What materials and components will be used?
What parts and systems will be made?
What questions need to be answered?
Your project should incorporate 2D and 3D design,
additive and subtractive fabrication processes,
electronics design and production,
microcontroller interfacing and programming,
system integration and packaging
Where possible, you should make rather than buy the parts of your project
What will it do?
The device will collect resources like energy, water from the environment, and also grow food. Each part can work independently and it could replicable to fit spaces and needs.
Who's done what beforehand?
Probably other people has design something similar before, but I haven’t found it. What I have found a system to collect energy or water, what they are king of big and need to be constructed with the house or make major changes into it.
The first example is a bus stop that collects water and energy. The second example is the circular energy usage of a house. Both are very interesting, but when we talk about bringing energy to slums, then the approach must be different, because transportation and the configuration of the existing houses are particular; meaning difficult access and lack of spaces, normally only the roofs are the empty spaces where to place this kind of devices.
What will you design?
A modular device for collecting basic resources and produce food in a way it could be transported easily to places with difficult access.
What materials and components will be used?
· Triple wood
· It could be reinforced and sealed with fiber glass
· It could weight more if a concrete surface is made on it
· Solar panel
· Solenoid valve
· Light sensor
· 3 stepper motor
· Solar panel
· Humidity sensor
· Boards to control the valves and motors depending on the information of the sensors
Where will come from?
Most of it except of the electronics could be found on any construction shop.
How much will they cost?
|
mxn |
usd |
|
|
triple wood |
600 |
31.58 |
|
fiber glass |
100 |
5.26 |
|
concrete |
100 |
5.26 |
|
solar panel |
750 |
39.47 |
|
stepper motors (3) |
594 |
31.26 |
|
Solenoid valve |
138 |
7.26 |
|
Humidity sensor (3) |
72 |
3.79 |
|
boards |
100 |
5.26 |
|
total |
2454 |
129.16 |
What parts and systems will be made?
The structure of the modules will be cut with the cnc router and assembled.
The system to detect the humidity of the soil where the food is growing that opens or close the solenoid valve has to be made and program
The system to track the sun for the solar panels.
The cones to collect the rain water
The boards to control the systems
What processes will be used?
CNC routing, pcb routing, components soldering, sensor and motors connections
What questions need to be answered?
· How much energy it can produce?
· How much water can be storage?
· How much food can grow
How will it be evaluated?
It is just a part of the whole thing. It is composed by many parts by at least one of them has to work properly. Probably the water collector and the water system that keeps the soil with enough moisture
Your project should incorporate 2D and 3D design,
Most of it was designed in Rhinoceros in 3d, but also 2d specially to produce the dxf files for the router and laser cutter
additive and subtractive fabrication processes,
The cones to bring the water from the collector to the bottles were printed in 3d. As well as the sensor holders
The structure and the water collector were cut with cnc and laser respectively
electronics design and production,
I redesigned a PCB integrating the mosfet and two different power source.
microcontroller interfacing and programming,
The data can go to a grasshopper interface trough firefly and the PCB´s is going to be programmed with Arduino IDE
system integration and packaging
Everything is integrated as possible into the same modular structure
Where possible, you should make rather than buy the parts of your project
Most of the things were fabricated in the fab lab. In the future the moisture sensors could be fabricated also in the lab