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Illuminating Window-Less Houses With a Plastic Bottle
New submitter DancesWithWolves writes "The BBC reports on Alfredo Moser, who came up with a way of illuminating his house during the day without electricity — using nothing more than plastic bottles filled with water and a tiny bit of bleach. In the last two years his idea has spread throughout the world. It is expected to be in one million homes by early next year.'"
I've seen this type of lighting system before on old ships (USS Constitution, etc...).
Instead of a water they used glass blocks (or similar).
But, it's great to see a novel way of recycling trash into something beneficial! :)
Cheers!
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Great idea and implementation... at least where you have the type of roof where it can be used. One modification I would add would be to add something to the water in order to make it just a bit cloudy... this would diffuse the light a bit more. Of course, depending on the plastic, it may cloud up as it ages in any case, or start with cloudy plastic (i.e. plastic milk bottles).
Elegant and no energy costs. It recycles something we all have handy. Easy to install also. Hard to argue with all those benefits!
I prefer filling my bottles with fireflies and shaking them.
I remember reading about this a long time ago. Also, there was a short film about it on WIMP. Neat story, but definitely not new news.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Those flimsy plastic water/coke bottles *will* leak eventually, and ruin whatever flooring/furniture/equipment happens to be underneath them.
Makes more sense to use glass bottles, IMO.
That said, we did the exact same thing when I was a kid (decades ago) to bring some light into an old and very cluttered toolshed, which had no source of power. Seemed pretty obvious to us at the time.
Of course, we considered it a poor-mans skylight, and didn't pretend to have some magic elegant new idea. I guess if something goes viral on facebook it means you invented it.
They're completely unhackable!.
Soon they'll be mandatory in Enterprise deployments.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
its the same guy, genius
You should take your own advice and read the "About Us" page.
Yes, they are spreading Alfred Moser's idea. Then again, this isn't a competition of who did it first.
Read about this and aliteroflight.org couple of months ago. A very similar idea has been used for years, sadly I cannot find an english version of this Wikipedia-article about the "Schusterkugel" (which translates to "shoemaker sphere") http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schusterkugel regards tuo
"I just heard someone on the roof. Why is it yellow in here?"
Moser actually came up with the idea back in 2002 in Brazil. The "last two years" mentioned in the summary is a reference to efforts to spread the idea around the world, of which the site you mentioned is one such example. That site started about two years ago, and if you check the About page, you'll see that they credit him as the originator of the idea and mention that they are working to spread the idea in the Philippines.
This is as old as clear plastic bottles.
If it's already sunny and you need light but have no electricity.. Get windows or go outside.
People using this have no money for glass, probably nothing for any other kind of windows, either. This will give a lot more than no light when it rains, too. People living in slums do not necessarily have the communal space you assume they have - if they can do things at home, chances are that's the place to do it.
Even if those things were to leak after three years, always, it would still be worth it for three years of work.
And what's with the night part? Do you think starlight will keep people from sleeping?
Why not swim to the moon? I mean, aside from the lack of water.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
NEVER leaks, he claims, having done it for the first time 2 years ago.
Only 9 years out.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Are you some kind of marketer hired to promote windows or something? Get a life.
to illuminating a house with no windows is . . . to add windows? Wow.
I mean, some kudos are deserved for finding an inexpensive (almost free) way to add windows, and using windows whose shape provides some refractory scattering of the incoming light. Still though, his solution to no windows was literally TO ADD WINDOWS.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
What the fuck is this doing on slashdot?
Ohhh... right. dice bought the place... nevermind.
Yeah, after Dice bought Slashdot there have been stories on nothing but smart hardware hacks such as this one. No Slashdot user has ever been known to like a hardware hack.
Old news, I'll give you that. But it's still a nice hack.
From the article: "The lamps work best with a black cap - a film case can also be used". - Could somebody plaese explain why?
How does the color of the cap impact the lighting proprieties?
This is Slashdot, where perfect is the enemy of good.
Because there are edge use-cases where this won't work, it's completely unsuitable for ALL applications.
Or, to put it another way, because it won't work in some guy's shed in Anchorage, poor people in Africa, Asia and South America should continue to toil in the dark until a proper solution involving LEDs and / or light pipes is made available.
Now, instead let's discuss how 2014 will definitely be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Plastic bottles aren't exactly UV-stable...
Actually it's probably as old as clear glass bottles, there are mining shacks that used empty whiskey bottles for windows since they didn't have window glass (likely because they drank all the profits before winter came).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It's a poor man's Solatube. However, in a hail-prevalent area like mine, I would go to the expense of a Solatube than plastic bottles.
Proverbs 21:19
Saw this some time back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buMyJPQLS9U
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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So, who do you think this particular article is talking about?
I remember reading about this a long time ago.
Is that why the summary says: "In the last two years..."?
No sig today...
Honestly it seems that every year for the past 4 years slashdot herolds this.
Then HAD will do it in about 2 days.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"First, where are they getting 14 hours a day of SUNLIGHT everyday,"
Nome, Alaska
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've seen this type of lighting system before on old ships (USS Constitution, etc...).
Deck prisms have been used for centuries.
DeckPrisms.com sells reproductions for decorative use and restoration. Marine supply houses sell them with frames. Fixed Portholes and Deck Prisms
You'll get a lot of sunlight in the summer, but nothing in the winter (Everyday, all year long)
Too bad the polyester resin he used to seal them up isn't free. A quick search on google, the cheapest small can of it was over $10usd. That's a lot of money in places where a good monthly wage is $60usd. You know, the kind of places that need to use old bottles as skylights.
And here I was hoping for some fun chemistry. Instead we get "no electricity? Use the sun!" What if I have no sun you insensitive clod!
And this will be coming to the USA also, because they will have to jack up utility rates, just to
please the enviro-nuts in the USA.
I hate to break this to ya, Chief, but the jacking of utility rates has far less to do with "enviro-nuts" than it does greedy utility company executives.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor#Glow-in-the-dark_toys
Just a thought; might help diffuse light in the daytime, as well as providing some light after dark.
Whether or not the materials to make such a modification are readily available in third-world countries I cannot speculate on.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Are you saying that because we've seen this for the last two years that this is somehow not news?
What happens when night falls?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
It's a great idea, costing almost nothing to implement and light up dingy shacks and such. But I wondered if you get some sort of decent light on a nice dark full moon night? Nobody seems to have mentioned that
Nope. Older than that. Even Cretans (from ancient Crete) used them.
Moser didn't come up with shit. He just built a modern iteration of technology that has been around for thousands of years.
Well, they could cut the tops and bottoms off their 1 liter bottles, then slice down the side and unroll. Bam. Nice little 8x8 plastic window.
I remember seeing a ted-talk or something like that about this exact topic around that time.
Here in Central Oklahoma (you know, the place with EF 5 tornados...), hail the size of ping pong or golf balls is common at least once a year (frequently more often), and hailstones up to 3" is not unheard of. These will go completely through a commonly-decked roof.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
In an article about a particular invention, I see nothing wrong with discussing what's the best area or way to apply the invention.
and installed several in my ceiling.
My mom got mad I was cutting holes in her kitchen floor. Apparently, she WANTS my only light source to be glowing LCD screens and blue LED power indicators.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The BBC article goes all breathless about this great low-tech approach for poor third-world countries without mentioning the fact that the user has drilled a bunch of holes in their roof. Combine that with a rainy climate like the Philippines (mentioned in the article) and you've got a problem. The solution, apparently, is polyester resin. Excellent choice, and so widely available in third-world slums. No slam intended to the unfortunate residents who are also blessed with power tools.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Actually you get light in the winter, It's a funky green light and very low intensity, but it's there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Using a bottle in this fashion is basically implementing a short "light pipe." The technology has been around a long time, but the water-filled-pop-bottle is the cheapest implementation I've heard of.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Moser didn't come up with shit. He just built a modern iteration of technology that has been around for thousands of years.
He came up with a modern iteration that can be widely and immediately deployed in the poorest parts of the world using freely available ubiquitous components and readily available installation skillsets?
I'm curious where you've set the bar before you give someone credit for coming up with something.
I have been reading slashdot for years. And apparently I missed that particular news in th epast. Sometimes, repetition is a good thing. Also once a year does not seem like an unreasonnable rate for such a news.
Nope, because the go opaque, get brittle and fall to pieces in fairly short order. For some reason that doesn't seem to happen to bottles that are full.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Ah yes. The "let them eat cake" solution.
Have gnu, will travel.
Of course such a window will let an 8x8 light beam into your place, and effectively brightly illuminate about the same surface area of the floor. So instead of a dim shack illuminated by the diffuse light seeping in through the cracks, you now have a blindingly bright rectangle on the floor. You'll see less than if you had the light seeping in - had you actually given it a thought, you'd know. Small windows suck, for a reason, and especially if they are in your roof.
The bottle acts as a simple optical system to diffuse the light. It's pretty neat.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The places that sell it near the slums where it's actually used may not even have any online presence.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Tools only require power in lazy post-industrial societies. Hand tools are inexpensive, effective and less costly to operate. I've cut steel roofing with hand snips in seconds.
Polyester resin is kind of a staple product. In post-industrial societies, it's sold for recreation in craft stores. But in less developed places, it's needed for boat building and all sorts of fabrication. Before 3D printers with their costly supplies, we made molds and used resin for pennies.
I imagine they are chosing it over tar or pitch due to availability as much as any other factor.
He took a simple concept, and used some simple tools to accomplish it. Call it what it is, a MacGuyverism, a hack. Applaud it for creativity, but not for being an invention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zMAWztZ6TI This guy in Brazil thought it up in 2002 during a blackout, I'm pretty sure that's more than 2 years ago. This story keeps getting recycled as writers and editors forget that they've already covered it before.
Evidently the idea that the root of "news" is "new", is news to you.
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Electricity companies are very heavily regulated and closely watched by the government, mostly because fools like you are always whining. Try looking at their profit margins and executive compensation before making ignorant and inflammatory posts.
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3W / 5% efficiency = 60W equivalent (incandescent). Additionally, the figures you cite are average (including cloud cover, nighttime) and include all solar energy reaching the ground, not just light. There are a host of other factors that should be considered; much more careful analysis should be done.
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Oh how right you are. Of course I'm an idiot, because no one has ever made a window with multiple panes. Not to mention the insanity of putting windows in one's walls. That's just crazy talk.
Sorry. Sometimes the sarcasm just gets away from me.
That must be so comforting to the people of Africa who live on $10 a year.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Yea, you obviously don't get your power from the same privately-owned (but "publicly" operated) utility company as I do.
These assholes find any and every reason to raise rates, government regulations be damned. Last year, they informed the public that they intended to jack rates almost 10% because we didn't get enough rain. No bullshit.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Polyester resin is kind of a staple product. In post-industrial societies, it's sold for recreation in craft stores. But in less developed places, it's needed for boat building and all sorts of fabrication. Before 3D printers with their costly supplies, we made molds and used resin for pennies.
I imagine they are chosing it over tar or pitch due to availability as much as any other factor.
Or more likely that it won't melt in hot weather. Since 2kg lumps dropping from the ceiling tend to be hazardous.
Ah, must have never been in a slum, then. For some reason or another, the few slums I've been in are often arranged around straight or almost straight paths, paralleled together, with the shacks sharing one or more walls, or at least being built very close to each other. The population densities there probably beat a lot of western mid-rise residential neighborhoods (8-12 stories). Three of the walls are thus usually out of commission, any windows there wouldn't let much light in, unless the neighbor's shack was ablaze :/ The front wall faces an often narrow "street". There'll be "stuff" hanging in said street, say tarps to keep the scorching sunlight out, or laundry, produce and occasional meat drying, etc. Thus, not much light is reaching the front wall either. Really the roof is the only option, and some discarded metal and bottles are about as affordable as they get. The caulking is a bit more of an expense, but presumably one could scavenge something from trash leaving the construction sites. Remember that opened caulking containers have a finite shelf life, and slum kids are professional scavengers, for lack of a better term.
The way those lights are meant to be installed is. 1. A bottle is caulked into a piece of metal that is shaped to match the grooves/waves in the roof. The metal has a circular hole cut out with a diameter a couple cm smaller than the diameter of the bottle. Radial slots are cut along the circumference of the hole. The resulting tabs are then bent up at right angle. Those tabs are then caulked to the bottle, and caulked over. 2. A roughly bottle-diameter hole is cut into the roof, and the assembly from #1 is caulked onto the roof. The assembly #1 is the replaceable assembly, and it can be "reverted" to a bottle-less version by using a variant without, you know, the bottle installed in it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Bet you wish you posted that AC
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.