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Uhh just letting you know a device that uses solar energy is not maintaince free and saying that it is would be naive at best and misinformative at worst. It's
by solarman1 4y ago
Uhh just letting you know a device that uses solar energy is not maintaince free and saying that it is would be naive at best and misinformative at worst. It's an even bigger problem in countries where accessibility for such parts does not exist or the expertise to maintain such equipment. In reality a project like this is rather useless and after a few years of use if it ever received any it would belong in the trash.
But that's what most hackathons are in reality anyways.
- Xylakant 4y agoThe device needs power, but solar is not a requirement. But you’re correct, nothing is ever absolutely maintenance free, especially if it contains moving parts. However, their envisioned use case is not “helicopterdump across the desert” but very specific use cases, often for people with technical skills: > This could enable the unit to be deployed in remote and severely resource-limited areas, such as communities on small islands or aboard seafaring cargo ships. It could also be used to aid refugees fleeing natural disasters or by soldiers carrying out long-term military operations. Whether they succeed in making a device useful these cases is a good question, but I consider it pretty dismissive that you characterize a 10 year research effort as “most hackathons”
- solarman1 4y agoI see the majority of these grant styled competitions as just this, hackathons. Besides the prestige involved the majority of these inventions often prove to have little to no value to often not even doing as advertised. The way we incentive academic funding and research is backwards and often more than not broken at its fundamental core. It's compelled further due to these research rings broken into their own hierarchical technocratic groups.