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So what is the practical use of this?

Let's say that I'm not an engineer or a researcher or a coder, but would like to set some of these units up to collect water. How do I do so? Do I approach someone to build this for me (who?)? How much can I expect it to cost?

In other words, how can I actualize this vision:

> So the H2E team asked: “What if you could put the power to generate daily drinking water into the hands of individuals, no matter where they live, by creating an affordable, easy to use device that harvests water from the air and is powered by the sun?"




The prototype described is tricky. Basically because they want low unit cost, they had to assume mass manufacture techniques such as vacuum forming. This means that the cost of small builds will be quite high (since there's a lot of jigging and molds that have to be 3d printed/CNC'd). Unfortunately, they don't have a BOM cost listed anywhere I've been able to find.

But also because this is a prototype, and they wanted to be able to tinker and measure, there's lots of design features and parts that are quite expensive and not really needed. Assembly also appears to be tricky and time consuming with non-trivial risk of damaging parts that then need to be repaired.

So ultimately you have a design and plan that's neither directly suitable for mass-production or low volume production (which is fine! it's a prototype! it's super not done). The prototype as described would likely form an acceptable basis for further revision.

You could probably go to a mechanical engineering design/consulting/prototyping firm with this and ask them to make it real with minimal changes (removing extraneous measurement devices, maybe swap out some of the grommets). It'd probably cost you like 50k at least to get your first one. Second one probably will cost like 100 bucks range.


There is already a similar device on the market called a dehumidifier. It takes a fair amount of electricity and costs over $150. I think the core of the problem may be the amount of energy it takes to harvest water vapor, especially in arid conditions. (Likely the areas where the need is greatest.)


Wouldn't producing prototypes like these with expert manual artisans in less "developed" countries be scales cheaper? like 500$?


None. Or alternatively, gathering Reddit/HN karma or channeling NGO funds into overpriced useless science projects instead of helping people.

Thunderf00t has made a ton of videos about devices like this, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGTRX6pZSns

The TLDW version is these devices are fancy dehumidifiers. They need a ton of power, and lots of air humidity to be practical, which are exactly not the conditions these devices are advertised to operate in.

And even then, the water they produce is dirty, so it needs to be purified and treated to be actually drinkable.

Even if we solve all these challenges, it turns out that doing something dumb and low tech, like transporting drinking water on trucks is actually a lot more efficient.

This is another one in the long list of devices designed to help those hypothetical poor people, like OLPC and the Gravity Light.

It turns out these people have already solved these issues, and much better, usually with off-the-shelf alternatives and a bit of ingenuity.


I'm thinking wildly here and not getting into technicals, but it could also be seen not necessarily for humans but also for ecosystem restoration efforts in harsh remote environments.

For example, while I have some viability questions the company Terraformation has been trial'ing photovoltaic solar powered water desalinization (using brackish wells as a source) in deforested areas for water - https://www.terraformation.com/blog/solar-powered-desalinati...

If I understand correctly (still learning and might be wrong), another way to frame this is in perceiving water vapor itself - you can be in desertifying areas and yet supposedly have plenty of water vapor to a lack of evapotranspiration. This is what some have framed 'the second leg of anthropogenic climate change' - ( https://museecology.com/2020/10/30/15-professor-millan-the-s... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf4jwkhCk_A - "Desert or rainforest" , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdcsQw3ma_Y - "Restoring the Water Cycle 1" )


Are there any sites that help build groups around current and upcoming open-source projects, and also encourage people to make stuff open-source - perhaps with pledges?

... a more business-focused GitHub.

... an OpenSea for inventors.

Imagine if money spent on NFTs would go to cool projects instead of avatars!


> Are there any sites that help build groups around current and upcoming open-source projects, and also encourage people to make stuff open-source - perhaps with pledges?

Open Collective is designed to do exactly that:

https://opencollective.com/


Great.. in Discover, I think it would be good to be able to see "Collectives near me" to bring people physically together.


Also imagine if money spent on stock buybacks went somewhere productive. :/


If a company can't think of anything useful and cost-effective to spend their money on, giving that money back in the way that passes through the largest portion of it is the most productive thing they could do.

Let the investors allocate their money efficiently, rather than buying a gold mine as a movie theatre company (as an example).


rather than buying a gold mine as a movie theatre

That's a pretty random example. Crypto? Maybe. But it's not like AMC is going to randomly get into the actual physical mining busin-- (hold on, it's 2022, lmgt just in case)

Yes, a perfectly good example.


Yes, very 2022-esque. xD


My guess is that if there were clear answers to those questions then the project might not have been shutdown. The hope is that someone or some other project might find a piece of this useful, or more optimistically that someone will find a way past any of the problems that made X take a pass on it.

Or if none of that happens, at the very least it serves as a free bit of knowledge telling others going down this path "it didn't work"


Potentially as a water source for data center cooling? Not sure if it’d scale to those needs


My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water, not a dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for business ends', but I appreciate the varying definitions of "practical" people have.


> My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water

If the principle of it is sound, which I cannot verify, then by a manufacturer picking up the idea. Developing it into a product and selling it to individuals.

They are basically saying (paraphrasing) "Hey we suck at manufacturing things at scale, so we won't continue with this idea. But we don't want to let our learnings go to waste. Go ahead and learn from our experiments and mistakes. Maybe one of you out there can make it work as a product."


Open sourcing a dehumidier isn't very exciting, mind you


I think it's very exciting. I'd love to have everything in/around my house open source.


[flagged]


What a totally disingenuous way to recieve the comment's spirit, which takes some serious miscontruing to take it to wherever you're trying to take it.


They way I misconstrued it was to assume that the door was wide open for a a fitting joke.

:-)


Such a lowbrow cheap joke to assume that open source means "come take all my stuff" vs "i've made this to share with everyone" which does a disservice to open source more than it is funny.


Have a nice evening.


Found the MPAA / RIAA rep


> dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for business ends'

Why is it "dystopian" and "co-opting" if a company uses a technology like this to operate in a more environmentally friendly way?

People love to shit on companies (not specific ones, just "big companies" as a concept in general), completely ignoring where our standard of living comes from.


Considering the project is self-described as a way to get drinking water into peoples hands, it certainly seems a bit dystopian to immediately jump to using this to collect water for DC’s… especially considering the original comment was asking “how do you build this”, not “what could you use this for”


I'd understand this more if the two uses would somehow conflict, e.g. by competing for a limited resource. But here? If anything, this is going to either preserve other water sources for others, or put more money behind the technology.


People need DCs too, not just corporations.


Yeah sure, but 1) prior to needing DCs, people need clean drinking water, and 2) the subset of people who need DCs is vastly smaller than those who need clean drinking water.


Well I'm sure we can look at both problems at the same time.


Wait, what?

What exactly is a data center by your definition? What individuals (that are entirely disconnected from corporations) need them? How many individuals have personal data centers of such a scale that they would need to produce liquid water on-site for their computing needs?

I genuinely believe you’ve described an entirely theoretical person that doesn’t reside in this universe.


People need institutions to run functioning societies. These (public) institutions are one of the most traditional users of large-scale computing. Even in 60s there was a lot of computing done by public institutions. To fulfill the requirements of modern life, DCs are a must.

Most modern buildings have at least few racks of compute/storage for services like TV/phone/internet, camera recordings, etc. Even family houses have small racks nowadays.


I’m aware that people and institutions need and have computing devices. What qualifies as a data center?


This site is likely not hosted out of a person's closet, hence you commenting here is likely a product of a data centre.

Ignoring this specific example, a majority of the population uses social media for leisure and online tools for work (email, banking, etc.).

A majority of interconnects between ISPs and networks are hosted in data centres too... so there wouldn't be much of an internet without them.

If you closed all data centres over night, the majority of the above would disappear and certainly would not be able to scale as large as it had without data centres... hence, a majority of people need data centres to maintain their current standard of living.


The comment said "people", not "individuals" or "a person".

And considering how highly technical something like a modern water treatment plant can be, data centers are already a major force behind some of our potable water.


I need one to host successful blogs and my data hoarding.


Considering they said allowing others to build on this progress I would imagine that they have not achieved their stated goal yet:

>The team aimed to build a highly lightweight, portable, cheap (<5% of user’s income) device that an individual could use to produce 5L of drinking water per day.




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