the blue, 160 for green).
2. Attach that length to the ply at the points marked, making sure they are the right distance apart.
3. Spraypaint over the chain to mark it's curve.

Cut out the templates with a jigsaw or similar.

Slot them all together, like so:

The easiest way to firmly attach everything is with some little blocks screwed into various corners.

Then attach your chicken mesh. If you're using this to receive 3G mobile/internet signal you'll want to have the mesh size no larger than 40 mm diameter. We figured that out using wikipedia and maths.

1. Drill 4 or 5 holes in the ply per gap, near the curve where the mesh will be attached.
2. Get yourself a bunch of cable ties.
3. Cut off a rectangle of mesh to cover half the dish.
4. Press the mesh into the cradle so that the point halfway along one side sits right in the middle.
5. Attach this point with a cable tie.
6. Work your way out in an expanding circle, pressing the mesh into the cradle and attaching with ties until the whole thing is locked down, including the circle perimeter. Don't worry about getting this perfect, it's not a mirror, and is pretty forgiving.
7. Repeat for the other half of the dish, overlaps are fine, but you can trim them off if you like.

Now attach two lengths of string tight from the sides of the circle, so you know where your centre is, and can attach your dongle/antenna/mobile there.

You're done!

Chuck it somewhere appropriate.

You can download the 3d model and schematics here:
Rhino3D 3dm file 203 kB
Google Sketchup 3DS file 39 kB

If this was helpful in some way, please let me know.

2011-07-02T13:05:00.001+02:00

Not sure if it'll be of use, but if any of you use CAD, here is the full 3d model of the most recent solarflower prototype.
Versions:
3dm - Rhino3d file, what it was built in so most detailed.
http://www.solarflower.org/store/solarflower_02-07-11_rhino3dm.zip

iges - nurbs surfaces only, so missing 12 threaded bolt objects.
http://www.solarflower.org/store/solarflower_02-07-11_iges.zip

obj - low resolution polygon version. Quick to view but lowest quality version.
http://www.solarflower.org/store/solarflower_02-07-11_obj.zip

3ds - same poly version as above, smaller file, and I'm pretty sure you can load this directly into Google Sketchup (free and easy 3d package/viewer)
http://www.solarflower.org/store/solarflower_02-07-11_3ds.zip

2011-06-29T18:00:00.000+02:00

The website is up! Still very much a work in progress, but it's there. Let me know what you think...

http://solarflower.org/

2011-06-21T16:40:00.000+02:00

Good lord, I have been terrible with keeping this blog up to date, I never even mentioned the first free construction workshop.

About ten people involved, three days to source materials and tools, six days to complete, NZ$110 total cost. Thanks to the Riverside community for hosting and making available the workspace. It was originally going to be taking place at the Tui community over in Golden Bay, but that fell apart at the last moment while I was attending the New Zealand national permaculture hui at Riverside, so I was luckily able to lash something together there on the fly. It actually turned out a stroke of luck, as trying to do all this over in Tui would've been a nightmare due to lack of access to people and resources.

2011-06-21T16:14:00.000+02:00

So in case you haven't heard the festival trip has been cancelled due to lack of funds.
But fear not! The SolarFlower World Tour will still of course be happening, just now after the summer and not involving a vanload of hippies touring Europe's festivals all summer for free.
Oh well.

So what I'm doing instead, at least for the next couple of months is:
http://urbangreenhouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/announcing-paris-urban-farming.html

setting up an urban farming collective in Paris. Because why not.

So if you're around, let me know. We can build some greenhouses.

I may end up doing another construction workshop while I'm here, and definitely have to get the now infamous tutorials finally completed, but otherwise generally I'll be posting updates to the greenhouse blog until I get back into the solar, probably in Turkey round Octoberish(?)

IndieGoGo is go!

2011-05-27T05:39:00.001+02:00

The crowdfunding project is now live, and can be found here: http://www.indiegogo.com/The-SolarFlower-World-Tour-Europe

The aim is to raise €2000 by the first of July to cover any and all costs of the festival trip. There will also be a €100 salary per participant, for the duration.

So just to sum up: if you want, you can join us touring a bunch of festivals and communities, building and supporting the Solarflower project and other interesting stuff, it will all be completely free, and you be paid for your time.

If you are psychologically capable of perceiving anything more awesome, or have something better to do with your time, I envy you.

An important note about the crowdfunding thing; if we don't reach the target I'll be making up any shortfall from the Solarflower kitty, which is my pocket. This is so that you can rest assured that this trip is definitely happening, regardless. (But doing so will eat in to my funds and probably cut short The Solarflower World Tour, after I leave Europe.)

SolarFlower is seeking collaborators for a free European festival roadtrip.

2011-05-19T02:35:00.002+02:00

The SolarFlower is a free and open source solar device which tracks the sun during the day and collects energy in the form of heat, which can then be used to run various applications such as water heating and purification, electricity, cooking, biochar, biodiesel, etc.
It can be made from recycled materials and common household items using very basic tools and skills, and there will be detailed animated tutorials on how to construct and use the device and its applications.
Over the next few years I plan to travel with the project, working with local communities and NGOs, giving free workshops and working in with people on how to build and develop this technology and others.

More information at http://www.solarflower.blogspot.com/
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_184038684971498&ap=1
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166441523415416
First though I want to spend the summer touring festivals and eco-communities around Europe, and I need three people to join me, as well as a van or other transportation.

The plan is this:
~Touch down in Europe around mid June.
~Hold a free workshop constructing one or two of the device, as well as a basic shower unit.
~Load it all onto a trailer.
~Tour the whole thing around any festival that will offer us admission in exchange for free hot showers for their patrons and supporting the project.

What you need to bring:

Technical requirements:
None. If you can physically hold a hammer you are fully equipped to help construct the device.
Being able to drive would be helpful.

Financial requirements:

UPDATE:
We now have a crowd funding project through Indiegogo.com ( http://www.indiegogo.com/The-SolarFlower-World-Tour-Europe ) to pay for this whole trip, as well as a €100 salary per participant for the duration. If this goal is not met I'll be topping up the difference from the Solarflower travelling fund, ie my pocket.

So not only will all this cost you nothing, you'll actually be paid to do it.

Practical requirements:
Tent, sleeping bag, etc. Whatever you'd normally take on a roadtrip. One person will need to supply the van /station wagon /car. Preferably something comfortable with good mileage and that won't break down. You will need to make your own way to the initial meeting point, probably at this stage northern Germany.
Also, I'll be too busy to do the work of approaching festivals etc for free entry, so someone else(s) will need to take on this task.

Personal requirements:
Must be a nice, easy going person who likes roadtrips, festivals and summer. Prior experience with social / environmental / energy projects is not required.

What you need to do to apply:

Send an email to solarflower.org@gmail.com with some information about yourself and a quick basic video. I know self promotion is difficult, but so is trying to choose three people you haven't met to share the summer with.

Any and all finer details will be arranged by the group.

And please forward this on to anyone you think might be interested. There's now less than a month to arrange all this, so the more people I can reach the better.

Thanks,

Daniel.

2011-04-01T04:06:00.002+02:00

2011-03-10T02:52:00.005+01:00

Well, the main news is that the device now works and is happily tracking the sun as we speak. I still have to complete the reset mechanism and heat tank, but these are (touch wood) vastly less involved than the tracking system and collector and will be lashed together when I'm back in New Zealand next month. I'm aiming to give my first free workshop somewhere in Golden Bay, maybe around the end of April.

Video evidence!!

Should point out that the wobbliness is not due to tracking error; the gearing is currently set a bit looser than it needs to be, and the wind messes with it. Easily fixable.

In other news, the Facebook page is changing over to a group, and can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/home.php?sk=group_184038684971498&ap=1

Feel free to pop in.
Also, www.solarflower.org will hopefully be up and functional in the near future.

2011-01-26T06:29:00.001+01:00

Wow, slack on the updates. The last pieces of the device are being put together now, I'll have media once there's something interesting to photograph.

2010-11-18T12:28:00.005+01:00

This is a design I sort of threw together one afternoon thinking about the absolute easiest and cheapest way to make a greenhouse, ideally for farming in cities and favella type environments.

It's just three tripods together in a triangle, wrapped in some ultra cheap plastic such as transparent mulch film, which some farmers throw literally kilometres of away each year.

It's arbitrarily scalable, the one pictured would have a 110 m2 footprint, giving about 320 m2 growing area. It'd also tie in well with aquaponics and similar.

I'll have a look at getting a working group together here in Perth, leave most of the work with them while I get on with the solar thing.

It'll largely come down to what land can be found, but as the thing will be somewhat moveable, getting kicked out won't be such a big issue.

Updates on this will appear on http://urbangreenhouse.blogspot.com/

2010-11-16T13:48:00.005+01:00

A few components still missing and a bit hacked together, but pretty much working.

Cute, no?

Unnecessary distractions 2: The Spoon Fork.

2010-11-16T11:37:00.004+01:00

In Malaga my wallet was stolen at a market where I was wanting to, interestingly, buy a new wallet. (But then couldn't because I no longer had any money).

They made off with €50 and a couple of cards, but what I missed the most was a little folding plastic spoon I'd got with an icecream in Australia.

How one is meant to travel without a spoon remains unclear.

So, finally, I got around to making myself a replacement. Hence:

the spoon fork.

(Not a spork!)

Unnecessary distractions 1: The Solar Shower.

2010-11-16T10:19:00.013+01:00

There were a couple of reasons for building a solar powered shower at the Traumschule when I showed up for the skill sharing camp in March; it'd been something I'd wanted to learn for a while, the only existing shower they had was a cold hose in the basement, and it was the north of Germany, in March.
Generally if the only way to get clean involves water slightly above freezing, I just won't get clean. The other people there didn't seem to mind too much, but Germans, like Scandinavians, are insane.

Most of what you see here was built in about two weeks, but wasn't actually finished until October, and not by me. I had an epic struggle with first the bends for the copper tubing (below) and then the water tank, which simply would not stop exploding, often spectacularly.

(I wasn't aware the water pressure was 5 bar, or twice that of a car tyre. That kind of psi simply will not be contained.)

In the end we went with a non-pressurised system using a toilet cistern. It worked pretty good and we still got a good rate of flow from the shower head.

It all works off a simple thermosyphon principle, where the water circulates itself through the heating panel due to the fact that hot things rise.

The actual metal panel we ended up using was donated to us, but not before I'd spent longer than intended trying to make this one. We had a bunch of old copper pipe, but I had massive problems joining it together.

The proper way is to get copper elbows and solder the whole thing, but we didn't have the money or soldering setup for that, so I had to try to make do with plastic hose, which kept going soft and collapsing when it got hot.

Finally the solution was to use two types of hose, one inside that other. The outer hose is the right diameter to fit snugly over the copper, with ridged washing machine hose inside to keep it strong and evenly curved.
However, shortly after coming to this I decided I really had to get back to the solarflower, and then we were donated the other panel anyway, so it never got finished.

But it's a good way of doing it.

Then a month later we discovered a full industrial grade water heating panel just laying around in the basement which made all of this unnecessary in the first place.

2010-11-16T10:13:00.002+01:00

Inside the shower.

It was a fatal accident waiting to happen, but I was quite proud of that little structure.
The inwardly sloped roof is so you can shower in the rain. Didn't really work, but looks pretty.

You can click on all these images for larger versions, and if you want any extra details on the shower's design and construction, just ask.
It's very simple and worked surprisingly well.

2010-10-20T16:39:00.006+02:00

The device has entered a vaguely quantum state of being both finished and not finished, working and not working, simultaneously.
Which is to say, the heat engine works and I got a correction out of the thing, but it took about a quarter hour where it should be six minutes at the absolute most.
This, I'm thinking it's safe to say, is largely due to the fact that I'm trying to extract useful amounts of solar energy from Germany's north in October.

If I was attempting a design based on oppressive grey and misery I could probably power the entire god forsaken region.

As it happens, however, this is not a problem, as in about three weeks I'll be back in Australia, where I can more realistically expect blue skies, 40º, and ozone depletion.
Roll on summer!

Again!

2010-10-01T22:44:00.003+02:00

Things are circling some kind of belated conclusion in a sum-to-infinity style equation; as in, when one draws perpetually closer to something without ever reaching it.

The design has entered a state of flux, what little scraps of direct sunlight I'm able to gather from the formidable Saxon weather are scrambled frenetically about in, testing what's been made and discarding all the things that turn out not to work. The little micro-updates have been appearing on the Facebook page, but once there's actually something to show, photos and jubilation will appear here.
Touch wood- I think it's not unrealistic to expect something very soon.

A litany of failures, part one: liquid core light pipe.

2010-09-12T13:25:00.009+02:00

The original idea I had for transporting the energy once collected, and we're going back more than a year here, was a liquid core light pipe. Essentially a fat, squishy fibre optic cable.

This works through the principle of total internal reflection, whereby light bounces without loss off the barrier between two materials of reasonably different levels of refraction. Such as glass and plastic, or water and air, or in this case: silicon and mineral oil.

The latter being pretty ideal, as it's easy to get, very refractive, has a high boiling point, and optically clear.

The former is what killed it. Silicone isn't particularly ubiquitous, cheap or clear, but the thing that really makes it inappropriate for this is that due to it's micro-surface texture, it scatters the light too much. What you really want here is something nice and smooth, like Teflon FEP or AF.

Unfortunately, tho those would be perfect for the application in every way (AF 2400 has the lowest refractive index of any polymer, to the point that you can even use water as your core (trust me, that's impressive)), it's almost impossible to get your hands on. And expensive when you do.

As you can see the silicone pipe did basically function, but comprehensive transmissivity analysis (digital camera, laser pointer, piece of paper and photoshop's histogram function) showed that even over only a meter and without bends, only about 10% of light was making it out the other end. The rest being scattered through the pipe wall.

And I wanted to put hundreds of watts through the thing. I guess this is why most everyone told me this was not a likely idea.
But it's quite pretty. I capped it with glass beads and hose clamps, attached a small l.e.d. torch with reflective tape, and am now using it as a rather dim light for my room.

So, since this was not going to do what I wanted I went on to investigate heat pipes, which are actually very promising and worth future further inspection, but ultimately for simplicity's sake have opted for a heat transfer fluid thermosyphon. Like most everyone else.
More on this later.

I've had an interesting realisation.

2010-08-19T19:57:00.006+02:00

At no point have I known for sure that what I'm trying to make here will actually succeed. From the start of all this, over a year ago, I would always end sentences on the matter with 'if the thing works', and then laugh nervously.

But it didn't work.
The first three or four basic designs for the solarflower simply didn't function, as it turns out, and it's current form is almost entirely unrelated to them. For the first nine or so months of this project I was pursuing designs which were doomed to failure; my most feared scenario set to transpire over and over again.

And yet it's taken me this long to even notice.
The design doesn't matter.
Only the function, and the consequence.
I've seen so many mechanisms and systems pass through this thing, some of them beautiful, only to be discarded or consumed. It's a good thing. It's evolutionary.
Every death signifies an improvement, an approachment on purity of function through form.

There is always a solution... there is always a solution... there is always a solution...

2010-08-19T18:48:00.005+02:00

Returned from the festival a few days ago, pleased to discover that after ten days of rain and wind the device was still structurally sound and hadn't exploded even once.
However, as I was stripping the reflector to upgrade a bit of wood I made the potentially catastrophic discovery that mylar sucks.
Every single piece of dust, every spot where the metal mesh touched it, every spattering of guano had somehow eaten a tiny hole in the reflective surface, leaving only the clear plastic backing. Holding it up to the light the damnable thing resembles a starry night sky of disappointment.

The two days of internet research which followed would be best described as 'feverish'; due partly to the fact that my stress levels always elevate a bit towards the end of projects, but mainly because I knew full well that:
Mylar, my default option from day one, was now going to be completely unusable,
The list of alternatives was very small, possibly zero,
And the inability to locate one would pretty much kill this entire project.

As of this morning the list runs to just one item: aluminium kitchen foil.
I've always heard that this is about the worst thing you can use; it's a bastard to work with, scatters the light too much, and is poorly reflective. Early research on marijuana cultivation forums seemed to confirm it.
However, closer reading turned up that there's no real reason this should be the case, as aluminium is one of the most reflective metals, running about 85-95% reflective through white light and well into near infra-red.

Caught a train to town, got a roll of the most reflective looking stuff I could find in the supermarket, taped three lengths together and whacked it in the assembly.
The results are very interesting.

The focus is about half as tight as the mylar thermal blanket, ie 10-12 mm as opposed to 5ish. Still pretty good. However the amount of energy is (according to my incredibly precise method of sticking my hand in and seeing how much it hurts) a lot higher. Like, 50% higher, even at the half concentration.

This, I think, means two things.
The thermal blanket, as well as sucking at durability, also sucks at reflectance.
and
Aluminium foil is a lot more reflective than it's generally given credit for.

I'm really happy to have discovered this, as though it requirs a somewhat careful workflow to avoid tearing, foil is by far the most accessible and ubiquitous reflector material in the world. That it turns out to also be one of the most effective has a lot of ramifications for home made solar.
And, yes, I'm aware that I hardly discovered it. About 90% of projects I've seen have used kitchen foil, but pretty much all of them have made what looks to be the mistake of gluing the foil to a backing material. It desperately wants to crinkle, and it's the crinkling which makes it almost useless. -You've got to stretch it-.
It also loves to tear, but taping the edges and any holes seems (touching wood) to resolve this. If it doesn't hold up in the field I'll just cover the entire back with stickytape. It's cheap enough.

So, if Google led you here because you're researching reflector materials, know this: aluminium foil rocks. Use it.
(There's pretty much no other affordable option.)

2010-08-03T02:07:00.003+02:00

So you know how I insisted that I wouldn't be leaving here until the prototype was working? Lies. Tomorrow I'm heading for the Ecotopia festival for a week.
There are three reasons why this is necessary.
First, I really need a break. I haven't officially shunned the project for more than three days since I was last in Edinburgh, in November.
Second, it's set to rain, and as the next step is plugging the tracking system together and seeing if it works, I'll be needing some sun.
Thirdly I've mounted up the collector and want to leave it for a while to see if it blows over/blows up/rips in half or gets messed around by the weather.

All plugged together it's still on about 20 grams to turn it, which is about a quarter what I was expecting.
So that's good news.

Wobbles like a bastard tho, haven't managed yet to devise a decent couple for attaching the collector to the main shaft. That'll get done when I'm back.

2010-07-31T11:55:00.003+02:00

Wolfram Alpha has just released a widget maker based on their computational knowledge engine, which for the geeks among us is pretty damn exciting.
Well...
I'm excited.

This one I made is for calculating solar noon for a given location, the time at which the sun is highest in the sky and vertical shadows run exactly north-south. This is very handy, as it's by far the easiest way to accurately aim your solar collector.

New wheel and gearing assembly.

2010-07-10T18:27:00.004+02:00

Well, it's official. With the removal of the washing machine hose universal joint, opting instead to just tilt the whole gearing and attaching the collector directly to it, there is now not a single aspect of the device left from the original prototype I did in Australia.

Over the last year every single part of this thing has been replaced or heavily reworked, often four or five times over.
This is a mixed bag, emotionally.
As in the case of abandoning the 'bubbles rising against an immersed wheel' in favour of the current 'pumping liquid up to pour over wheel' which at a stroke removed two major construction issues but also made completely redundant at least two months hard work on getting the thing sealed.

The wheel is another example of this. As you can see in the video it's bidirectional, because up until a week ago resetting the device each morning required a whole seperate heat engine running the wheel, and thereby the collector, in the opposite direction. Now tho I'm working on a more simple and effective return mechanism involving a heat switch, which makes the bi-directionality of the wheel rather pointless. It was a lot of thought coming up with that design, rather than just mount the cans directly on to the shaft.
I'm going to keep it how it is, however, for three good reasons:
1) It's the same effort to make either way.
2) This design is a bit more efficient and avoids a problem with dead spots.
3) It's really cool. And I'm too proud of the design to send it the way of all the other stuff I've come up with which didn't turn out to be necessary.

And 4), I guess, it could be of use to someone who needs a really efficient, low revs high torque, bi-directional water wheel.

Collector improved.

2010-07-10T16:04:00.007+02:00

The first attempt was too wrinkly, and the tape used to pull the mylar tight was slipping a bit in the heat, so instead of pulling out points on the surface with the gaffer have instead lined the peripheries with bike spokes and flexible wire, pulling out the entire edge uniformly with cable ties.
I've also added two extra bits of wood lengthways to support the mesh, as it was bowling a bit in the middle.

This has the effect of making the thing pretty much perfect.
I'm actually amazed how accurate the shape is, as you can see here; the focus is about 5mm wide, which is I imagine what you'd get from a professionally machine produced reflector.
Just to reiterate that this has so far cost me about €10 in materials and can be whacked together in a couple of hours with a jigsaw and a drill.

I tested the balance and it's about 50 grams heavier on one corner, so two medium size bolts should bring it back to perfect, thereby having the thing require practically zero force to rotate.

Main parabolic trough collector.

2010-07-03T18:55:00.013+02:00

So this is the main solar collector,
just shy of one kilowatt (one square meter). Worked out pretty easy to make; just some wood, an emergency thermal blanket and a sheet of wire mesh (and quite a bit of gaffer tape, tho the next version won't rely on that so heavily).

All up about €10 and two days work, tho most of that was figuring out how best to do it.

The hotspot is significantly tighter than I was realistically hoping, about 5mm from a 50cm aperture, or 100x magnification. And that's with it not really made quite as well as it could've been, a few surface deviations and wrinkles which don't need to be there.

Still needs a clear plastic sleeve for the copper pipe, but even without gets 300 ml water boiling in under ten minutes. Whole thing weighs about 6-8kg and if I've made it right should be pretty well counterbalanced, with the parabolic focus also being the center of gravity and rotation.

2010-06-16T12:43:00.003+02:00

The heat engine which drives the device has been going through some considerable metamorphosis since I realised that what I originally had, ie ethanol bubbles working upwards on a submerged wheel; was not going to work.
I spent two months trying to get the system completely sealed (which, to my restrained pride, I eventually did), but the main problem was that in order for the bubbles to not immediately collapse the whole volume of ethanol would have to be heated to just below boiling. Doable, but an extreme hassle.

So I had the idea to instead pump liquid up and pour it into the wheel from the top. Tried a bubble pump, which worked but not well enough, improved this to a kind of geyser pump; better, ended up with some kind of weird steam-piston-by proxy hybrid thing which worked quite nicely, but still only about 30% of what I'm after.

The obvious solution was to insert some little mechanism which alternately switched on and off the flow of gas. That previous link has the reasoning why.

This has taken me the last six freaking weeks to solve. I've come up with at least half a dozen ways of doing it, but they all require some fairly precise and tricky components, which rules them all out.
This one little thing has, in all seriousness, been the hardest thing I've ever had to design. It's such a tiny thing, but I haven't been able to move on without it.

Finally, after burning through more brain kilojoules than the device is actually likely to produce, I think I've hopefully solved it: by completely redesigning the entire apparatus and kind of avoiding the problem altogether.

The trick was to use much less ethanol, so that it boils itself out after pumping enough for one correction, then refills. I probably should have thought of that earlier...

So this is the Connell Pump. Not very powerful, grossly inefficient, but absurdly easy to make and I'm actually quite proud of the design. It works good, and more importantly; it works at all.

At the bottom right is the boiler, which holds about 2-3 ml ethanol.
This boils and the vapour enters the 'chamber' (the half blue, half white (liquid and gas)), forcing out the liquid, which goes to the main reservoir.
This continues until the eths in the boiler has boiled off to the extent that it can no longer overcome the rate of re-condensation in the chamber, which starts to suck, so to speak.
This draws liquid from the reservoir, which passes through the boiler, shutting off the boil, the pressure drops quickly and the chamber and boiler refill with liquid.
Two valves (the only moving parts) keep all this going in the right direction.
Repeat.

2010-06-15T11:57:00.000+02:00

Ok, let's get back into this.

The last couple months have been kind of crazy, at least in terms of physical relocation. This partly explains the lack of updates here, the rest being a combination of internet inaccessibility and traditional procrastination.

After leaving Malaga (what an interesting day that was), I stayed a few weeks with a friend in Madrid before heading south again to a farm in the Sierra Nevada where there was no electricity, running water, tools, workspace or shelter, but potentially at least sun.
The sun lasted a week before being replaced by the worst snow and rain in Andalusian history. Roads subsided, buildings collapsed, people died. I went back to Madrid to wait it out. That ended up taking a month.
I don't know if you've noticed, but in terms of precipitation, the whole world's gone freaking nuts.

While there I tried to get a light pipe going, as a means of transporting the energy collected by the device. It worked, but not well enough, so I started looking instead at heat pipes. More on this later.

Returned to Sierra Nevada, found out about a skill sharing camp in Germany so popped up there for three weeks, returned to Sierra Nevada, discovered that the complete lack of resources there was just not going to be ok, returned to Germany which is where I am now.

The Traumschule is an ex military barracks, currently stocked with materials, workspace and tools, and is a little bit of heaven when you're trying to actually get something done. If you've seen the episode of Red Dwarf where Lister is infected with the Luck virus, and rather than look for things simply takes two steps and literally trips over precisely what he wanted; that's exactly what it's like here. There's a whole room full of nuts bolts and screws, and five rooms of bike parts.
Plus the crew are real nice, and even the weather isn't bad and getting better.

Makergasm.

Two things I've been incessantly repeating for the last eight months to the point that they literally have no meaning any more:
I'm nearly finished.
I'm not leaving here until this thing is done.

However, I am, now, nearly finished, and I'm not leaving here until this thing is done.

2010-04-02T18:34:00.001+02:00

Posts related to the project's progress and solar energy soon. Promise. (There've been positive developments..)

2010-02-02T11:02:00.001+01:00

I've had to leave the place in Malaga.

It seems the prime principle of squats is tolerance. That if there's something happening you're not copmpletely comfortable with one is meant to think, well, this is a squat. People can do what they like. So I think the main reason I don't 100% gel with the squatting scene is that there are some things I simply will not tolerate. And a grown man prottractedly bashing a puppy to death scores pretty high on my Oh-No-You're-Fucking-Not,-Mate o-meter.
I should point out that on the whole, the people in the squat were very, very sound. Super chill, well minded. I would have liked to stick around longer.
And I know, Tato, that now you want to find and hurt me, and that what I did was pretty extreme. But what you should appreciate is that outside the walls of your little kingdom; it was an excercise in restraint. Most people would have simply called in the police. A fair few of my mates from back in the UK, the ones with clear views on the treatment of animals, well, they would have simply done to you what you were doing to her.
They would have fucked you up.
Bad.
So I guess what I'm saying is that you're lucky it was me. That in slipping out of the house with Morena that morning, taking her west and finding her a new home, I was allowing you a level of tolerance that you arguably don't deserve, and most people would not have granted.
Peace.

2010-01-11T18:07:00.002+01:00

Hey here's a tip. Next time you have to do something you're mildly phobic about, such as dentistry or an exam (or in my case a barrage of vaccinations), a good way to reduce the fear response is to make the whole process as much of an absolute freaking hassle as possible.

First I had to walk across town to Sanidad Exterior to get information about Rabies and Hepatitis B jabs for this trip. They couldn't do the Rabies shots there so directed me to Trinidad on Calle Sevilla, other side of town. After a week of trying to ring those guys over Christmas I eventually figured out the number on their site is wrong, got the right one, they said 'why come all the way over town? Go to Salud Victoria, it's closer.'
At Victoria I was advised that they'd be too expensive as I don't have social security in Spain, and I should go to the Hospital Pascual where they could jab me for sure. At least, I thought, this is spiralling progressively closer to my house. However Pascual was all 'we're a private hospital, what are you doing here? Go to Calle Sevilla.'
Not close to my house. Not at all. There I waited twenty minutes in line to be directed two floors up, where the guy informed me that they only prepare the Rabies vaccine there, I would need to have it sent to my local medico. Also to pay (tho on the bright side it was only €40, Exterior told me 90) I had to go to a bank, pay there, then bring back the receipt. That queue also taking twenty minutes.

Fear of needles? About this point I'd have quite happily let them stab me repeatedly with a screwdriver if it would just get this whole shag-around moving faster.

But today, finally, I managed to get at least the first of the three shot course put in me. Tho, in my time honoured tradition of not making things easy for myself, I showed up at the place without the paperwork or my identification. It took the poor woman half an hour to sort it all out.
Damn, people down here are so nice and patient. They really are.

As for the needles themselves, the first was so slight I barely felt it, the second something more like an aggravated assault. At one point I even gasped '¿Como?', which is as close to What the Fuck?! as I can manage in Spanish.

2009-12-26T23:21:00.003+01:00

Funny things. Squats.
On the plus side, you can knock holes in the walls and no one really seems to mind, on the other hand they do tend to be little beacons for absolute-batshit-crazy.

Kesselburg as a case in point. They had really nicely kitted wood and metal workshops, and a couple people there were super proactive and productive, making all kinds of stuff and trying their best to improve the place. Whereas the other two thirds were still, after years, living under tarpaulins in the woods and the only work being done on the existing buildings (it's an old Stassi training facility) was in making them worse.
This I found really surprising. I'm used to communities in New Zealand, where the first thing you do is build some kind of amazing house for yourself.

It seems a common thread in these types of places, and the problem seems to be openness. Basically, if you are somewhere that anyone and everyone can stay, you end up with all the people who have nowhere else to go. And of course junkies and the profoundly mentally ill need as much as anyone somewhere to live, but you don't necessarily want to be the poor bastard who has to deal with them.

It was the same at the Open University squat in Berlin. It was set up a while ago as a free space for learning and art, and for the first couple years it was, but then the government started shutting down support for the mentally ill, and a lot of them ended up there because it was nearby and no one had the heart to physically throw them out. As more came in the originals got fed up and left, now the place is basically uninhabitable.

Kesselburg wasn't anywhere near so far gone, in fact it was mostly pretty sweet, but there was definitely a fair bit of crazy going on.
I had a good time, nonetheless.

And now I'm in another squat, in Malaga. La Casa del los Monos.
But this isn't an open squat. You can't just walk in and find yourself a corner to sleep in, it's more like a normal flat. I'm here because two of the originals passed through Kesselburg and invited me.
So the place is a lot less crazy, and generally more proactive.

Funny things communities; that the only way to make a space where people want to live is to prevent most of them from living there.

2009-12-05T21:13:00.000+01:00

Ever since reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I've wanted a portable Somebody Else's Problem field. The practical advantages of unobtrusive invisibility for someone who does a lot of sneaking around and pitching tents where he shouldn't are fairly obvious.

If only I'd known all these years about the inherent irony of High Visibility.
The effect is identical to an SEP field, people can see you, they don't trip over you or anything, they just assume if you're wearing any kind of flourescent green vest that whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, you're meant to be doing it.
I've walked into festivals, directed traffic, painted over billboards, and just the other day; stole a bike.

I say stole. The way the solarflower is shaping up, the majority of materials are coming from old bikes. And usually this is a good thing as they can be found just about anywhere. But not really in Malaga. In fact the only one I managed to locate was an obviously abandoned and half missing scrap of a thing securely locked to a fence on a busy street by the university. So, day before last, round noon, I grabbed my hacksaw and an old cycling green hi-viz vest, and cut the bastard loose.

At least fifty people saw me do it. No one batted an eye. They were probably glad the council was finally removing the thing.

And there's even a version for my tent:

2009-11-26T21:47:00.003+01:00

I've been spoiled, these last two months. I knew it at the time, but a couple weeks in Malaga has really driven the point home. It wasn't the workshops so much, (tho they were awesome), it was the access to scrap. Both Christiania and Kesselburg had magnificent scrap piles, and, frankly, I miss them awfully.

The main problem in Malaga is that you can make money by collecting metal, so all the existing skips and construction sites etc have been picked clean by the homeless. Which is, y'know, great for them and all, but it's leaving me utterly short of materials.
And it's ridiculous how basic I'm talking. Like; two bits of pipe and something flat. I even went to the extent of catching a train out into the industrial sprawl in the city's west on the off chance that I'd stumble across something, but if there's an actual scrap yard within a hundred k's of here I can't find any trace of the bloody thing and the only events of that day worth noting was almost being forcibly dragged off the road by two prostitutes.

Coming home in the evening, after half a day of walking around, I found exactly what I needed sticking half out of a bin directly in front of the house.

I like to humour my life, bless her, she thinks she's funny.

2009-11-06T22:41:00.002+01:00

I've left Kesselburg and Germany for the south of Spain, where apparently there is a squat in which I can stay and sunlight through December in which I can do the final tuning of the device.

Just for the pure hedonism of it I hooked through Edinburgh on the way and performed in another Samhuinn (Celtic halloween) festival.
Here's me being all scary and stuff.

Last year we made oak flatbows and several of our friends were hunted, murdered, and eaten.
Good times.

2009-10-29T13:54:00.000+01:00

It looks somewhat rediculous, but this little fella's the result of over a month's work, trying to come up with a simple, easily constructed, completely water tight and low resistance sealed couple for the system.
It actually works very well. Not sure how it would hold up in a higher torque/rev situation, but for this application it's perfect.

The rest of the setup is the basic frame and gearing for the device: Worm drive - down gear - universal. The last being just a section of washing machine hose, which being light, easily sourced and only flexible along it's length (while very resistant to twisting) is again, perfect.

2009-10-29T12:10:00.000+01:00

Click and drag ^^

This panorama is not quite as good quality as the first two, being snapped quickly while I was leaving Kesselberg.

2009-10-14T18:55:00.003+02:00

Arrived in Berlin, walked past massive squatted space with iron sculptures on way to place to stay. Back next day talked to crazy painter, directed me down the road to a squat in the university grounds. There Lilly gave me lunch and told about squat around the corner from where I'm staying. Gone now to offer help make free food and attend some kind of gig. Heard of community just out of town where people make things. Heading out early tomorrow and hoping for the best.

2009-10-14T13:21:00.009+02:00

I really think there's something wrong with me.
My relationship to reality is that of a deranged toddler constantly followed around by a long suffering nanny, cleaning up messes and trying to keep me out of traffic.
Reality says; Daniel you can't just show up in an unknown city, in some strange country, and expect everyone to just happily give you everything you need-
by which time I'm already joyfully wandering into the nearest bus lane.
My audacity of expectation, if only in retrospect, shocks even myself.

Things I got in Copenhagen for free:

Three days staying with a very nice couchsurfing.com couple called Marlies and Kristen.

Free reign of workshop space at Christiania for six weeks.
I turned up at Christiania unannounced, went into the first cafe I saw and asked to talk to someone who lives there. They pointed me towards the main office, which was closed for the weekend but dude there said if it was regarding solar, talk to Alfred. Alfred was all like, sure, come back tomorrow and here's a key to the workshop, indicating a corner; 'you can stay here'.
I thought it was a bit weird to offer a workshop floor to sleep on, but a nice offer nonetheless. Next morning when Alfred comes in at 8am to find me asleep under the bench it turned out he meant 'stay' as in, stay to work.
That was a bit uncomfortable.

But then after some emergency Couchsurfing request sending, facing the prospect of having to pitch tent in a very dodgy looking but nearby park, ended up four days with another CSer called Rikke who not only gave up her entire room for me (with computer) but then managed to get me my room on the Illutron barge, where she's resident.
Then she gave me a bike.

The barge, populated by mad and gifted artists, had another workshop and my room a computer.

Almost all my building materials were pulled out of Christiania's various skips and recycling facilities.

There's a vegetarian restaurant near the workshop which gives you any unsold food if you help clean up. Between this and a nearby supermarket with a pretty good dumpster I got all my food for free.
Plus had the amusement of watching them debate exactly how much work they could ask before feeling they were exploiting me. I don't speak Danish at all, but sentiments such as 'don't be crazy, you can't make him wash the floor!' and 'course we can, look how much food we're giving him!' tend to transcend language.
It was really good food.

Things in Copenhagen that I paid for:

Staying on the barge came to about €7 a day for bills and stuff.

Some of my materials, if I couldn't scrap them.

The occasional falafel.

2009-10-10T22:14:00.006+02:00

_Finally_ managed to come up with a sealing option that should work. I went through a couple, some of which actually kind of worked ok, but this one's the winner.

Completely sealed, very low resistance. Just a previs at the moment, I'll get some video of it working when I can.

Update

2009-09-29T18:48:00.004+02:00

Got the boiler stuck down with impressively adhesive double sided flooring tape, is now just about mirror perfect and doesn't seem to bubble.

The new boiler is literally twice as good as the prototype (which I was fairly happy with anyway) and gets the ethanol boiling from warm in under three minutes.

The wheel is still leaking, despite my unloading half a reel of teflon tape on the damn thing. I think the vaseline grease gasket approach just isn't going to work, so I'm back to the drawing board on that one.
Membrane, I think.

Update on the update: have developed a new form of sealed eccentric rotational couple. I'll see if it actually works when this wind dies down and I can make it to Christiania without being blown into the Teglværkshavnen.

2009-09-27T20:57:00.006+02:00

This is the turbine / wheel thing which comprises the majority of the tracking system, and is getting close to being finished. It's made from a paint tin, aluminium cans, the bearing out of an old bike wheel and, I shit you not, a kitchen sponge.

Ten minutes after I filmed this however the back started leaking, either the thread on the shaft or the slight water pressure or both seems enough to agitate the petroleum jelly fluid gasket I've packed the shaft housing with. I'm going to take to it with a roll of Teflon tape (and if necessary something heavy and blunt) until it stops.

2009-09-26T00:22:00.000+02:00

Finished the new version of the boiler unit for the tracker.

The mylar's a bit bumpier than I'd like, it's currently stuck with double sided tape but I'll try to source some spray on adhesive. You get the idea tho.

It actually holds together really well, the form is surprisingly solid for just four bits of card.

The boiler:

Just a bit of copper pipe squashed flat, painted black and sheathed in clear plastic. I've used metal epoxy to seal the ends as it's about the only stuff that will resist heat and ethanol.

Now I'm just waiting for some sun to test it. It should give about twice the concentration of the prototype, and that got eths boiling in under 20 minutes from cold.

More updates as things are finished.

2009-09-25T15:13:00.015+02:00

The Illutron barge. My cabin's the one next to the rusty sconce which swings back and forth in the wind throwing disorienting shadows on the wall.

World's largest amateur built submarine, 15 meters long. The guys who made it are now trying to get into space.

Seriously.

Here's the damn thing breaching:

Awesome, no?

2009-09-15T21:38:00.003+02:00

Sometimes I watch films in settings which are very appropriate and inappropriate at the same time.

I saw Hedwig and the Angy Inch projected on the inner wall of large dome in a Canadian river valley with a bunch of elegantly wasted and sexually ambiguous Vancouver burners who later at Burning Man forever ruined the colour orange for me.

I saw Being John Malcovitch, but halfway through the projector broke, or something, and we had to leave the cinema through a narrow plywood portal hidden in the back wall.

Two days after seeing the Blair Witch Project I went camping. Alone. In the middle of nowhere. Without a torch. (Tho randomly, did have a video camera, so had to use the night vision mode to find my way in the dark...)

And last night I watched Das Boot in the hold of a Danish barge with the world's largest amateur built submarine moored off the port side. Sometimes the only way I could tell which side of the screen I was on is that ours had a fully stocked bar.
And less drownings.

So far the only thing I've had to get used to about living on a ship is not knowing whether the ground is actually intermittently swaying, or if I'm having some kind of episode. Look out the window. Is everything else moving? Good, not just me then.

It's mad, after the social mania of Edinburgh, the relative quiet here. People are really nice and there's chats, but a lot of the time (now, for instance) I'm just on my own, chilling in my cell. As in the monastic, not the penitentiary.

And monastic is definitely the word for things as they are in this period. I sleep, I meditate on ways I can enable this bastard contraption to turn around when the sun shines on it; and I work, tending my little sunflower patch of one.
Well, half, currently, but I'm working on that.
Helping it to grow.

2009-09-14T00:30:00.005+02:00

Click and drag ^^

View from the top of the barge at night. You can just see the submarine off the port side.

2009-09-10T23:45:00.011+02:00

Click and drag ^^

The workshop in the hold of the barge.

2009-09-09T21:31:00.002+02:00

My father's right; tear gas is nasty.
I'm not sure where he discovered that, Rhodesia perhaps, but I got my first taste of the stuff today at Christiania when the riot police invaded.

Apparently it happens all the time. At first I thought it was a football match, what with the cheering and shouting, then I thought it was a fight and stuck my head out the workshop door, straight into a line of armored police making an ill-conceived dash for Pusher Street.
Well, not 'straight into' as such, they were about twenty meters away receiving a barrage of rocks and bottles, but it was close enough to scare the bejeezus out of me.

They fell back, letting off a round of the gas as a literal parting shot, and I went out to see what the hell was going on. I've only been at Christiania a week now, came here figuring there might've been some workshop space available, and this was all a bit unexpected. I mean, go to a climate camp and you expect this kind of thing, but this is a village. People live here.

That's when I got a face full of gas. It's not like rubbing your eyes after cutting chillies, somehow it's worse. It makes your body want to run away.
The canister was still pissing white stuff about thirty meters upwind and generally being a bit of a public health hazard. I darted back to the workshop, grabbed a respirator and some eye protection (great things, workshops) and wetted a towel with the plan of smothering the bastard. But by the time I got back someone had already taken care of the situation. Things were already swiftly returning to normal.

I asked a dodgy looking guy next to me with either a tiny pipe bomb or a very large firecracker tucked ignominiously up one sleeve what it was all about. He said it happens all the time, and was of the strong opinion that it shouldn't. By coincidence he turned out to be the same guy who had earlier told me I wasn't allowed to sit where I'd been on the main road, Pusher Street, eating a falafel and, coincidentally again, just at that moment thinking how nice it was to be able to sit and eat a falafel without somebody moving you on.
I'd asked him why, he said 'Because'. I went. You don't mess with the drug dealers in Christiania. It's easy to avoid them, but they're dangerous people.

Within ten minutes it was like nothing had happened, and I went back to work.