30 ms·

Open Source Low Tech

675 points by grep_it 3mo ago

elias1233 3mo ago
It would be interesting to see if an air conditioner or refrigerator can be made in this manner
- contingencies 3mo ago
  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.
- WillAdams 3mo ago
  Air conditioning: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/no-ac-required-indias-3000-year-old-cooling-technique-can-reduce-heat-up-to-50-in-your-home-naturally-says-study/articleshow/130305016.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/no-ac... Refrigerator would be a traditional root cellar such as my uncle had --- he was also fortunate to have a spring on his property which he encapsulated in a rock structure which was a wonderful place to be on a hot summer day/evening.
- busymom0 3mo ago
  If you don't have AC but do have a refrigerator, you can build a DIY AC using a box, bottles of frozen water and a fan. There's YouTube tutorials on how to do it. I have friends who use it in their apartment which doesn't have AC and doesn't allow installation of one.
  - WillAdams 3mo ago
    Do the thermodynamics of that work out beyond a localized shift? (kitchen is hot, other room cool?) I've always thought that refrigerators should be boxed in with air circulation where filtered intake air for the back comes from the basement and the then heated air is piped up to the attic to be vented.
CurtMonash 3mo ago
I recall predecessors to this idea from the 1970s, which probably implies I heard about them from Futurist Magazine and/or the book Small is Beautiful. It has always been suggested that engineers could do something worthwhile by inventing very simple yet useful things that could realistically be made in poor/underresourced countries or villages.
- nchmy 3mo ago
  What do you figure happened, such that people largely haven't done this?
  - justinmarsan 3mo ago
    It doesn't make anyone money...
  - stdbrouw 3mo ago
    One aspect is perhaps that simple things aren't necessarily cheap. One Laptop per Child struggled to get costs down, whereas a mass market solar panel is not self-serviceable but at their current cost, who cares. Even in the developed world, you get noticeably more bang for your buck if you buy a cheap, basic car than if you buy a cargo bike that could replace it, because of the fierce competition and huge economies of scale for cars. Touch screens are cheaper than seven segment displays. And so on. (Not a snub on the Open Source Low Tech community, their designs look great!)
    - nchmy 3mo ago
      Yeah, I agree with this. Though, I think you could make bikes for much cheaper with some ingenuity. Certainly some bike-powered appliances. Also I think OLPC was a misguided project, as most of these things are. Its out of stem with maslows hierarchy of needs. Folks who are subsistence farmers with drought, smoke filled homes and stomach parasites don't need a laptop and academic education. They need practical and actionable tools and techniques to better meet their basic needs, a state from which they could better pursue academics etc
  - 3mo ago
xmprt 3mo ago
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 way if something breaks, they have the skillset to fix it. If you go to villages in developing nations, you'll see these kinds of innovative solutions all over - things that don't seem like they should work but they just do after lots of trial and error.
- nchmy 3mo ago
  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 distinct dearth of not just innovative solutions, but even just basic and seemingly obvious ones. Upon seeing and feeling this 7 years ago, I decided to dedicate my life to it. I'm hopeful that in the coming year I'll finally be ready to share what I've been working on to facilitate it in a more scalable way...
  - bloqs 3mo ago
    I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for a meaningful career. Instead of engineering for the pocket lining of your chosen billionaire, why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering
    - bratbag 3mo ago
      Because i would rather solve the problems close to home, the problems involving those billionaires. Im not going to put effort into turning those other people in another country into a new cash crop for billionaires.
gaigalas 3mo ago
Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ 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.
- nchmy 3mo ago
  I've never really understood the point of open source ecology. As you noted, it seems egregiously complicated and expensive. I guess that's why it seems to languish in obscurity.
  - hobofan 3mo ago
    I think it makes more sense if it's not viewed under the aspect of trying to be maximally productive in its output. If you look at it over they years, they've also tried to do a share of public outreach / education (though I'm not sure how successful), and I think they also sustain themselves in terms of labor with burnt out tech people that are looking for a change of scenery. So similar to a good zoo, that does both active conservation work, and at the same time public education (e.g. in the form of guided tours for school trips). > I guess that's why it seems to languish in obscurity. I think even in a well-executed form, it would likely still be quite obscure, as there is next to no need for it in western societies (apart from emergency preperation).
  - camwhite 3mo ago
    I would argue that, for anything with value, there is value in having a decent open source option for that thing. I think farm equipment is valuable, so I think it's great that someone is working on an open source option. You are right though, it is an enormously uphill battle. To get off the ground, there would likely need to be a well funded non profit involved. Would be cool to see Futo or similar tackle something like this
- Geezus_42 3mo ago
  Seems dead.
Atiscant 3mo ago
Seems somewhat related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology
- internet_points 3mo ago
  And Illich (where the term "tool" is quite broad, including anything from a knife to a highway system): Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. The use of such tools by one person does not restrain another from using them equally. They do not require previous certification of the user. Their existence does not impose any obligation to use them. They allow the user to express his meaning in action. Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others. Most tools today cannot be used in a convivial fashion.
- utopiah 3mo ago
  Damn, thank you! I often refers to myself saying "Naive heuristic : avoiding gadgets or services (free or not) that increase inequality by design, through technology or business model or both, would be a good starting point." but I can now point to this!
  - utopiah 3mo ago
    Neat, found out https://www.appropedia.org https://www.appropedia.org this way!
ewheeler 3mo ago
MIT's D-Lab https://d-lab.mit.edu/research https://d-lab.mit.edu/research does a lot of similar work on fuels/cooking, evaporative cooling, and design with locally available materials/techniques
adesertrained 3mo ago
[flagged]
joshuaS98 3mo ago
This is amazing
alanwreath 3mo ago
Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/ but I’m not sure if they are still active
- cjameskeller 3mo ago
  They are! But it seems like most of the effort is from the founder, himself. They could use some more hands and cash...
m-i-l 3mo ago
See also Hugh Piggott's detailed recipe books for building wind turbines, e.g. https://scoraigwind.co.uk/all-of-the-books-by-hugh-how-to-get-them/ https://scoraigwind.co.uk/all-of-the-books-by-hugh-how-to-ge... . They were originally printed paper books because they pre-date the internet, and have been popular, e.g. in Scottish island communities, for a long time. I see now they are available as paid eBooks, which seems reasonable to me because the price is very low and a lot of effort has gone into making them, but I wonder if that will be a problem nowadays with people expecting everything on the internet to be free. Edit: There is also https://pureselfmade.com/ https://pureselfmade.com/ which uses Piggott turbine designs.
plastic-enjoyer 3mo ago
That looks rather primitive. I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one. If the designs were adapted so that they no longer looked as they’d been designed by an anarcho-primitivist, would we still regard them as low-tech at all?
- lukan 3mo ago
  " I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one." It is not about aesthetics but functionality achieved with cheap avaiable material. That looks seldom beautiful.
utopiah 3mo ago
You might like https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Appropedia https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Appropedia posted here every few years but paradoxically very little success here.
- grep_it 3mo ago
  Awesome resource, thanks for sharing!
Guestmodinfo 3mo ago
Also lots and lots of manufacturing and repair work is like kept secret from the common people or at least that is the general vibe. So I'm happy for this initiative.
Max536752 3mo ago
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.
- functionmouse 3mo ago
  Any part of the process we hand over goes away forever. This way, society becomes dependent, and M$, OpenAI and Apple see RoI. Any usage, even minor, is at too great a cost.
  - voakbasda 3mo ago
    Certainly no parallels with our manufacturing capabilities, no sir. /s
ElenaDaibunny 3mo ago
this is the kind of open source project that makes me question my life choices every time i install a node module
WillAdams 3mo ago
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-wolschon-on-2013-09-27-0912-utc/20008/9 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-is-solid-as-a-rock/ 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....
ahana_537 3mo ago
what is most interesting to me is gap between ai engineering and software engineering, a lot of challenges are testing , performance , architecture and user experience, good engineering still seems to be differentiator.
perrygeo 3mo ago
Love it. Another great site along these lines: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
marttt 3mo ago
Similar guy (though a more mysterious persona), and another noteworthy low-key web page: https://simplifier.neocities.org/ https://simplifier.neocities.org/
camwhite 3mo ago
I love this project. I often lament how narrowly focused on tech/software open source tends to be. It is the most powerful example of human altruism that I can think of but it tends not to address a lot of peoples basic needs. I would love to see an open source house, car, bike, etc much more than I would like to see another solution for coordinating container clusters or something (I know there are actually a few projects in the categories I mentioned but they are, largely, underwhelming)
mrbluecoat 3mo ago
Reminds me of the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope" by William Kamkwamba. Good read.
hmhrex 3mo ago
My wife came across the Jean Pain compost water heater recently, and I've been really intrigued by the idea. I haven't found a great compact design though, and most of the information I see online treats it more like a fun project than something that could be iterated on and refined. Would love to find somewhere to trade ideas on this and potentially replace some or all of gas water heater. Here's a decent post about the idea: https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/ https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/
- swiftcoder 3mo ago
  You might want to look at biogas digester design - I met farmers near Hanover who were running big biogas digesters, and using the excess heat to heat their homes and pools all winter…
  - hmhrex 3mo ago
    Oh thanks! This is exactly what I was thinking!
ericd 3mo ago
Sort of in the same vein, I've really enjoyed this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/76998.Reader_s_Digest_Back_to_Basics https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/76998.Reader_s_Digest... Lots of really interesting tidbits, and a great lemonade recipe, among lots of other gems.
- WillAdams 3mo ago
  For a more academic approach see the Foxfire Series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/88939-the-foxfire-series https://www.goodreads.com/series/88939-the-foxfire-series
ajot 3mo ago
I've been following this guy a couple of years now (as well as many other mentioned in the comments like LowTechMagazine, Simplifier, OSE, etc) I always liked the WiFi catenaric (instead of parabollic) reflector for it's simplicity,though I think drawing parabolas shouldn't be that difficult either to get a more directional reflector https://opensourcelowtech.org/wifidish.html https://opensourcelowtech.org/wifidish.html
runamuck 3mo ago
I printed this out for the looming Zombie apocalypse.
mrhottakes 3mo ago
Excellent work. People here forget that "low tech" can be much more difficult than "high tech".
turtlebits 3mo ago
IMO, the wind turbine is way too complex to be actually useful. It's definitely not reproducible for $30 unless you have access to a junkyard. The power drill required for it isn't especially low tech. A cheap used solar panel is a better solution in 95% of situations.
ivarv 3mo ago
Here's a similar project focused on agtech & iot - https://github.com/mitra42/frugal-iot https://github.com/mitra42/frugal-iot If anyone else has pointers to low cost sensor network appropriate for small scale farms please share!
culi 3mo ago
See also - The astounding Low Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ - Appropriate Technologies wiki https://www.appropedia.org/ https://www.appropedia.org/ - Global Village Construction Kit https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ (blueprints for 50 open source technologies that are fundamental to civilization)
justincredible 3mo ago
[dead]
Duanemclemore 3mo ago
Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World [0] is a foundational text in the area of Appropriate Technology (cited here by others). Essential reading alongside the Illich (also linked by others), Pye's Nature and Art of Workmanship [1], and Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" [2] for those interested in.... Let's call it an ecology OF technology? And also the Papanek was probably the book that felt most like a forbidden text in undergraduate architecture school... [0] https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6... [1] https://archive.org/details/natureartofwor00pyed https://archive.org/details/natureartofwor00pyed [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652
vedant_getbags 3mo ago
I'll share this to all the NGO's ik which can further spread the info, Thanks :)
treasury_block 3mo ago
I sure that ai will eat everything
jiehong 3mo ago
If you're in a country like France, where buying fans for your daughter's schools is not allowed [0], or installing your own store-bought AC unit either, making DIY devices seems the easy part, sadly. [0]: (French) https://www.lexpress.fr/environnement/canicule-il-offre-dix-ventilateurs-a-l-ecole-de-sa-fille-et-doit-les-reprendre_2086448.html https://www.lexpress.fr/environnement/canicule-il-offre-dix-... [1]: (French) https://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2026/06/19/canicule-des-coproprietaires-ayant-installe-une-climatisation-sans-autorisation-sont-condamnes-a-la-retirer_6704977_1657007.html https://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2026/06/19/canicule-de...

675 points by grep_it 3mo ago

elias1233 3mo ago

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

contingencies 3mo ago
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.
WillAdams 3mo ago
Air conditioning: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/no-ac-required-indias-3000-year-old-cooling-technique-can-reduce-heat-up-to-50-in-your-home-naturally-says-study/articleshow/130305016.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/no-ac... Refrigerator would be a traditional root cellar such as my uncle had --- he was also fortunate to have a spring on his property which he encapsulated in a rock structure which was a wonderful place to be on a hot summer day/evening.
busymom0 3mo ago
If you don't have AC but do have a refrigerator, you can build a DIY AC using a box, bottles of frozen water and a fan. There's YouTube tutorials on how to do it. I have friends who use it in their apartment which doesn't have AC and doesn't allow installation of one.
- WillAdams 3mo ago
  Do the thermodynamics of that work out beyond a localized shift? (kitchen is hot, other room cool?) I've always thought that refrigerators should be boxed in with air circulation where filtered intake air for the back comes from the basement and the then heated air is piped up to the attic to be vented.

CurtMonash 3mo ago

I recall predecessors to this idea from the 1970s, which probably implies I heard about them from Futurist Magazine and/or the book Small is Beautiful. It has always been suggested that engineers could do something worthwhile by inventing very simple yet useful things that could realistically be made in poor/underresourced countries or villages.

nchmy 3mo ago
What do you figure happened, such that people largely haven't done this?
- justinmarsan 3mo ago
  It doesn't make anyone money...
- stdbrouw 3mo ago
  One aspect is perhaps that simple things aren't necessarily cheap. One Laptop per Child struggled to get costs down, whereas a mass market solar panel is not self-serviceable but at their current cost, who cares. Even in the developed world, you get noticeably more bang for your buck if you buy a cheap, basic car than if you buy a cargo bike that could replace it, because of the fierce competition and huge economies of scale for cars. Touch screens are cheaper than seven segment displays. And so on. (Not a snub on the Open Source Low Tech community, their designs look great!)
  - nchmy 3mo ago
    Yeah, I agree with this. Though, I think you could make bikes for much cheaper with some ingenuity. Certainly some bike-powered appliances. Also I think OLPC was a misguided project, as most of these things are. Its out of stem with maslows hierarchy of needs. Folks who are subsistence farmers with drought, smoke filled homes and stomach parasites don't need a laptop and academic education. They need practical and actionable tools and techniques to better meet their basic needs, a state from which they could better pursue academics etc
- 3mo ago

xmprt 3mo ago

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 way if something breaks, they have the skillset to fix it. If you go to villages in developing nations, you'll see these kinds of innovative solutions all over - things that don't seem like they should work but they just do after lots of trial and error.

nchmy 3mo ago
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 distinct dearth of not just innovative solutions, but even just basic and seemingly obvious ones. Upon seeing and feeling this 7 years ago, I decided to dedicate my life to it. I'm hopeful that in the coming year I'll finally be ready to share what I've been working on to facilitate it in a more scalable way...
- bloqs 3mo ago
  I had never really considered the _competence_ of help before. It makes a huge amount of sense and is a strong argument for intelligent younger folk looking for a meaningful career. Instead of engineering for the pocket lining of your chosen billionaire, why not use those incredible skills to use in frugal or humanitarian engineering
  - bratbag 3mo ago
    Because i would rather solve the problems close to home, the problems involving those billionaires. Im not going to put effort into turning those other people in another country into a new cash crop for billionaires.

gaigalas 3mo ago

Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ 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.

nchmy 3mo ago
I've never really understood the point of open source ecology. As you noted, it seems egregiously complicated and expensive. I guess that's why it seems to languish in obscurity.
- hobofan 3mo ago
  I think it makes more sense if it's not viewed under the aspect of trying to be maximally productive in its output. If you look at it over they years, they've also tried to do a share of public outreach / education (though I'm not sure how successful), and I think they also sustain themselves in terms of labor with burnt out tech people that are looking for a change of scenery. So similar to a good zoo, that does both active conservation work, and at the same time public education (e.g. in the form of guided tours for school trips). > I guess that's why it seems to languish in obscurity. I think even in a well-executed form, it would likely still be quite obscure, as there is next to no need for it in western societies (apart from emergency preperation).
- camwhite 3mo ago
  I would argue that, for anything with value, there is value in having a decent open source option for that thing. I think farm equipment is valuable, so I think it's great that someone is working on an open source option. You are right though, it is an enormously uphill battle. To get off the ground, there would likely need to be a well funded non profit involved. Would be cool to see Futo or similar tackle something like this
Geezus_42 3mo ago
Seems dead.

Atiscant 3mo ago

Seems somewhat related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology

internet_points 3mo ago
And Illich (where the term "tool" is quite broad, including anything from a knife to a highway system): Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. The use of such tools by one person does not restrain another from using them equally. They do not require previous certification of the user. Their existence does not impose any obligation to use them. They allow the user to express his meaning in action. Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others. Most tools today cannot be used in a convivial fashion.
utopiah 3mo ago
Damn, thank you! I often refers to myself saying "Naive heuristic : avoiding gadgets or services (free or not) that increase inequality by design, through technology or business model or both, would be a good starting point." but I can now point to this!
- utopiah 3mo ago
  Neat, found out https://www.appropedia.org https://www.appropedia.org this way!

ewheeler 3mo ago

MIT's D-Lab https://d-lab.mit.edu/research https://d-lab.mit.edu/research does a lot of similar work on fuels/cooking, evaporative cooling, and design with locally available materials/techniques

adesertrained 3mo ago

[flagged]

joshuaS98 3mo ago

This is amazing

alanwreath 3mo ago

Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/ but I’m not sure if they are still active

cjameskeller 3mo ago
They are! But it seems like most of the effort is from the founder, himself. They could use some more hands and cash...

m-i-l 3mo ago

See also Hugh Piggott's detailed recipe books for building wind turbines, e.g. https://scoraigwind.co.uk/all-of-the-books-by-hugh-how-to-get-them/ https://scoraigwind.co.uk/all-of-the-books-by-hugh-how-to-ge... . They were originally printed paper books because they pre-date the internet, and have been popular, e.g. in Scottish island communities, for a long time. I see now they are available as paid eBooks, which seems reasonable to me because the price is very low and a lot of effort has gone into making them, but I wonder if that will be a problem nowadays with people expecting everything on the internet to be free. Edit: There is also https://pureselfmade.com/ https://pureselfmade.com/ which uses Piggott turbine designs.

plastic-enjoyer 3mo ago

That looks rather primitive. I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one. If the designs were adapted so that they no longer looked as they’d been designed by an anarcho-primitivist, would we still regard them as low-tech at all?

lukan 3mo ago
" I wonder whether the difference between low-tech and high-tech isn’t simply an aesthetic one." It is not about aesthetics but functionality achieved with cheap avaiable material. That looks seldom beautiful.

utopiah 3mo ago

You might like https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Appropedia https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Appropedia posted here every few years but paradoxically very little success here.

grep_it 3mo ago
Awesome resource, thanks for sharing!

Guestmodinfo 3mo ago

Also lots and lots of manufacturing and repair work is like kept secret from the common people or at least that is the general vibe. So I'm happy for this initiative.

Max536752 3mo ago

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.

functionmouse 3mo ago
Any part of the process we hand over goes away forever. This way, society becomes dependent, and M$, OpenAI and Apple see RoI. Any usage, even minor, is at too great a cost.
- voakbasda 3mo ago
  Certainly no parallels with our manufacturing capabilities, no sir. /s

ElenaDaibunny 3mo ago

this is the kind of open source project that makes me question my life choices every time i install a node module

WillAdams 3mo ago

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-wolschon-on-2013-09-27-0912-utc/20008/9 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-is-solid-as-a-rock/ 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....

ahana_537 3mo ago

what is most interesting to me is gap between ai engineering and software engineering, a lot of challenges are testing , performance , architecture and user experience, good engineering still seems to be differentiator.

perrygeo 3mo ago

Love it. Another great site along these lines: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/

marttt 3mo ago

Similar guy (though a more mysterious persona), and another noteworthy low-key web page: https://simplifier.neocities.org/ https://simplifier.neocities.org/

camwhite 3mo ago

I love this project. I often lament how narrowly focused on tech/software open source tends to be. It is the most powerful example of human altruism that I can think of but it tends not to address a lot of peoples basic needs. I would love to see an open source house, car, bike, etc much more than I would like to see another solution for coordinating container clusters or something (I know there are actually a few projects in the categories I mentioned but they are, largely, underwhelming)

mrbluecoat 3mo ago

Reminds me of the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope" by William Kamkwamba. Good read.

hmhrex 3mo ago

My wife came across the Jean Pain compost water heater recently, and I've been really intrigued by the idea. I haven't found a great compact design though, and most of the information I see online treats it more like a fun project than something that could be iterated on and refined. Would love to find somewhere to trade ideas on this and potentially replace some or all of gas water heater. Here's a decent post about the idea: https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/ https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/

swiftcoder 3mo ago
You might want to look at biogas digester design - I met farmers near Hanover who were running big biogas digesters, and using the excess heat to heat their homes and pools all winter…
- hmhrex 3mo ago
  Oh thanks! This is exactly what I was thinking!

ericd 3mo ago

Sort of in the same vein, I've really enjoyed this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/76998.Reader_s_Digest_Back_to_Basics https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/76998.Reader_s_Digest... Lots of really interesting tidbits, and a great lemonade recipe, among lots of other gems.

WillAdams 3mo ago
For a more academic approach see the Foxfire Series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/88939-the-foxfire-series https://www.goodreads.com/series/88939-the-foxfire-series

ajot 3mo ago

I've been following this guy a couple of years now (as well as many other mentioned in the comments like LowTechMagazine, Simplifier, OSE, etc) I always liked the WiFi catenaric (instead of parabollic) reflector for it's simplicity,though I think drawing parabolas shouldn't be that difficult either to get a more directional reflector https://opensourcelowtech.org/wifidish.html https://opensourcelowtech.org/wifidish.html

runamuck 3mo ago

I printed this out for the looming Zombie apocalypse.

mrhottakes 3mo ago

Excellent work. People here forget that "low tech" can be much more difficult than "high tech".

turtlebits 3mo ago

IMO, the wind turbine is way too complex to be actually useful. It's definitely not reproducible for $30 unless you have access to a junkyard. The power drill required for it isn't especially low tech. A cheap used solar panel is a better solution in 95% of situations.

ivarv 3mo ago

Here's a similar project focused on agtech & iot - https://github.com/mitra42/frugal-iot https://github.com/mitra42/frugal-iot If anyone else has pointers to low cost sensor network appropriate for small scale farms please share!

culi 3mo ago

See also - The astounding Low Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ - Appropriate Technologies wiki https://www.appropedia.org/ https://www.appropedia.org/ - Global Village Construction Kit https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ (blueprints for 50 open source technologies that are fundamental to civilization)

justincredible 3mo ago

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Duanemclemore 3mo ago

Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World [0] is a foundational text in the area of Appropriate Technology (cited here by others). Essential reading alongside the Illich (also linked by others), Pye's Nature and Art of Workmanship [1], and Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" [2] for those interested in.... Let's call it an ecology OF technology? And also the Papanek was probably the book that felt most like a forbidden text in undergraduate architecture school... [0] https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/designforrealwor0000papa/page/n6... [1] https://archive.org/details/natureartofwor00pyed https://archive.org/details/natureartofwor00pyed [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652

vedant_getbags 3mo ago

I'll share this to all the NGO's ik which can further spread the info, Thanks :)

treasury_block 3mo ago

I sure that ai will eat everything

jiehong 3mo ago

If you're in a country like France, where buying fans for your daughter's schools is not allowed [0], or installing your own store-bought AC unit either, making DIY devices seems the easy part, sadly. [0]: (French) https://www.lexpress.fr/environnement/canicule-il-offre-dix-ventilateurs-a-l-ecole-de-sa-fille-et-doit-les-reprendre_2086448.html https://www.lexpress.fr/environnement/canicule-il-offre-dix-... [1]: (French) https://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2026/06/19/canicule-des-coproprietaires-ayant-installe-une-climatisation-sans-autorisation-sont-condamnes-a-la-retirer_6704977_1657007.html https://www.lemonde.fr/argent/article/2026/06/19/canicule-de...