Primary User Story

"SUNBOX" 

Prototype for a modular solar powered generator, SMS CB antenna, datacenter and portable water treatment facility

This project is for a modular data center that runs off of solar power and powers a single cell broadcast antenna. 

• Nicholas Hall is a 30 year old venture capitalist and software engineer from Los Angeles, CA

• Nicholas Hall has been performing R&D on integrated data centers and power generation for several years alongside health research initiatives.

• This kickstarter project is for a single prototype that will integrate telemetry for this datacenter into a well-known telemetry standard used by the US military.

• GIT shall be used for all of its source control.

• The project should include broad representation from academia and industry and be organized into teams with clear responsibilities.

• We are looking for approximately 2 industry leaders willing to commit and 2 academic leaders willing to commit, and about 10-15 students, to be clarified with feedback.

• Each member should commit to contributing a certain amount of time. There will be a monthly stakeholder meeting at an academic institution and the project is expected to take approximately two semesters.

What We Need & What You Get

What we need:

• Two custom ISO containers, each about $2000.

• About $5,000 in gas hosing and liquid cooling equipment, including liquid coolant for cooling the datacenter ISO

• About $2,000 in rackmounted server equipment.

• About $3,000 for an antennae.

• About $10,000 in OEM solar generator equipment.

• About $6,000 to rent space to work on it. Alternatively, this may be donated.

• About $10,000 in water treatment and storage equipment for use in demonstrating acceptable pressure from the ISO containers water purifier.

What you get:

• Exclusive access to investment materials upon success.

• Day-by-day updates and documentation of our work, including pictures of the team and their participation.

• Free access to our mailing list, including periodic promotions such as free t-shirts and other swag.

• Your name as a contributor in our prototype development materials.

• Peace of mind working in a purely green solar electric project.

• Your picture on our blog.

• Your name as corporate sponsor, contributor or fellow.

Nicholas Hall will provide:

• Free secure hosting of all source code and design documents through a public GIT server at his own expense.

• Time administrating and coordinating.

• C++ unit tests

• Integrated circuit design acceptance criteria 

• Water pressure and quality design acceptance criteria

• A custom C++ build system,that uses only GNU make  and is suitable for targeting a number of embedded problems.

• IT expertise with the Linux operating system for embedded devices.

• Embedded expertise in low power ARM chipset and embedded device behavior with respect to the Linux operating system. Industry and academic participants may be free to choose another standard.

Industry shall provide:

• Criteria for a design document that adheres to biomedical device industry standards of traceability .

• Criteria for a design document that adheres to standards of Southern California Edison and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power energy production.

• Criteria for drinking water that adheres to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power tap water standards.

The students shall provide the following documents:

• 1 guide to constructing a datacenter contained in ISO container that runs on solar power and can output standard industrial voltages.

• 1 guide to constructing a water treatment apparatus contained in an ISO container that runs on standard industrial voltages.

• 1 guide to the software installation on both facilities.

The students shall provide the following source code deliverables:

• 1 deliverable consisting of water purifier embedded device source code, binary, GIT commit ID, accompanied by a document outlining the update procedure.

• 1 deliverable consisting of solar electrical generator device source code, binary, GIT Commit ID, accompanied by a document outlining the update procedure.

• 1 deliverable consisting of a rackmounted server physical dimensions and hardware specification, a document outlining its OS deployment procedure and setup. Alternatively, this document may be created by Nicholas Hall if no students are interested. 

• 1 deliverable consisting of a manual detailing how to maintain both ISO container devices and expected behavioral operation under basic malfunction and low sunlight conditions

All documents must be stored in GIT and all source-code must be stored in GIT. All sponsors and fellows will have read access to the source code repository. Source code ownership shall be determined by the stakeholders but is expected to be open source.

Nicholas Hall is expected to take full responsibility for the project and ensuring sufficient participation occurs to get it executed.

The Impact

You could change the world by giving it solar powered water filtration.

• This project intends to expand itself to ensure that its design is modular, so that other power generation sources can be quickly integrated such as wind, geothermal, nuclear, or even carbon. The design does not constrain this.

• Nicholas Hall is an activist for polio eradication and a volunteer public researcher for food safety disease control. He has anticipated such problems as the anthrax CDC incident and participated in activist journalism with regards to California's water shortage since 2011.

• This project intends to reach out to a nearby university or community college and industries and staff itself using a mixture of industry professionals and college students who show particular aptitude for bringing the project to its completion.

Risks & Challenges

• A low-power server rack that can still provide SMS text message service to be considered a viable alternative to a fossil fuel energy site is necessary. Voice capacity is not a requirement for this round, just SMS capability.

• It may be sufficient to simply demonstrate that the technology for this antenna can scale with more ISO containers, even if a single ISO container does not meet the same standard as municipal production. For this reason, design acceptance criteria should take into consideration that the containers may be used in tandem.

• Nicholas Hall is a hipster who listens to dubstep and is barely 30. He also has a B.S. in Information & Computer Science and has worked in industry as an engineer for approximately six years. He feels that presenting himself authentically is very important and encourages everybody else to do so as well. 

• This project should be approached with the academic, economic and humanitarian goals of everybody involved in mind.

• The first challenge will be creating a set of test criteria to ensure each milestone of the project is successful and that a testable design can be created.

• The goal of this project shall be to power a single SMS-CB tower. Cell broadcast towers fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC and are subject to regulation. 

• The team shall comply with all transparency and traceability regulations of a biomedical device such as a medical ventilator. Members representing industry will draft the documents and representatives from our academic institutions will be expected to implement them.

• Quality assurance shall be performed by industry leaders. We shall choose a local fossil fuel provider to set criteria based upon its power generation standards for fossil fuel. This is a difficult standard to achieve with solar and green generation but is within the scope of current technology. We will do the same for drinking water quality.

Other Ways You Can Help

Some people just can't contribute, but that doesn't mean they can't help:

• Please tell your friends about this project, and forward this to your community college or state college teacher.
• You can contribute space, code, servers and time to the project as an associate. 

Nicholas Hall is highly active on twitter at http://twitter.com/hallnicks

His life story can be found on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/pub/nicholas-hall/84/6b0/b53

He was born in Santa Cruz, CA near Monterey Bay.

That's all she wrote. Please keep watch here and have a good one.