[UPDATE 10/21/2021 -After 2018 I started posting my updates on my Patreon page, and so I'm filling in the back-logs for this project retroactively so the whole story is in both places. You can also read all of these posts with their original photo formatting here]

April 30th, 2021

Hello Dear Patrons, and welcome to everyone who signed up on or around my birthday! I gained over $20 patrons, bringing my hacking budget up to over $650/mo, a new record! 

Waaaaay back in October, I spent weeks putting together the best proposal I possibly could for the LAGI2020 initiative, a design competition for regenerative structures to be build and tested on the Fly Ranch property in Nevada, now owned by the Burning Man org.

I tried to sum up as succinctly as I could, exactly what it is that would like to build: a fully open-source closed-loop basecamp that can be rapidly deployed and power itself entirely on trash an sunshine, able to meet 100% of the primary human needs of a small group of roughly 30 people, by metabolizing locally available waste biomass and solar power into useable energy for essential needs like lighting, heating, cooling, cooking, washing, bathing, and building.

But I've been sworn to secrecy until after the shortlist of winners had been selected, which just happened this month. My proposal didn't make it on the shortlist, which is a disappointment and a relief, and it is now published on LAGIs website, so you can go explore it there, and while you're there, check out the ones that did get shortlisted, they are DOPE.

Now that the results are published, I can FINALLY share all that work I did with all of you without fear of disqualification. So I would love if you would explore it in detail and see what comes across for you. These are the three design boards I submitted as my proposal.

The thing that I find so intriguing about metabolic systems, like organisms and ecosystems, is that they're an ongoing process, a constant balancing act, something that is always happening. As Buckminster Fuller put it, "I seem to be a verb."

All living organisms, by definition, have a metabolism. But do cities? What about cars? What about rainforests? Whats the difference between them? A metabolic system is any set of chemical processes that is able to sustain itself through time, to grow, replicate, and adapt as needed to keep that process going. 

This camp is research center for an experimental metabolic system, that is arguably alive, at least metabolically speaking. If you don't feed the system, you run out of power, the system reboots, the counter resets, and you have to start all over. The camp itself is a challenge, a platform, a feedback loop that lets people experience what its like to live within a living system, and work to maintain the systems that sustain them.

It would be a platform that small crew of people would have to work together to operate, requiring communication and trust, just like the crew of a ship (or starship).

If a bunch of groups started doing that, and competing with each other to see how long they can keep their system going, and sharing their mods and hacks with each other, so that other groups can replicate the designs that work well, with only open-source tools and locally available materials. If even a few groups of people started doing that, I bet we could get pretty good at it pretty fast!

All of the infrastructure proposed in this design already exists, fits inside a shipping container, and costs between $10,000 and 20,000 in parts. That's a lot of money for one person, but not very much for 15-30 people, especially if those people can then set up that camp infrastructure anywhere and have it meet all of their essential needs.

Phew. So, yeah. That's what I'm trying to do, as specifically as I've ever been able to put it. Thank you for all your support, it's made doing so much of this work possible.

So now lets shift gears to the brass tacks of how do you actually do that. In order to create a camp that can power itself from sunshine and trash, I need to be able to turn waste biomass into useable energy. The biochar reactor I've been working on refines biomass into a flammable gas quite nicely, which is great for cooking, or heating water, but isn't quite as useful as electricity in most cases.

So, I've been trying to figure out how to turn that gas into electricity as efficiently and reliably as possible, with limited success. I can run small engines up to about 10hp no problem, and have converted nearly every engine I've tried to at least run on the gas. But most generators aren't up to the task, and don't put out useable, storable power, and so I had to order this special generator from AliExpress:

This man is a giant, apparently. Months ago, I used my Patreon budget to order this 24VDC generator. This generator does exactly what I was trying to hack my generator to do over last summer, and does it much better, for less money ($608 shipped). It turns out it is the EXACT same engine as the Harbor Freight Predator generator I had already gotten working, so I hoped that getting this one going would be easy, and it was!

I literally just swapped in the other air intake cover I had from the other one, and since they're identical engines it fit perfectly. I got it running on the first try! But I still didn't know how much power it was producing, if any.

After a few tests, I was able to measure my first real amount of power, 34 watt-hours! Not much, but enough to run a string of warm LEDs for an hour, so not nothing either. The generator produced about 250W at idle, and I saw it produce up to 600-800W when I pushed down on the barrel to increase the pressure. Thats really great, because it means the output can be varied, and is roughly equivalent to the output of 1-3 solar panels.

Now I either need to figure out how to store more gas, or how to make the gas faster, so that I can run the generator continuously. The generator can be remote started by remote or wire, so that bodes well for future automation.

Thank you again for supporting this Patreon! This is what I love to do, and I feel very lucky that I am able to do it. Stay tuned!