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FIFA SA 2010 WORLD CUP ANTHEM

Final reflections (yeah, yeah, I know it's not REALLY over)

Final reflections are usually about what the students have learned during the course. This time it’s really hard to think of any concrete things or themes that I might have learned about. I don’t remember too much about the lectures to be honest. I remember liking the participatory methods sessions in the beginning and the workshop experiences later on. Then again I remember sitting at some of the guest speakers’ lectures and literally falling asleep. Not that the themes were not interesting, because they were. It’s just that it felt like I had heard all that before in the earlier SGT courses.

Also, towards the end of the course it just felt a bit stupid to sit at the classroom listening to some guy telling me once again about the importance of community participation in development projects, while at the same time we were really busy with the project and could have used that time working on it. It was the same old story again, and I felt like it didn’t support the project work or help me in any way with the situation we were in at the time. But who knows, if the group had been better organized and not in a terrible hurry, maybe I wouldn’t have been that stressed out and would have enjoyed the lectures as well.

So, if I didn’t learn much at the classes, maybe the project itself taught me something new? Well, not really. Turns out that lo-tech solar concentrator technologies are not exactly rocket science. Once we had come up with the design and the solutions for adjusting – and I’m not saying it was easy, it took a lot of effort and time – the rest was pretty much just about building the thing. But did I learn something new, some new skills or some new knowledge? Sure, I learned to recognize an 8 mm bolt from a distance and to use some power tools, but that’s pretty much it (still, I do value this, it might come handy later in life).

Was this all just a big waste of time then? Definitely not. I did learn a lot about myself, other people and working in a group. When I started with this course I knew that it would be a lot of hard work. Yet I didn’t have a clue of how frustrated and stressed out I would be at times. Normally with group works things have worked out quite OK, and usually the biggest problems and reasons for stress have been related to organizing the time (i.e. always starting everything way too late). Although we finally ran out of time with this project, too, I don’t think the actual problem of the group was organizing the schedule but communicating within the group.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this stressed out and frustrated because of just ten credits. At times I felt like the secret meaning of this course was that if I survive this, I would survive pretty much anything my future working life will bring me. In the end I did survive, although I have to admit that during the last month or so I thought about quitting almost daily. It would certainly have been the easy way out. However, I had already put so much effort into the project that it simply wasn’t an option anymore. This experience might not safe me from all the similar difficult situations in the future, but I have definitely learned an important lesson about how one should work in a group.

Is this the end?

Now when the SGT show is over our blog readers might wonder that is this the end? The rght answear is NO! Although we quite finnished our product, it´s not ready yet. From next week we (at least half of the SGTSolar team) will continue building and propably will update the manual if we find something useful. The mondays final critique gave us some improvement proposals, that we will try to implement. The next GOAL the Maailma kylässä aka World Village festival. As Shalin is one of the exhibitors, SOLAR FLOWER is going to be there too! But before the festivals there is a lot to do to finalize our product. And as I mentioned in my previous blog update the World village is a milestone for the Solar Flower, since we will hopefully get some really useful suggestions, opinions from the audience. Place to enjoy and learn! There have been about 50 000 visitors per day in the festival in previous years so we expect nothing less this year.

So We warmly invite you all, your friends and family to come and visit us and ofcourse the whole festival! I just checked out the performers and I must say, I was amazed! Awsome bands from all around the world! And fo free!!! The festival is free of charge. You can also get exciting new taste experience too, while there are traditional kitchens from all around the globe. Nutrition for your soul and body. And the final culmination for me is the festival club. Saturdays club is funky elephant and sundays club is Balkan Fever (no vested interests :D ) Check out the whole program in www.maailmakylassa.fi We´ll update the blog as soon as we know where you´ll find us.

UV purification

I have been thinking about the UV purification that Risto mentioned at the critique. I did some quick research on it, and apparently solar radiation was three effects that are believed to contribute to the disinfection of water:

• UV-A interferes directly with the metabolism and destroys cell structures of bacteria.
• UV-A (wavelength 320-400 nm) reacts with oxygen dissolved in the water and produces highly reactive forms of oxygen (oxygen free radicals and hydrogen peroxides), that are believed to also damage pathogens.
• Infrared radiation heats the water. If the water temperatures rises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.

Basically, on a sunny day you should get clean drinking water just by placing a plastic bottle in sunlight for six hours. I wonder how fast this would be with concentrated sunlight.

Of course if we wanted to use this method with our concentrator the water might have to be at least filtered somehow, because it probably has to be clear. And we need to remember that this method only kills the pathogenic organisms but doesn't purify the water in any other way. So if the water contains for example chemicals or other materials, such as arsenic (which is a common problem globally), it would need other treatment as well.

So, would this be something we'll consider, or do we stick to the original plan (distilling water), at least for now?

Bottom Of the Pyramide- seminar and work shop. 26.1

I attended the BoP- workshop wich was organised by Aalto university. The seminar was held by Peter Schartz and The workshop was in the beginning of the SGTSolar project so it gave me a lot to think and new perspectives for seeing our own project and especially the users of our product. Let me axplain first what BoP means:

As you can see in the photo the people that are normally seen as customers are the ones in the top of the pyramid. But as you can see the biggest population are the ones that earn less than 5 euros a day. So why the markets are so concentrated on the 0,5 billion? Why are the markets top-down oriented and no bottom-up oriented? These 4 billion are seen as numbers, but who are the people behind the numbers? What do they need? Can we produce the items they need? For these peolple the only certaninty is uncertainty. Irregular incomes, uncertainty about what tomorrow brings, but still- todays money money goes for todays spendings. Peple are inventing in future by repairing, renewing for maximizing the benefit of their belongigns.

The BoP consumers mindset is about minimizing the risks, making tradeoffs in purchasing descision , stategic money management and the need for proof of the items performance. BoPs are brand loyal, which might sound wierd, but by understanding that the items that theu are farmiliar with are the ones that have proofed their performance. And when there is just a certain amount of money the risk of buying something even cheaper that doesn´t work is too high, so they´ll continue buying the more expencive, but safe items.

An invention is not an invention untill it´s adopted by it´s users- John Heskett

This is a challenge to our Solar Flower aswell. We have a design and an invention, but how will the users adopt it? Hopefully we will learn a lot from the Maailma kylässä festivals, where anyone can test it and give feedback. Although we had a critique on monday, but the real judges are the Solar Flower users.

Reflections on Final critique

Amazin monday I say! I am so proud of the Solar Flower team and of the other teams as well! Athough our presentation was a bit different due to beeing outdoors and our voices were fighting with the wind, I think that we nailed it. It´s amazing that our students are so professional in their works and I belive that every project was a succes. The presentations were well presented. I want to thank the teams, mentors, rewievers, listeners and SGT staff for inspirational, interesting and succesful day! The discussions were so fruitful that we deffenitely would have needed more time for them. The course and the project work taught us many useful things and beeing in a real project gave us all important lesson. Thanks for trusting your projects in students hands! I really hope that each one of the projects will continue some way!

Like Marko always says, let´s give us our selves a big hand!

Reflecting on the long Journey

You can call this piece a wrap up or final reflection. I just write what I have felt throughout the long route though. Well, after this long route, hard work paid off its servants and our project – Reflecting energy for community development – comes to a fruitful conclusion with the birth of our precious product SunFlower. I believe this product is all but a monument that represents the essence of innovation and the power of unity. Moreover, it is one of its kinds that can be used by anyone as a basis to begin with to provide similar real life solutions to the target groups.

Bringing individuals of different personality in a single team to work for a common cause and achieving their goal is a monotonous task by itself. It requires bearing the frustrations and angers, respecting one another’s opinions and most importantly converging diversified individual ambitions to a single focus to boost the team energy. And sharing the fun, of course! That said, at times, heated arguments and clashes of opinions were not uncommon among our group members and I think this is one of the attributes of a group work which stretched in such a long period of time and I think it is quite Normal.

At the early stages, the more we started working together, the team dynamics developed progressively but the notion of not knowing how to organize the work seemed to take its toll on our progress. In a project of such depth, unless one sit down, split the tasks to smaller ones, dot them down and start working on them, it could be a nightmare to simply think about the final product. Before we gave the real first kick to our work, I personally, at times, thought this whole thing is a mere theory and unachievable. Once we dared to take the first step; the second was easier and then after it got as easy as taking a candy from a baby. Ok, maybe I exaggerate the fact a little bit here. But it is to emphasize the importance of organizing the task and get immersed in it for the smooth flow of the whole activity. Working on the deliverables throughout the project route was between tough and crazy though, especially the construction thing.

And then came the final day ………….

It was everybody’s pride and honor to present their thing in front of such audience and in that breathtaking atmosphere and mine was no different. I have to be honest here. I thought, at some point, that there is some sort of relationship between the names in the audience and my heart beat. The bigger the names, the faster my heart beats when I take the stages for presentations. With all the arrangements and the way things flow together, with that magical atmosphere in the room, it seemed like it was a thesis work defense before the faces of those bunches of academic personalities that crammed the room. So, let us say Hats off for all the teams who keep nerves and did great job to ensure the magnificence of their presentation. Overall, the day lived to my expectations!

We are at the very end of this long journey now with all the funs and the challenges we have shared, with the huge lessons we learnt, with all the great friends we made, along the way. I can sense mixed emotions running down my nerves right now. I am relived because I believe we as a team managed to deliver what was expected from us and from our project. On the other hand, I am afraid I am going to miss all my teammates the, teaching staff, the mentors and the casemates who all worked together as an Item for the success of this mesmerizing course – SGT. Finally, I would like to thank my team members and mentors for what we have done together. I have reaped all the benefits that working with you guys brought with it. The same is true for all parties involved.

See you again, somehow.

Oh the relief!

The course is finally over then. It feels like it's been forever since we started working on the project. It's been on my mind since January, and especially during the last few weeks we've been working really long hours at the Design Factory trying to get everything done before the deadlines. So, needless to say that it was quite a relief to have returned the manual on Thursday and finally to have given the presentation on Monday (and what made it even more relieving was the fact that we had a good last minute panic going on on both days...why ruin the fun by doing things in advance, right?).

Everything hasn't gone quite as planned during the project, so all and all I'm really pleased with what we managed to put together, even though there are still some things yet to be figured out. However, I am quite confident that we will be able to solve the last little details and get Solar Flower and a working application on display in Maailma Kylässä festival. Come and see it yourself!

03 May 10: FINAL CRITIQUE

The final critique was great but too long due to "something" beyond the organizers' control; so please be realistic with the timing and manage it better next time. All the teams did a wonderful job and it was nice to see how successful the projects were. However, my only regret was that, I could not talk to one particular intelligent, smart and pretty lady who was in one of the teams, after the whole show. Here we go again, the same old story. That was just by the way.

22 Mar 10: Sustainable building in Finland and the Eco Viikki case

Tapio Jalo's presentation/lecture was great because eco-friendly buildings are what we need today. Moreover, energy issues are the "talk of the town" and so it was not surprising that his lecture was concentrated on energy. Furthermore, it was of interest to me because my team's project for this course was on ways of harnessing energy from the sun, which is super-green.

08 Feb 10: Practical cases of international projects: how local communities have participated?

The presentations by Helena Sandman (architect), Peter Kuria (NGO, Shalin ry) and Mika Skarp (NSN) were interesting, informative and educative. Peter's presentation on foreign aid was the most interesting since that is the order of the day. Institutions that offer foreign aid to developing countries always have selfish interests and at the long run, worsen the plight of those countries. This is all because of politics and there is politics everywhere, even in the bedroom.

26 Apr 10: Large, Complex, Difficult: Doing Extreme Projects in Murky Places Around the World

The presentation/lecture by Mikko Koria was OK but not all that interesting, because I have had so many project management/project risk management/project courses already and just tired of hearing project this, project that. However, such a topic is very good for this course since it is not everyone who has taken courses related to this topic.

19 Apr 10: Development cooperation project - KATHMANDU VALLEY CULTURAL TRAIL

The presentation by Panu Könönen was interesting, though it is also the same old story. Making it easier for people/tourists to navigate to areas of interest by the help of the trails was good. Moreover, the tour-guide training given to the locals in assisting foreigners/tourists during sight-seeing was great because it is a form of job creation.

12 Apr 10: How to make and give good presentations

The presentation/lecture by Philipp Schmidt-Thomé was quite boring because at this stage, a student, a master's student for that matter, should know how to make formal and informal presentations. We all defended our thesis works and were taught presentation skills during our bachelor's degree, I guess, so the lecture was not of interest to me. Pamela also made a contribution to the lecture by adding that, we should be practicing it in front our mirrors, our friends and families in order to get used to with; these are things I heard when I was in stage 5 and we should know these by now. So, it was the same old story over and over again. Hence, the surprise exercise for the debate and presentation was unnecessary.

15 Mar 10: Presentations of the student projects from SGT studio course 2009.

The presentations of the student projects from SGT studio course 2009 were quite OK. I did not enjoy them much since I have heard those stories over and over again, so there was nothing new. Except the RCS project which was more on disaster management and recovery, I guess it was because it was something related to my field of study and could relate to the issues he talked about.

The Banana CD scratch remover

What you’ll need:

* A banana
* A banana peel
* Some glass cleaner

1. Take a CD / DVD that has smudges and minor scratches on it.
2. Using a circular motion, apply a freshly cut banana to it.
3. Next, wipe it down with the banana peel. The wax from the peel will help polish and further clean the disk.
4. Take a clean cotton cloth and wipe the entire surface of the CD / DVD. Be sure to apply moderate pressure while moving in a circular motion. This should be done for around 3 to 4 minutes.
5. Finally, spray the disc with glass cleaner and wipe it clean.

Voilà! Your scratched CD or DVD should now look like new! Please note that this trick will also help you repair scratched PS2 and Xbox CD’s and DVD’s.

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2007/08/11/how-to-use-a-banana-to-fix-a-scratched-cd-or-dvd/

Meeting on 26th April 2010

We had our last official meeting with our mentor, Peter, to finalize the project. We then continued with the remaining construction work from Tuesday and spent several hours at the design factory, even up to 10:30 p.m for the Wednesday session. As you can see, we did loads of hard work behind the scene. So, I think the course assessment for our project should be 80 percent for the construction part (manual, solar concentrator, report) and 20 percent for the rest, if necessary.

Cheers

It seems that after a hard hard work and a combined team effort, the long awaited project is coming to a fruitful end. Working with you guys as a team is a life time experience that I have taken a huge lesson from. Congradulations for the work done so far and more focus and hard work for the coming presentation of our brand product Solar-Flower. I hope the team will stick together and continue to further develop the product and present it for the show on world village 2010, Finland.

Hauskaa vappua!!

Test drive

As Miina mentioned, we tested the first readymade panel in Design Factory with a spot light. The testing went quite ok, but we are still missing a simple solution for adjusting each panel. The theorys we had in our mind didn´t quite work as thought in real life. Here are few photos of what we did.The next photo is not a master piece, but you can get some idea ot the focal point.

On thursday we made cardboard exemplars of the panels to make the drawing easier. After that we draw the figures on the metallic plates and wen´t on friday to Kone department to cut them. Cutting was easy until we got the the point where we had to cut the small wedges between the cds. We will continute the work on monday/tuesday.

Eddy and me flatened the other reflective material that we collected from Engineers without boarders. As the team already disscussed, it would be a good idea to make a couple or three panels out of this material to show that we can also develop our solar concentrator from different reflective materials. I hope Eddy and me would join forces to go to the cutting station and prepare some panels today or tomorrow. And what about the gaps between the CDs on the panels? are we yet to decided on this matter?

Logo, anyone?

Now, I ain't no graphic designer, but the product needs a logo, so I thought I'd play around a little and avoid doing real things. So here's the first logo suggestion with the two name suggestions that have come up so far. Comments, please!

Problematic Panels

Today was the pre-submission of the final report i.e. our manual, and so we pre-submitted, but quite a bit is still missing. The biggest single thing seems to be the panels and instructions on how to make them. We've had some problems with them during these past days: on Wednesday morning me and Irena couldn't find the time to test the adjusting properly and after that it's been all cloudy and rainy. Today we tried to do some testing with a spotlight at Design Factory, and based on that, the manual adjusting (bending the "wings" to right angle) of a single panel works. However, I am still concerned about how to make the rest of the panels. Going through every single one of them manually is a lot of work.


Right now we know the needed angles, so in theory we could make a mould of it. However, we haven't quite figured out how that would help us. First we thought of hammering the wings to the right angle with the help of wedges or the mould, but it seemed to be quite difficult to get the angle right and precise because the needed elevation is so small (0,6 mm). If we would have access to a press in the next few days, our problems might be solved. If not, we need either a brilliant innovation quickly or long hours spent at the DF. So any ideas are now more than welcome!

Introduction and manual is sufficient

Hmm tomorrow is the deadline for the report and well, it needs not to be a big report as we have been working too much in the lab. So this should be short, simple manual of the product and introduction. We plannned to put pictures together with steps to make the concentrator. We may add some applications where it can be used but this is in the backlog. If team members have any other suggestions, they are welcome to share here.

Frame and panels design

So we started with the design of frame last week which is almost at the end now. But we still have to make panels for the concentrator. Today's plan is to go through the panels design shaping them and trying to get same focus for all. Best of Luck team.

Pickup day

Today I finished up our collection of materials. First I went to visit William, but in the corridor I bumped into Eric and we discussed shortly on how things are going with our project. He told me that he´ll come to see the presentation. William and I went to collect the reflecting metals and loaded them in to my car with the roof panels I came pu with. Then I carried all of them to Design factory, next to our other materials. So need for the gym for few days :D Now we have enough of metallic plates! Enough metallic plates to build a boat! So if want to change the plan, we could build a Buster boat XD

Oh just kiding :) So since we have good materials that are mouldable, we can try to mold the whole plate or cut them and fold each section one by one. Few things for forthcoming: The product development projects are closing up soon, so be patient in the machine room, they are as busy with their projects as we are. And William would like to see what how were doing, so he´ll visit us next week :)

BR Irena

Meeting on 12.4

The whole group had a short meeting on the schedule. We decided that this week the group will meet every day at 3 and spend few hours in the design factory and start building. On next monday we will continue after our class and on tuesday we will spend the whole day in the design factory. Working on DF on sundays is not worth of planning, since the entrance is uncertain. I will bring the metallic panels on tuesday or wednesday and we will try to make them bend. The shiny metallic plates we still have to pick up, so I´ll send an email to William and ask when one of us can collect them. If it´s possible tomorrow or wednesday, I´ll pick them up and bring them to DF so that I could compensate my absence on the end of the week.

BR Irena

Shopping

Irena, I and Teddy went for shopping today at 1530 hrs. We bought all the required stuff e.g. wood, thread rods, nutts, hinges etc but sorry Ed we could not buy your email items 7 to 10 :). Well, we did all the shopping from one big store so it was not roaming around for things but we really worked to chose the material. We hope you will find that we have purchased useful things. We remained well in budget and all the stuff cost like 190,63 euros for today's shopping. It was a narrow escape though :). We also put all the material in Design Factory and pasted page with "SGT SOLAR" so that others may know.

NOW LET THE REAL DESIGN BEGIN

Meeting in Design factory 01st April, 2010

We had a meeting with our mentor Peter on April 01, 2010 in the Design Factory. We discussed different aspects of the design and how to improve it. We came to the conclusion that the design needs to be flexible and easy to handle. We agreed on wood structure for the frame and metal for the panels. Peter pointed out that wood is not a sustainable solution as it gets destroyed by the rain and is no longer in good shape after a while.So it is better to use metal for panels instead. We also noticed that structure should have some holdings so that it can keep the panels in one position so that we could focus easily. Then there was discussion whether the distilled water is useful or harmful for drinking. So we adapted the procedure where first water will be distilled and then passed from substance that can add minerals to it making it like mineral water in the market. That is going to be our application.
Unfortunately, we are still not sure when to buy the stuff but team was confident to get all in next week. Out model for panel was good and we will continue with that. Lets see what we make.

Jeez...Elementary school math is hard!

Before leaving you guys for a while, I did some little calculations for the concentrator...

Width of one panel = 38 cm (= 3*12cm (CDs) + 2cm (just for fun))
Length of a row = 200 cm (= 5*38cm (panels) + 2 * 5cm (attachments))
The needed elevation of the furthest panel (so that we know the length of the handles) = 32 cm


At first I was being a dumbass and couldn't figure out how to solve x. I finally got it then. So if the needed elevation is 32 cm, I think 40 cm (or maybe a little less) would be a good length for the handles, since it has to go through the wood and there needs to be some space for attaching. They sell the material in 2 m long bits, so alltogether we will need 5 of those, according to these calculations.

For attaching the rows, this is what I thought of:


We'd use bolts since you need to be able to put the thing in pieces and put it together again. Do you think this attachment could work? I thought we could have the center rows and the furthest rows fixed like this (or some other way), and the two rows in the middle would be the ones you can incline if you want to reduce the efficiency of the concentrator. We still need a solution for how to rotate the rows, any thoughts on that? What's the structure of the base?

On another note, I discussed with Marko and Pamela yesterday, and it seems that the "report" is not going to be a big deal. It's 1-2 pages, and if I understood correctly it would only be a sort of an introduction to this thing we're doing. Basically something that we can present to someone, who's never heard of this project before. Why we're doing it, what's the goal of all this, why we chose to do it like we did etc. Better information about this should be sent by Pamela soonish. But so no 40 page reports, just the manual and this info thingy. Great, innit?

working at Design Factory on 29.3

Despite the litlle the small relapse on sunday, the team met on monday noon. Due to short notice Majid was not able to change his schedule, but the rest of the team was present. The meetin lasted for 4 hours. The topic of the meeting was further designing the solar concentrator. To be exact, finding a simple solution on adjusting a single panel. As a result we managed to build a simple but functioning adjustment that is made out of common components. It was a lot of fun to use the machines :) We also were discussing about the cd attachment and adjustment, but we still are not sure what is the final solution on that. But we went to the machine room to learn about the possibilities of the modern machines. It seems that these few specific functions are available in the design factory.

We desided to meet on thursday at 5 pm. Due to the eastern holidays it is not certain if the design factory empty so that someone would open the door for us... If it´s closed we can have a meeting wihout the possibilities to build, and for example calculate the need of the materials, so that we could finally buy the materials. etc...

Design Factory

Hmm, looks like no one could manage to go in the design factory today?

We hit the shops!

Hi Team,

Mina, Madjid and myself hit the shops in the city today to buy stuffs needed for our project! We bought some materials to initiate our work. We even got to the design factory and experiment our design on a single panel. Everything seems to be going fine. We plan to launch our official design work on Sunday if the design factory is open on that day. I will check that and call you guys if it is open. I am afraid Irena would hit the roof when she learns we didn't buy Pine :) Let’s be ready for Sunday. Let the good ideas roll.

On our Final report

Hey guys, I was referring some documents on how we could prepare our final report. I found some points which, I think, are worth including in our final piece. I organized the whole idea as shown below. Please Read and suggest.
Our Final report would include the following sections:

-Title and full author and team info on the first page
-Abstract (short summary of the Project)
-Introduction (motivates the project)
-Approach and methods
-Results from the project tests (how well it worked)
-Strengths and weaknesses (the good and bad parts, and why)
-Summary
-References
-Appendix

It would also be a good practice if we would be able to remember the following points while writing our final report:

- Use graphics (i.e., diagrams, graphs, tables) to illustrate our approach, but also explain it clearly in words.

- When we describe our approach, we should relate it to the key principles and ideas we learned in class. Feel free to add any other relevant references you have read which helped us with the project.

- Our references to other books/readings should be done as professionally as those in the textbook.

- Explain any original ideas and additions that are a part of our design. For failed versions of the design we would describe them briefly and explain why we eliminated them.

- We should reference the manual for some information.

- Write the report for an informed lay audience; that means we need to provide enough detail so our project could be replicated by the reader.We should explain and justify all of the important design choices.

Solar Concentrator Common applications

Lets list some very common uses for solar concentrator for remote community.

• Potato chips / Frying / Cooking:

This may be common use in any household living that consumes energy.

• Solar Bakery:

Baking consumes a lot more energy but solar bakery would be sustainable and environmental friendly.

• Desalination and getting drinking water from sea water:

• Concentration purposes and Juice Extraction

• Making of Jams and drying in food processing

• HEATING HOME

Reflect solar light and heat into a window in house which does not get sunlight usually. This may heat the home naturally in winter as well. Natural light is more efficient and it reduces headache and eye fatigue caused by the fluorescent light. It may also help in health care reducing "Seasonal Affective Disorder".

• Swimming pool heating

We may build a community center swimming pool and it may be heated with solar concentrator.

• Drying paint or wood

• Electricity production

Thermal engines convert heat to mechanical power which may be used to run generator that can produce electricity efficiently.

• Growing vegetables in winter or shady areas

• Melting ice dams on roofs

• Drying wood for fire

Short discussion Monday 22 March, 2010

Well, that was just short discussion today when four of us were available in the class for today's lecture. We decided to buy the material on Thursday and meet at 1600 hrs in school for that. I think two more from the group are coming with me and I will provide the transport.
Another thing that came under discussion was that we might need to work one or two days full time in the lab to make our concentrator. Someone also suggested the Sunday for full time. So may be on thursday, we may be able to decide the day for full day working in the lab.
What do you guys say, can you make it some day? What about after Easter, weekend, any commitments?

Solar Concentrator Design

Concentrator Grid Dimensions: Width = 70 inches, Length = 84 inches; Each Panel, not shown here, is 14 inches x 14 inches (square)

Meeting in the design factory

We held our meeting in the design factory of Aalto University on 16.03.2010. Both of our mentors, Peter and Eva, and all the team members except Madjid have participated in the meeting. The main agenda of the gathering focuses on how the physical structure of our solar concentrator and its application look like. We mainly discuss the following three points in detail some:

1. Main frame: after a heated discussion, we decided on what features should our main frame has and made from. Even if we singled out certain materials to use to build our main frame we still don't rule out any other possible alternatives.

2. Panels: we decided to build 25 panels that rest on the main frame. We discussed on the adjusting mechanisms of the panels to maintain the system efficiency. We also decided on the potential material that we could use to construct the panels but again we don't rule out possible alternatives.

3. Application: We discussed on the design and construction of the application. This task was originally assigned to Madjid. Because of his apparent disappearance, the team decided to divide the task between Edward and Tewodros.We decided that the on-paper design should be completed by 19.03.2010 so that we could order materials needed for constructing the application.

Concerning the solar concentrator, we decided to start by building the grid first.

Reflection on the workshops

The experience of simulating the real life workshop in the class rooms was a great challenge and at the same times an opportunity to master the basic essence of planning and executing a real life workshop in the future. The main challenge stems from the fact that the participators are not real beneficiaries who have economic, financial or political interest on the workshop and hope to gain something out of it. This makes it very difficult to attract the attention of the participants of a simulated class room workshop as most of them have little or no idea and interest on the subject matter of the workshop.

Another challenge that I witnessed of a class room workshop is the struggle to fit all the contents of the planned workshop in a really short period of time. Sometimes we even don't get the necessary time to collect our breath before we jump form one task to another in order to manage our meager time properly. I hope we would have a much longer time than this in when we plan a real life workshop.

But I think we managed to come out of both of the above challenges with victory as we tried to plan our workshop in a sense that it would attract any neutral participant and accommodate all its components in the given period of time.
Finally, I would like to say that I feel I am privileged to experience that moment, face the challenges and share the fun with my team mates and the whole class and I hope the whole session in the consecutive two weeks gave a big lesson on how we plan our future workshops in the real world.

Adjusting a panel

Yesterday me and Irena went to the Design Factory to try to figure out the adjustment of a single panel. Basically we found some cardboard-like material, drilled some holes to it, stuck nine CDs on it and tried to lift their edges so that they would reflect to a single point.

Reflection before adjusting

Adjusting the CDs to reflect to a focal point at around two metres of the panel was surprisingly easy and didn't require great accuracy. Basically we "measured" the right angles of one side CD and one corner CD by sticking a cardboard cylinder through the holes and twisting and turning it until the angle seemed right. This way we would figure out the measurements of the wedges that go under the CDs. At this point, though, we were just playing around with play dough, so we just put four "equally sized" (measured by eye) pieces of the dough under the edges of the corner CDs and and four thinner pieces under the edges of the side CDs, and voilà:

Reflection after adjusting

Perspective of the focal point

We also noticed that by curving a CD just a tiny bit (basically just giving it a little bit of pressure), you could increase the intensity of its reflection at a single point significantly. Unfortunately it can't be seen in the photo that well, unless you try hard to see it:

Reflection when curving two of the CDs

Another thing we noticed was that the adjustments worked quite well with angles and distances that were close to the originals. We were in a small space, so we didn't really test big differences in distances. However, the more the angle changed, the worse was the result:

Reflection of a light that met the panel in a bigger angle

We figured the next step could be doing this with better materials and accuracy and not just play dough, tape and rough measurements, so we might be going back later this week (possibly Friday) to do that. Feel free to join if you're available!

Amusement in the spirit of Solar concentrators

See even Lady Gaga is a fan of Solar reflectors! Our project is Super Trendy! Lady Gaga is a trend setter, so it is just a matter of time that everybody is wearing portable solar reflectors!

I just wanted to wish you all a relaxing weekend and a stressless examweek!

Two steps forward and...back to square one?

Today we had a short discussion about the design of the solar concentrator before we went to show the "ready" idea to William and Eric. Boy, was I wrong about it being ready. We showed them a slightly simplified version of the design that the group had talked about yesterday, and we discussed further some technical details and other stuff with William and Eric.

One thing that they both seemed to agree on, was that since the design had so many moving bits and parts (e.g. the amount of joints we had), it would be both quite expensive and - even if we manage to replace the expensive stuff with some other solutions - pretty complex to adjust. Instead they both suggested a model where we would use one big panel that would be curved to form a parabolic shape, then covering it with a reflecting material. This way the adjusting wouldn't require that much work. They had some simple sounding solutions for doing this, and they really seemed to think this was something we should concider. So, back to designing I guess..?

Peter, I remember you saying that one big panel wouldn't work. Now I'm trying to remember why. Something about wind at least, but surely that problem could be solved somehow. Were there some other reasons as well?

On another note, I'm facing a huge existential crisis. The more I search on solar concentrators the more I realize that everything has already been done. What new are we exactly bringing to the table? Even the CD idea has already been used (http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Old_CD_cooker). Oh the frustration!

The day plastic became - an opportunity!

Solar Concentrator- Demo!

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