WEBVTT - Repurposing Tech for Developing Countries 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.960 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:08.800 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:17.600 tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:19.880 and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poette, 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.200 and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com. 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:25.040 Sitting across from me as is usual, I albeit a 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.440 few minutes later than the typical, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:32.760 Hey there, and everybody, remember to tell Tyler he had 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.640 one thing to do today. That's an inside joke. We 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.120 are going to talk a little bit today. We're continuing 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:43.960 our series about reinventing and repurposing technology and cool and 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.920 interesting ways. Uh, we're gonna talk about something that's really 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:52.479 kind of a a humanitarian sort of approach to hacking. 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:54.960 But before we really get into it, I wanted to 0:00:55.080 --> 0:01:01.520 read something. It's a little listener mail. This is actual 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:03.800 listener mail. I have it in front of me. It's 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.399 on real paper. What everything? What kind of strange technology 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.080 is that? I know? Not? It confuses and frightens me. 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:14.240 It's like it's appearing on a screen, but it's on 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:18.959 an actual physical sheet of paper. Who's it is? But 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.360 only because there's a lamp behind the letter that I'm reading. 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:25.400 This is a letter that we received from our super fan, 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.760 Adam Pervez, who actually has sent stuff to lots of 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:31.959 our podcast He's a big fan of How Stuff Works 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.000 podcasts in general. And if you guys have been to 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:36.640 our Facebook page, you may have seen a picture Chris 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.960 and I were sporting a pair of alpaca wool hats, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.720 and these are hats that he picked up while he 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:48.920 was doing something he calls the happiness plunge. Packs are keen. Yeah, 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:51.440 so the happiness plunges this idea he had where he 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:54.680 decided he wanted to really follow his dreams and try 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.000 to make the world a better place than it was 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.720 when he got there. And so the idea is that 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.360 he quit his job and he started traveling through the 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.320 world really but mostly through Latin America when he started, 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:10.640 and trying to help different communities. As he traveled from 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:12.680 place to place, he would listen to the House Stuff 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.959 Works podcasts in between those places. Well, I wanted to 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:19.799 read a paragraph from this letter. It's actually a fairly 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:21.320 long letter, so I'm not gonna read the whole thing, 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.080 but here's the paragraph. My goal is a travelers to 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.079 leave each place better than how I found it, which 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.000 I do by volunteering everywhere I go. I've had volunteering 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.519 experiences such as feeding the elderly at a nursing home 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.320 in Mexico, installing solar panels in rural Honduras, attracting book 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:38.080 donations for a rural library project in Peru, playing with 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:41.240 kids at orphanages in Costa Rica and Ecuador, designing a 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.400 financing strategy for a new NGO and El Salvador, and 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:48.920 marketing an organization that turns donated used bikes into bike machines, 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:53.000 washing machines, blenders, water well pumps, etcetera. In Guatemala. There's 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.080 a lot I can offer as an engineer slash NBA 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.720 and there's more to the letter than that, but that's 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:00.960 kind of what gave us the idea for this podcast. 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:04.040 We want to talk about technology that people have taken 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:09.280 and repurposed to benefit people who are in developing nations 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:11.960 who don't have access to the same level of technology 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:14.040 we do. And in fact, if we were to give 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:18.639 those people the technology that we take for granted every day, 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.079 it would not necessarily be helpful because their conditions, their 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.880 day to day conditions are so vastly different from the 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.160 ones we are used to that they would not necessarily 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.400 be able to take advantage of that tech. So they're 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.600 actually taking kind of a lower tech approach by repurposing 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.960 stuff that was never meant to do the things that 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.400 it now does. And we thought, what a cool idea, 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:42.560 So we wanted to kind of get into that and 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:45.960 sort of talk about the different ways people have tried 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:50.280 to to accomplish this. And uh, I'm sorry, you're gonna 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.400 say something, Well, I was gonna say that in in 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:55.200 some of these places, uh, you know, these are the 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.440 places where, for example, cell phones have really vaulted over 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.880 land lines because a lot of a lot of areas 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:07.480 have not ever been wired for landline telephone used. So, um, 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:10.280 you know now that uh cell phone talk technology is 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:14.640 so inexpensive, I mean just the basic phone technology. Um. 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.880 And you know, many people in places such as uh 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:21.960 you know, Africa for example, Um, more of the rural areas. 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:25.040 Um you know, really it's a an urban versus rural 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.400 thing anyway. But but um, yeah, a lot of more 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.440 the rural places where or places that are more removed 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.560 where there's a lot of distance in between that area 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.480 and an urban area. UM uh cell phone usage. You 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:39.200 know it's easier to put up the towers than it 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:43.760 is to wire those places for landlines. So UM you 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.160 know that. In doing research for other podcasts where we've 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.960 talked about phones, UM, I've just run across stories what 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.120 they've said, Well, you know, cell phone usage per capita 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.039 maybe higher in some of these other places, simply because 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:58.800 everybody's got a cell phone. They never had a landline phone. 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:01.240 It's not that they ropped one for the other. It's 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:04.640 like they completely leap frogged. Yeah, and and and and 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:06.880 the play and some of these inventions that we're going 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.560 to talk about UM or these technologies, Uh, they may 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:17.360 not necessarily have uh for example, electricity seven, but they 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:19.839 might be able to repurpose some of these other things, 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:24.120 uh inexpensively to improve their lives through this other technology. 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.160 And it is a lot of it is very inventive. 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.599 I actually saw Apollo thirteen invoked in one of the 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:34.240 articles that I was searching for because UM, if you 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:37.960 know the story that was the mission where um they 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:41.960 the astronauts had serious, serious problems because they're some of 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.760 the technology failed, UM and they had to come up 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:47.720 with other stuff on the fly. I know that was 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.560 actually the uh, the genesis of the idea for the 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.320 TV show scrap Heap Challenge, which in the United States 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.120 was Junkyard Wars, where you had to just throw some 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.400 other stuff together. And that's sort of this the same 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.120 idea would you would you would go through a junkyard 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.440 and you would salvage different machines in order to build 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:10.960 something that was specifically intended to achieve a a particular 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.040 goal which was established at the beginning of the show. 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.240 So you would have a goal like it might be 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.040 traversed this this landscape here, and you're going to have 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:21.920 to be able to go up, you know, a twenty 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.720 degree incline, and there's going to be a section that's 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:26.400 gonna be rocky, and there might even be a section 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.120 where you have to travel across water. So you have 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:31.560 to build a machine that's capable capable of doing all 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:33.680 those things. But all you have is whatever is in 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:36.840 this junkyard. Yeah, and of course they did up it's TV, 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.599 so they'd end up seeding the junkyard a handful of 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.200 necessary parts because if nobody ever, you know, they don't 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.680 know everything that's in the junkyard. I'm sure they go, well, 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.119 it turns out that there isn't any of this stuff 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.440 and we're kind of stuck, so it would make it 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:51.960 would not make for interesting television, so they would they 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:54.320 would put in things in there. But here's the thing 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:57.200 is that people are really inventive, right, and they can 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.039 come up with solutions that you do not and to 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.120 to pay. So even if you were to seed a 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.280 junkyard with things that you think, oh, well, clearly, they'll 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:08.040 want to build a device that can do this by 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:10.680 using this, this, and this, it may turn out that 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:12.640 they end up getting stuff that you did not see 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.560 that junkyard with and they build something that works, you know, 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:19.080 as well or perhaps even better than what you had 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.000 conceived of when you were seating it. Because people adapt 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.840 to the situation they are in, and they are very 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.640 quick to adapt their technology as well. And in fact, 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:32.080 we have seen that in developing nations and a lot 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:34.280 of the projects we're gonna be talking about kind of 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.360 they didn't start this process. They just saw something that 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.400 was happening and decided to help it along. Uh. And 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.080 there are a couple of organizations I want to mention 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.960 before we even get into specifics. One of those is 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:51.000 called Random Hacks of Kindness and another is called Geeks 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:55.280 Without Bounds, and both of these organizations are dedicated to 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:59.960 helping developing nations through various hack projects, although and both 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.880 of those cases, they are more focused on the software 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:06.120 side of things. So, like you were saying, you know, 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:09.600 cell phone use being much more prevalent than landline use. 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.760 A lot of these involve apps for phones that would 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:19.239 alert people to things that affect them in their daily lives, um, 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:21.680 and things that other people just wouldn't think of because 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.880 it's not something that affects us, right, So a lot 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:28.560 of these are programs that would not that that are 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.640 again on that software side, that are not about hardware hacks. 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.400 We're really focusing mostly on hardware hacks today, although some 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.199 other stuff might pop up to yeah, this is um. 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.760 Also keep in mind that a lot of the technology 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:43.760 that that can be used for the you know, it's 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:48.079 perfectly good technology. Um. You know, we're not talking necessarily 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:50.520 about junk, although it might be things that other people 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:54.239 have cast off as being obsolete. In some cases, it's 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.880 you know, completely functional and uh, you know, there's there's 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.520 no reason to overdo it. Yeah, and there's some cases 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:04.640 where it's not even repurposing in the sense of making 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:08.480 something do something it wasn't meant to do, like repurposing, 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:10.880 just as in reusing. So there are a lot of 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.720 these programs that allow you to do things like donate 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:18.679 your old electronics to various programs, so like old computers are. 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.280 That's the perfect example. It might be a computer that 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:23.480 you think is obsolete because it can't run the latest 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.760 stuff that you like to run, but for a developing nation, 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.200 it might be a very useful asset. But we're really 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:35.960 looking at in this podcast technology that's been turned into 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:38.200 doing something else. And I was going to start with 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:43.280 Maya Pedal, and Maya Pedal I'm I'm assuming that's the 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.880 organization that Adam was talking about in his letter, because 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:53.120 Maya Pedal is the is a Guatemalan organization that takes 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:57.199 donated bikes, mainly donated from the United States and from Canada, 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.480 and they take those bikes to either reac condition them 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:03.280 and sell them or they use the parts to build 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:05.760 what they call and I'm going to completely butcher the 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:11.200 pronunciation of this biking mackinas or bike powered machines pedal 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.280 powered machines, and so what they're doing is they're actually 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:18.240 taking these bikes apart to some extent, and using that 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.640 pedal power. So instead of it turning a wheel, it's 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:26.400 turning some other mechanical part to accomplish a task that 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:32.200 they might otherwise not have a mechanical opportunity to to 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.880 address it, like things like and the simple stuff. You know, 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.520 Adam and mentioned things like a washing machine. Well that's 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.720 a that's a perfect example. You've got a big tub 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:43.760 that you put the water in, the soap in, the 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:47.760 clothing in, and you have an agitator in there, something 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.960 that turns around and moves the clothing so that it 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.559 creates this agitation which will help the soap and water 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.160 work out all the soil and everything else that's in 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.520 the clothing. You have that agitator hooked up through a 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:06.680 series of of gears and chains or belts to a 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.000 pedal system on a bike, and it might even have 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.000 the back half of the bike more or less intact, 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.600 where you've got the seat and everything, and you sit 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:16.880 down the seat, you pedal the pedals, it turns the 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:21.200 agitator and it ends up washing clothing that way. There's 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.600 actually a guy in Texas who had um a blog. 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.600 The last entry I saw was in two but there 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.320 was a guy in Texas named John Wells who was 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:33.880 building He built something very similar to that called the 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:38.000 He called it the bike O Worsher worshipers spelled w 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.079 O R s h e R in true Texas fashion. Uh. 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:44.960 He was part of the Southwest Texas Alternative Energy and 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:48.840 Sustainable Living Field Laboratory. So the idea was that he 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.320 was building stuff that would allow you to have a 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:55.839 sustainable life where you're not depending so much on things 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.400 like electricity. And it was a really cool project, but 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:01.319 it's very similar to the stuff you see in these 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:04.880 developing nations. Now. In the case of Texas, obviously it's 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.040 not due to lack of electricity. It's more of kind 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.840 of a an uh, environmentally friendly lifestyle that he wants 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:16.760 to adopt, right right. But in the case of Guatemala, 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:20.880 it may be necessity because not all places in rural 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:27.640 rural areas of these these countries have access to regular electricity. Yeah, yeah, 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.160 that's true. And one of the things that struck me 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:34.360 and doing research for this podcast is the similarity of 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.560 some of these inventions to things that you might see 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:41.360 in the pages of Make magazine or among the hacker community. 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.240 Um you know, talking about different bike machines. For example, 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:48.400 I remember watching a video probably more than a year 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.960 ago now where uh, some some folks in San Francisco 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.800 basically collect old bikes and what they do is they 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.480 cut them apart and make new bikes out of them. 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.600 I mean they're they're strange contraptions. Is things with different 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:03.760 size wheels and all sorts of others. Mostly too. It's 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.440 like an art bike's community, and it's mostly because they 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.080 can and and want to have fun doing that. But 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.240 you can you can do the same kinds of things 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:16.680 to to uh uh to create sustainable um machinery. Yeah. 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:20.920 I saw a great video from the Maya Pedal group 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:25.840 where they showed a de grainer and it was what 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:27.760 it was was it was this It looked like the 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.000 back half of a bicycle. But then there was this 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:36.080 shoot that you could feed uh corn through corn that's 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.160 actually still on the cob, uncooked corn, and you would 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:41.760 feed it through and it had a series of gears 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.800 that would end up pulling the kernels off the cob 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:50.080 so that you could d grain that corn. Very very efficiently. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:52.440 You just turned the you know, you're peddling, that's what's 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:56.360 turning the gears. And uh, it was so much faster 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.480 than doing it by hand, and it actually saves a 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:01.880 lot of time and for it. So that was another example. 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:03.719 But they had lots of other ones that I saw. 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:07.719 One that was a a pedal powered blender, and they 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.360 were showing how they were using aloe plants. They would 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:13.320 take the skin off the alo plant and chop it up, 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.320 put it in with some water and a blender, uh, 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.720 and then uh start peddling. And they would use this 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:22.360 to create things like shampoos that they could then sell, 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.680 and it was a way of generating money because these 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:30.880 are in general, the communities that these these projects are 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:38.360 benefiting are incredibly poor compared to the lives that most 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.160 of the people in the west, like the developed nations, 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.760 are used to. So for example, for for me and Chris, 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:50.200 you know, the thought of uh, the reason why these 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.640 devices are so important is because they they take away 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.400 the reliance upon things like kerosene, which might cost four 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:00.880 dollars a week, and that is prohibitively spensive. I mean 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:03.320 that is that's a totally different world than the world 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:06.479 we live in. Yeah. Basically, if you're listening to this podcast, 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:11.200 you know this. This is kind of a different, different experience. Yeah. 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:13.560 So yeah, the and and there was a lot of 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:16.560 other examples of the same sort of thing, mostly, you know, 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.120 all these really cool versions of bikes, uh to do 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:24.040 things like make tiles. There was a bicycle bicycle powered 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:31.080 thresher for for harvesting crops. There there were water pumps. 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:34.080 I saw one where a guy was riding a bike 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.720 and water was coming out of a of a pipe 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:40.200 and it was it was like a bicycle powered Well. Yeah, 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.240 I actually ran across an invention from the Nippon Basic 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.720 company in Japan called the Cyclo Clean and basically it's 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.680 it's designed to you add it to the bike. It 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:54.760 it's kind of hard to describe. You might want to 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:58.600 look it up, but it's it's got water containers so 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:01.760 somebody would ride there by and it goes on your bike, uh, 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.280 an existing bike, so it's not unmodified. If you will 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:05.840 you want to cut a bike apart or anything like 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.360 that as a moving bike. And so you ride to 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.520 a place a source of water. Now, if you think 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:17.000 about lakes or streams, creeks. Uh. You know, most of 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.400 us listening to this podcast probably know all sorts of 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.080 micro organisms live in that water. A lot of it 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:24.880 isn't safe to drink, and a lot of people around 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.800 the world don't have access to clean water. Um. So 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.200 what this does is you pour the water into the 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:35.480 containers and as you uh you know, using the kinetic 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.280 energy of pedaling the bike, the Cyclo clean will filter 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:44.480 the water, so it actually creates potable water by the 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.160 energy of the bike, and it's it's portable and potable. 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:59.520 So it's that that's a pretty nifty um. Um. Actually, 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:01.040 I just want to point out before we move on 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.000 real quick, um, A lot of the devices that I found, 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.680 uh in researching this episode are not things we can 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:12.480 talk about because they're they're invented, they're intended to be inexpensive, 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:16.879 and they're new, so it's not really repurposing technology. There 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.520 are so many really cool devices it might it might 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.639 also be worth investigating it again in the future. Some 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:25.360 of the really cool devices that are you know, they'll 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:28.280 be like a twenty dollar or something and it completely 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.520 does a very useful function and speeds life. And I'm like, oh, man, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:34.280 if I could just use like we could talk. You know, 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.199 Dean came In did the whole thing about you know, 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.240 his his water projects, which I think we talked about 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:43.600 in the Dean came In podcast, but that was years 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:47.440 ago anyway, So I wanted to also mention, Yeah, Maya 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:50.280 Pedal if you if you live in the United States 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.280 or Canada and you're interested in donating an old bicycle 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:55.920 to this, Maya Pedal does have its own website and 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.119 you can learn more about the program and how you 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.520 can participate. They also invite people to come down and 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:06.000 visit their facilities in Guatemala. Obviously, you can even work 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.000 there for a while, volunteer there for a while and 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:14.880 help do things like make repairs or design new machines. Um. 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.240 It's very much a hacker culture in the sense of 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.840 they have they have specific tasks they need to achieve. 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:25.199 They have a specific set of resources they they they 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:28.000 are at their disposal, and they have to find the 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:31.480 way to make the resources meet their their needs. So 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:34.479 they're not interested in making it look pretty. They're not 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:38.640 interested in any of that. Their aesthetics are not important. Yeah, 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.280 it's all about achieving the goal and and that's something 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:45.399 that appeals to a lot of hackers who are all about, hey, yeah, 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:47.880 I know that this was meant to do this one thing, 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.320 but you know, if we just changed it a little bit, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.639 we could totally do this other thing. Let's see if 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:56.199 we can make it happen. And uh, you read a 0:18:56.240 --> 0:19:00.360 lot about that kind of stuff in these in these stories. Um, 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.360 there was another one that I wanted to mention, very 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.280 similar kind of idea again using bicycles. A fellow named 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:13.320 how Watts invented something designed to help countries that are 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:17.919 all about dealing with e waste. So, you know, old electronics, 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.920 if you're right, yeah, if you've ever if you've ever 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.680 tried to get rid of your electronics, maybe maybe you've 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:25.960 tried to put them in some sort of e waste 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.239 recycle program. One of the problems of of some of 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.080 those programs, not all of them, they're not all created equal, 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:38.040 but some of those programs, some of these programs ship 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:42.359 that stuff off to various developing nations where they have 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:47.160 an industry all around recycling that material, and it's mostly 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:53.440 about recapturing the metals that are used in those products, 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:58.439 mainly copper. Yeah, and lead to recapturing the copper and 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.199 lead that's used in these electronic It can be a 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:05.680 very dangerous thing to do if you aren't being if 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:09.440 you're if you're not following particular steps right and and 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:11.560 it can release a lot of toxic elements into the 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.199 environment and also affect people's health. Yeah, the thing is 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.760 too that in in some of these cases, the people 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:20.719 who are disassembling the electronics aren't given the proper tools 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.440 to do that, and some I've read about people who 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:28.679 had to put materials into a fire essentially intending to 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.320 melt it all down, and of course in doing so, 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.399 it releases toxic chemical toxic chemicals, uh into this the 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:39.159 soil um people have had in in the atmosphere. The 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.720 people in the immediate area have health problems as a 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.879 result of the the metals leaching into their soil and 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:49.160 having to breathe the smoke. It can affect areas even 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.800 further out from the immediate area. It's it's one of 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:56.440 those in a way, it really shows that environmental concerns 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:00.080 and ecology go beyond just the point. Like there's a 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:03.840 there's like a ring effect, right you you move one 0:21:04.000 --> 0:21:06.240 ring further out from the center, and you can still 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:08.439 see where the effects are. And they might not be 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.800 a severe and they may not be the same effects 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:13.800 as you would see right at the point of contact, 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:17.280 but it's still negative. Well in this case, very it's 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:19.080 exactly what you're talking about. You know a lot of 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:22.040 these UH countries. What they do is that they will 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:25.800 use fire to melt stuff down, like like let's say 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.680 copper wire that's insulated. So you've got a rubber insulation 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.360 around copper wire. Well, they want to get to the copper. 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:34.960 They want to get the rubber off of there. And 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.120 what's an efficient way of doing that. Well, you could 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:39.199 burn the rubber off, but that can release a lot 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:41.480 of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and get it into 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.879 the ground as well. Uh. And then you also have 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:48.760 essentially a burnt copper, which is not as valuable as 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:51.959 copper that has not been put through this process. So 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:56.359 what Watts did was he built a machine that was 0:21:56.400 --> 0:22:00.359 again a bicycle powered machine where he called the E 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:04.840 source and it has a grinder in it and it 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:09.320 has also a metal separator. Uh. It's it's it's like 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.080 a centrifuge in a way. And what you do is 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.119 you put the copper wire into the grinder and you 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.719 petal the petals. Some grinders actually grind that up so 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.840 that the rubber and the and the copper come apart. 0:22:22.920 --> 0:22:27.560 It shreds the copper wire, so you get smaller segments 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:30.440 of copper wire, and the rubbers is pulled right off 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:34.800 of the copper. The spinning plate actually spends so that 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:37.959 it separates out the copper from the rubbers. So then 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:41.760 you've got these rubber pellets on one side and you've 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:44.520 got the copper on the other side, and it means 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:48.119