Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open Source Low Tech

opensourcelowtech.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 143 posts

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#51

Post by maeln »

xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

> It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles

Buying and shipping X amount of Y to is easy to calculate the cost. And it's a fixed one time cost. Perfect for PR OP, and humanitarian operation with limited budget and/or available work hours.

Teaching takes the most valuable resources of all: Time. And it's harder to predict how long (and therefor how much $$) it will take before having sustainable results. And it requires on-premise staff and usually to setup some building for the staff, for the teaching grounds, etc.

Tl;DR teaching can easily be 10X the time and money budget of a quick 'send stuff' operation. This is why these are usually big operation handled by big non-profit.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#52

Post by contingencies »

elias1233 wrote: post #43

It would be interesting to see if an air conditioner or refrigerator can be made in this manner

Yes, an air conditioner can be made as follows.

1. Identify a locally viable deciduous tree species.

2. Plant this species on the afternoon aspect of the sun in your location. So for northern hemisphere plant to the southwest. For southern hemisphere plant to the northwest.

3. Enjoy shade in summer and sun in winter, plus cleaner air.

Another option depending upon your architecture is to take advantage of forced air within a roof cavity. Buy a large diameter fan with an electronic control, install at apex, and set it to operate when the temperature exceeds a certain point. This will result in a house wide temperature drop with no need to expend $$$ setup plus dollars per hour per room on air conditioning.

Another option is simply shading. One of the simplest and most traditional approaches here is the drop awning. A drop awning consists of a retractable material expanse which can render a building surface in shade and thus promote rapid air movement and cooling in the hottest periods.

Two final options include internal forced air: passive variant (open all the windows and doors) or active variant (ceiling fan, solar works) and insulation or thermal mass.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#53

Post by Geezus_42 »

gaigalas wrote: post #15

Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ , but way more low tech. One could actually try the Open Source Low Tech designs without having a small fortune to spare or gathering a considerable community to cooperate.

Seems dead.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#54

Post by Max536752 »

I liked the aircraft carrier analogy. Some skills can only be preserved by practicing them repeatedly, not by outsourcing them. AI is an incredible tool, but we probably need to be more intentional about which parts of the creative process we hand over.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#56

Post by WillAdams »

Ages ago, I had Vol. 2, _The Metal Lathe_ which was one of the 7 vol. "Gingery Books", a series on _Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap_ (Vol. 1 was _The Charcoal Foundry_) which used as its central conceit the fact that a lathe is the one tool in a machine shop suited to easily replicating itself (insert old machinist joke about how you can make anything with a shaper, except money).

Always regretted giving my original away, the typewritten text and hand-drawings had a certain charm which the updated single leatherbound hardcover lack.

The Gingery Book Store is shutting down this year, and not reprinting any books, so one wonders what will replace it:

https://forum.makerforums.info/t/google-post-by-marcus-wolsc...

Another effort along these lines was the "Multimachine" which attempted to create a metal-working equivalent to the woodworking shop's ShopSmith using an engine block, taking advantage of the fact that they are readily and inexpensively available from junked vehicles. I believe it was on the "Opensource Ecology" site linked elsethread.

Perhaps Chris Borge's series of machine tools made with 3D printed shells filled with concrete and arrayed with hardware store components?

https://hackaday.com/2025/04/13/3d-printed-milling-machine-i...

That said, as various machinists have joked, I am still "shaper curious", and have been sketching up a hand-operated shaper --- debating on saving for a set of castings, making my own, or going the hardware store route....

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#57

Post by WillAdams »

xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

World Bicycle Relief has one approach to the transportation angle:

https://worldbicyclerelief.org/mechanics-of-mobility/

One product which I can still remember back from when Banana Republic was still an obscure and cool and independent company with a charming hand-illustrated catalog was pairs of slippers/shoes made in 3rd world countries where the sole was a repurposed worn-out bicycle tire.... Interesting inversion of the usual order of things.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#58

Post by WillAdams »

nchmy wrote: post #5
xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

I strongly agree that it's incomparably more important to teach a man/village how to fish/build a bike than to give them one. Unfortunately most people who focus on "helping" are grossly incompetent and have largely misaligned incentives (and oversight). As for local innovation, it think it very much depends on where. I've visited and lived in many communities in developing nations in Latin America and there's a dist…

That is why Heifer International is such an important charity:

https://www.heifer.org/our-work/approach

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#59

Post by WillAdams »

dtj1123 wrote: post #49
xmprt wrote: post #3

I like the idea behind this. I feel like far too often, the solutions we build for poor communities involve specific materials that can't be manufactured locally, so it just creates more dependence rather than self-sufficiency. It's one thing to build and ship 1000 bicycles to a poor village, but it's another to teach a village how to make bicycles with random spare pipes and materials they can find anywhere. That wa…

I think this extends to wealthy communities too. Basically every item in my home more complex than a spoon is beyond my capacity to manufacture or repair. A resource that teaches me how to build useful things without relying on a complex supply chain or prohibitively expensive tools would be pretty darn liberating.

Well, fundamentally, there are two different types of furniture:

- platforms

- boxes

so if one can build a drawer box, one should be able to make pretty much anything --- it's just a matter of working out how to cut things to length/width and possibly reduce/adjust thickness and what sort of joinery one wishes to use.

See my top-level post elsethread for the metal-working angle.

Re: Open Source Low Tech

#60

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nchmy wrote: post #23
sublinear wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This mindset of "locals know best" is, frankly, toxic. (just think about the locals wherever you live to see how incompetent they are as well) [...] others who are fortunate to have more access to information, resources, education on critical thinking etc... This is insane.

Care to elaborate? (and not cut out the most important context from my comment)

The trouble with your premise is that it doesn't just apply to local people, it applies to people in general. Incompetence is all around us. Notice that everyone is a local in the place where they live.

But local people at least have the benefit of knowing their own situations, which puts them ahead of some other rando who doesn't even have that and presumes to know better.

Post reply on HN