An integrated LED flashlight? What’s the big deal?

Well, if you happen to live in a country with frequent power failures and favour all-in-one devices, an integrated flashlight comes in handy for those moments when it’s too windy or otherwise inappropriate to use a lighter as a source of light. Dedicated LED-based flashlights are nice and proven - I have mine on the keychain - got it free from Globetrotter.de some years ago.

Sure, you could even use the brigtly illuminated screen on your phone to satisfy any quick needs for a source of light, but it just isn’t the same comfort and also isn’t right on one single spot. There btw is a fancy app for the iPhone which provides a blank white screen to substitute a flash (says @mzeecedric). Quite a ROFL-factor but more like a gimmick. Other recent Nokias with S60 and LED-flash for photography can be modified on the hardware side, e.g. cutting a wire on the printed circuit flex cable. Those “flash lights” weren’t made for constant illumination needs, hence it’s highly recommended not to do that.

I’d been thinking about a DIY alternative for a phone that could be realized by any average phone fundi out there and consequently didn’t want to come up with any SMD-type solution that would probably do a much better job, but instead come up with a simple hack that - most importantly - may be reversed to preserve any warranty on the phone.

The actual need for this project arose late last night after Samuel’s tweet on how he misses the flashlight. Besides, I had urgent work to finish so I needed an external incentive to push me through the evening until I could eventually put my hands on this “hack”.

The players:

an older Nokia 6230 I rescued from eBay some time ago (my 6230i walked away in a Were-sense…). Here you can already see the thin back cover which can be replaced anytime and is thus perfectly made for hacks.

an old LED with batteries from a dead lighter

So let’s start with….

1. the cheap solution :-)

A quick ‘n’ dirty solution that will just do the job.

Not very sustainable though. Which gets us to…

2. the slightly better option

Many Nokia phones come with an exchangable cover, so it’s obvious to make use of the plastic cover which can be exchanged any time. And since there isn’t much space for a bigger battery, we’ll also use the phone’s own battery. After all, it’s based on LithiumIon technology which means relatively high energy density.

The LED is in blue colour, but basically any stronger LED will do the job. Your fundi may be able to resuce one from the usual e-waste found in popular places. I am also not using any resistor or any other passive & active parts to keep it really simple. All we need to do is to sacrifice the back cover for this hack (coz the LED has to go somewhere) and get a direct connection to the battery.

So I’d asked myself:

1. Where do I put the LED?
2. Will I need a switch to activate it?
3. How will I manage to connect it to the battery, given the narrow space in between the cover and the battery?

To worsen the situation even more, I currently do not have access to my usual tools, but then again, that’s the challenge after all - trying to find a decent solution under limited conditions. All I currently have are scissors, my Leatherman Wave, a (really!) cheap voltmeter and a monsterous 30W soldering iron. My Gadgetimoja-toolbox is somewhere else on this planet…

Trying to find a short piece of relatively thin wire turned out to be the hardest part - I have lots of that stuff at home - but where is it when you need it??

So I did what everyone does in such situations: improvise - and take it from somewhere else. In other words: look for another electronical device and see if you can “borrow” some 10cm of wire from that.

Pole sana, dear electrical thermometer. It’s friggin cold outside anyways so at least I’ve provided you with a few indoor minutes. And thx for the cable!

Improvising also means that you do things by trial & error and try to avoid any hardware modifications by simulating the scenario in your head. Will this work? Where will I put the LED? Can it still fit? And what about that damn switch??

It works!

I’d made good experience with “drilling” decent holes into plastic (mis)using a cheap soldering iron in the past, so I just continued “drilling” a hole (don’t try this at home, kids) using this method. Just make sure you actually clean the iron afterwards and while it’s still hot.

As you can see from the pictures above, the cables are just loosely joined with the wonderful battery dock on the phone so that you can remove them any time. The LED is rather big but “somehow” fits onto the edge of the back cover. Also, the cable is still too thick and the back cover will not close the way it is supposed to (also because my phone….ahem…let’s say: had already survived a few other “operations” in the past + remember I’d previously aquired it in an awful condition from eBay).

A “switch” is also missing but this was just version 0.1 to show it’s doable to pimp an ordinary phone into a flashlight phone. It’s a jua kali hack for prototyping, I’d say.

Do you have any ideas for a switch? How would you design it? Maybe integrate it on the side? And is it locally available (= keep it cheap and simple)?

The activated LED with the back cover just put on top.

I will try to organise two more back covers so that I can play around and see what else is possible. Ideally, I’d like to see someone else from Nairobi pick this up (if not already done - sijui if this already exists in Nbo these days?) and modify it into a commercial add-on for wanainchii. After all, phones with flashlights just rock and should imho be on any phone out there. This solution here won’t jeopardize the gadget itself - and such a plastic back cover is cheap, especially this one (with a Vodafone branding, yuck!).

Nutec is all about nutrients that will remain in a biological or technical loop, or as the tagline on their website reads: “Everlasting Cycles: How Waste becomes Food”.

Nutec was partly organized by EPEA which is run by Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart - who is the B in MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry) - an international consulting company that tries to a) sell the philosophy of the so-called Cradle to Cradle (C2C) concept and b) tries to achieve this by convincing companies to obtain a C2C certification.

closing the loop on technical and biologial nutrients

Since Michael was my professor at university and since I a firm believer in this philosophy of closing the loops (which is one of the reasons I started becoming active in the field of ecological sanitation), it was particularly interesting to see how this event was set up, where the aims are, what kind of visitors it would attract and what any possible outcomes are.

Those of you who frequently visit other green blogs like Treehugger.com, know that C2C is a “sexy” and already very popular approach at dealing with the protection of our environment. And those who have read McDonoughs & Braungart’s famous Cradle to Cradle book often agree that their idea of another industrial revolution actually is the way to go. Maybe not at once, but in small steps and by starting today. I’ve even convinced some older folks in the business who have a very green background, especially since this whole green movement has been active here in Europe way back in the 1980s when our US-American friends only had green flower people - so opinions on “what needs to be done” had already been settled, with the usual discussions. Unfortunately, green activists had in the past often only experienced a negative image, partly due to their bad rhetorics. You simply can not tell anyone he’s doing someting bad if your only solution is to advice him on doing less (bad things).

McDonough & Braungart both achieved to market their idea of another industrial revolution, where they are asking companies to redesign their products into greener products. Products whose materials remain as nutrients and may then be reused for another purpose. I won’t go into more details here because I’ve blogged about this subject more than once during the last three years and there are various other resources online that give a much better insight into the subject.

Trigema - Germany’s famous manufacturer of clothes who produces compostable shirts right here in Germany. The CEO of Trigema was present at their booth and really impressed me. Talking about Corporate Social Resposibility - big up for Trigema!

Back to the Nutec exhibition: this year’s event was a trial set up by EPEA to see / test how the public and international scene reacts. Messe Frankfurt, the world’s largest trade fair organiser, actually accepted a loss of 1,2 Million Euros to host this event - provided that EPEA/ElcaMedia continues to invite to another Nutec conference & fair, maybe next year in Hong Kong.

And this is what it was all about: an international event, hosted to pool interested visitors and their contributions, with about 60 exhibitors (this time only) that showcasted some of their ideas and approaches. And mind you, the idea behind all this is not to display eco products, but instead show the world that a better world is possible with economic incentives. After all, no company in this world will change its products only because of some environmental concerns. Instead, there’s money to be made out of this - analyzing your material flow streams and processes will help you (as a company) to save on lots of hidden costs you may not have been aware of. So instead of telling companies to stop polluting the environment, these guys invented the C2C certification which provides a detailed analysis of production processes and shows them a way forward.

Backhausen - an Austrian company producing returnable fabrics. These guys were certified with a GOLD C2C certificate for their products.

The C2C certification has in the last few month also received some criticism online, especially as portrayed in this story on FastCompany last month. Despite of some personal resentments some CEOs may have with MBDC, the C2C certification is a smart way to cash-in on environmental protection, as it helps everyone involved.

For some reasons, which may also include this 49-minutes long documentary on MBDC, the C2C philosophy has become very popular in The Netherlands lately. It probably also is one of the reasons why Nutec this time attracted many Dutch exhibitors - green start-ups that are often looking for investors and who have some very smart ideas.
Braungart is a German though, and when I look back at university, I think I am save to assume that only a handful of students really understood his concepts and the importance of his message. It’s like the prophet who’s an outsider at home. I blame this on the German culture, and often wish my fellow countrymen here would be much more open to new ideas and willing to take more risks. So it’s very nice to see the Dutch side being so open to his ideas. We urgently need much more of this enthusiasm in Europe.

Other interesting exhibitors included:

Nike - with a small booth displaying their shoe recycling concepts.

These guys from Austria run a networking agency and set up a pilot project in the city of Graz where they managed to obtain funds from the European Union that helps them turn the city centre into a greener place. Simple, but smart and making sure to use what’s available (the EU has these grants + there’s a whole industry busy trying to apply for these).

XeroFlor - these are the guys that provided the green (grass) roof to the Ford Rouge Center in Dearborn, Michigan, USA - the world’s largest green roof, covering 46,500 m² and thereby protecting the roof from heat and cold, improving the interior climate, saving on heating energy and offering habitat for smaller animals and plants.

I recently visited a friend who lives in a green roof building. If I ever manage to build a house one day, I’ll try to get my hands on such a roof. It’s just awesome! Didn’t ask for a price though.

Ron from Redwood Renewables in California who’s offering solar panels integrated into roof tiles. “Redwood has developed the first disruptive environmentally friendly, chemical free, patent protected technology that can inexpensively recycle waste elastomers (tires) into devulcanized rubber high quality integrated solar roofing tiles and molded consumer end products“.

Told him about solar systems being in use in rural Kenya and how popular the system already is over there. For a typical household of 4-5 pax, you’ll need about 417 solar panel tiles on your roof.

Ron is currently looking for investors.

(Funny thing is that I had read about his project before when someone had sent me a link to his one-paged website some time ago and upon seeing his logo (!), I instantly remembered the link from the other day. It’s a small world :-)

The famous Herman Miller collection must not be missed on this event. Comfortable and well-designed furnitures (and lamps, visible in the background) that make the difference. The materials used on each chair have been reduced to a limited selection and inspected for their toxicity. That’s the kind of chair you’d want to have for your office. Or?

Some other crazy Austrians who invented this new show concept consisting of three different parts. The company name Wexla apparently is a joke on the word “Wechsler”, which would prolly translate to something like “exchangeable”. And exchangeable is what their shoe soles are.
These are prototypes, so don’t be fooled by the somehow strange design.

The idea behind this obviously is to provide exchangeable shoes to customers. I’ve even seen another Dutch company offering a very very nice laptop bag which can be rented for a period of three months and then returned. Could you imagine renting consumer goods instead of buying them? Well - that’s exactly the scenario we’re talking about here. Imagine your desk at work being occupied by someone else so you’ll have to work on another desk. How would you feel about that? Are human beings ready to accept such new habbits?

I tend to compare that with the YouTube Generation that stopped buying complete (music) albums and instead downloads single tracks online. Because it suits their needs.

EcoWorx - another US-American product line the “Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded the Presidential Green Chemistry Award for its environmental and performance benefits”.

We walk on carpets almost every day and inhale the abrasion. Think about it!

A talented industrial designer at VelopA-Citystyle developed this new bench system created of two different materials, which is currently waiting for an official Cradle to Cradle certification. Appart from the green cover in this 1:2 scaled model above, “the bench is made from one piece of steel, without nuts and bolts, and is less vulnerable to vandalism and damage”.

That’s one those moments where I think: damn, I should have studied industrial design! :-)

And this idea, ladies and gentleman, is one of the craziest concepts I’ve heard of lately. But a very good one, indeed.
What you see here as a scaled egg model, is supposed to become a comfy building for expecting mothers who want to give birth to their children in a much better, eco-effective environment. It’s a new type of childbirth centre, so urgently needed in Europe because birth rates are alarmingly low these days and in some European countries, giving birth is only possible in hospitals (and not at home, where you’d probably feel more comfortable). Once investments for this project are secured, they will try to build the first project in Spain.
Obviously, I couldn’t resist telling them about urine diversion toilets that would add a greener side to their sanitational facilities. :-)

————–

These are just some of the exhibitors, and there were only 60 around this time. Maybe there will be 200 next time - featuring innovatives products from toxic-free cleaning detergents, healthy toys to edible fabrics and cleaner toner cartridges. Who knows? Everything is possible if you start analysing the products that surround us and realize how much we’re currently poisoning ourselves.

Interestingly, we saw a lot of (industrial) designers on this event - as opposed to traditional engineers which is what you’d prolly expect from an engineering perspective. But then - these designers are the ones to create the demand side, the ones who will have to ask for better materials.

It will be particularly interesting to see where we are in let’s say five years from now - what kind of products will have changed and found their ways into our daily lifes. What seems obvious to me is that C2C is a great marketing tool to promote innovative products for a better world. Oh, and there’s lot’s of money involved.

When will we see the first African C2C certified product?

[n.b.: Talking about environmental matters - what do you do with all these brochures you normally pick up at fairs? Read them at home and then throw them away? Many of the above mentioned projects have interesting brochures but still lousy internet websites. How come? I actually prefer a good website to obtain the relevant information instead of a papered brochure....]

Chinavasion has this new “High Capacity Solar Charger Battery for PC Laptop + Mobile Phone” for sale which looks quite promising in terms of it’s 20.000 mA/h accu - enough to feed your laptop’s battery.

Recharging the internal battery of cells (yeah! :-) is said to take around 3h @ AC and 8-10h through the use of the solar panel. What irritates me a bit is that on their website they are talking about a monocrystalline solar panel type, although it obviously is a polycrystalline type? Anyhow, an interesting alternative for ~ 96,- EUR. Let’s see when this will hit the European market (soon?).

I am still dreaming about a foldable solar panel that I can put on the cover of my 15,4″ HP nx8220 laptop and that will recharge a 2nd battery pack in an unused space, e.g. the media bay that currently hosts the DVD burner. Unless someone comes up with a much better (slimmer) rechargeable battery system, I am currently more interested in devices that generate power instead of just storing it (mechanical, solar, …. devices vs. NiMH/LiOn/…battery storage systems).

A sustainable power supply + decent bandwidth = JKE happy :-)

The goal of the competition is to promote upcycling by encouraging the use of wasted materials to generate innovative designs and redefine the standards of environmental sustainability by fostering balance between conservation and development.

Despite this rather unfortunate phrasing ;-), there’s a very smart upcoming competition promoting the upcycling ideology (waste = food). Nice!

[h/t Erik!]

It is so amazing!

Now where are these guys like Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi or William Kamkwamba to take over? Oh, and check out this Phun version on YouTube.

Next: a wind-powered commuter train supplying Nairobi’s CDB with Githurai?
No, seriously, someone needs to turn these mechanisms into an Afrigadget asap!

Although - or maybe because - I diligently clean my HP nx8220 laptop on a regular basis (sometimes even with Isopropyl acohol), the rubber on my laptop’s touchpad today went into early retirement.

Nothing to worry about, but then… you know there are some things in life that have a 1a priority - and my machine here apparently has that status.
A quick search on eBay revealed no luck in finding the right spare part - and it’s a pity because I recently had another HP nx8220 here where I exchanged some parts with my current machine and somehow missed to change the touchpad as well. Stupid.

So what do you do if spare parts aren’t available and things keep on bugging you? Right - fix it in a jua kali way:

Now where would I be without my Leatherman Wave? Ahh….priceless.

Removed the touchpad from the laptop, opened it, cleaned it, swapped buttons (!), removed the rubber “hole” and reassembled it. Quick fix, took me 15 minutes. Not as pretty as a used & cleaned touchpad from The Bay, but works fine and once I’ll get around a decent spare part, I can still exchange it.

Now, I really have to think about limiting my daily usage to avoid any further damage. Can’t be that I’ve already ruined a keyboard and now this touchpad within a timeframe of almost 2 years. HP Compaq built quality? HP = huge problems, high price. But still the best laptop I’ve ever used. Except for my landlord’s ThinkPad X41 of course. :-)

A keychain LED light, powered by a small rechargeable battery inside which is charged by a tiny solar panel (= fragments of solar cells that are leftovers from the production of bigger cells). With some adds printed on the device, or even an integrated RFID chip to enable mobile payment, such a little gadget would be really handy for those who need a torch in their pocket.

(= sometimes I just wish to have a Chinese factory that I could approach with a prototype and tell them: produce this. You know how many smart ideas exist out there but never come to life because of financial issues, copyrights and expensive marketing? A few thousand, I guess…)

I’ve been dying to blog about this since 2005 or so, and my initial plans included to describe a few of the already on-going ecosan related projects in Kenya and other parts of East Africa. But life had other plans with me, so instead of promoting ecosan in EAK on behalf of an international NGO, I am instead doing just another internship at one of the ecosan HQs here in Europe. It feels a bit strange being the intern at this age, but then: why not?!

I am sucker for high-tech gadgets, sophisticated technology and appreciate many things the web & phone world has brought as goodies in the past. It sure are exciting times we’re living in these years, and whoever thought the dot com bubble is gone, hasn’t really understood yet the meaning of IT in Africa.

High-tech on one hand - that kind of development we’ve been waiting for and always considered the “progress” which will advance us in so many ways. As for the booming mobile phone sector, this is just very true.

On the other hand, though, the majority of ppl in this world still lives below the poverty line, and it is estimated that 2.6 billion (!) people worldwide have no access to basic sanitation needs. I blogged about ecosan more than a year ago here and here, and this huge number makes ME think: “ok, before we saturate some (not necessarily only!) developing countries with high-tech gadgets such as the OLPC initiative (where ppl so often forget the desired reverse-engineering effect) or continue hyping lots of fancy web services, let’s get back to the basic stuff, the low-tech ideas that have worked in the past and will provide good and sustainable solutions for the future.”

One of those things is the ecosan approach. Ecological sanitation.

The concept behind ecological sanitation (ecosan) is that sanitation problems could be solved more sustainably and efficiently if the resources contained in excreta and wastewater were recovered and used rather than discharged into the water bodies and the surrounding environment.

The end-of-pipe sanitary systems that are used today are based on the modern misconception that human excreta are simply wastes with no useful purpose and must be disposed of.

Ecological sanitation is a new paradigm in sanitation that recognises human excreta and water from households not as waste but as resources that can be recovered, treated where necessary and safely used again.

Ideally, ecological sanitation systems enable a complete recovery of nutrients in household wastewater and their reuse in agriculture. In this way, they help preserve soil fertility and safeguard long-term food security, whilst minimising the consumption and pollution of water resources. (source)

Water, yeah, my favourite subject. A resource, often taken for granted and desperately sought for when about to finish.

Whenever I am telling others about my interest in water, they come with these rather boring phrases like “aaah, water, yes, the currency of the future”. And by saying such things, they so often forget the other part in this water business: wastewater management. Being active in water doesn’t necessarily mean you’re issuing licences to water abstractors from rivers and giving permits for water wells ONLY. What happens to the wastewater? Yes - do you know what happens to your waste water?

You know, while you’re reading this blog post, someone in China is currently relieving himself on one of those 1.02 million ecosan toilets already in use all over China.

The Chinese, dude! The very same nation that loves to cook and eat, this one particular nation that has a tremendous interest in the various commodities of the African continent and that will host the 2008 Olympic Games.
The Chinese aren’t that dumb. They may be copying our products from Europe like crazy, sacrificing the environment in their cities for technical “progress” and may have a strange understanding of how to treat it’s people in a People’s Republic, but what they DID understand so far is that whenever we relieve ourselves on the toilet, lots of nutrients are going down the drain.

With a limited availability of fertilizers in future, retaining those that are contained in our faeces and urine makes sense. Meaning: with our “modern” flush toilets, this mixture of faeces and urine is diluted with water, and any further treatment of the wastewater requires an investment of energy and lots of high-technology to seperate the different material flows. Something that does not have to be.

Instead, the approach on ecological sanitation promotes the use of a) compost toilets, b) urine diversion toilets, c) dehydration toilets and/or toilets based on vacuum technology. And while different technologies are already implemented and piloted in various parts of our globe, all of these systems try to provide a more holistic, a much more sustainable approach on this key issue of sanitation.

And yes, sanitation IS an important issue. The UN already declared 2008 being the “International Year of Sanitation“, and while I personally don’t expect any output from an international bureaucratic body such as the UN, I do appreciate their understanding that something has to be done about this pressing issue.

So far so good.

I received a letter today from someone who takes care of a local hospital, school and orphanage in Matyazo, Tanzania, and who asked for advice on how to change their sanitation system into a more sustainable one.

At the moment, the 300 people on this (missionary?) station are defecating into traditional (ventilated) pit latrines, which obviously fill up quickly and are no proper solution for many people on one small plot.

Well, THESE are the challenges - and suddenly you are there in this position, where someone is asking your advice on what kind of sanitary system would be the best solution for this very remote station somewhere out there, 30kms south of the Burundi border. I don’t know what kind of solution would be the best, and more details would prolly help on identifying a better solution than those pit latrines currently in use.

However, it are exactly these examples from our daily life that so often remind me of the importance on how we are supposed to handle our waste. Also, due to the nature of the subject, ppl don’t give it the same priority it is supposed to have. Good sanitation is a must, but then when you’re in Kibera, that particular slum informal settlement in Nairobi (…), try to explain a father of 8 children to cough up 5/= bob for each child and every toilet session.

I sometimes think of Daudi’s comment earlier this year in which he mentioned the business potential for an extensive clean public toilet system in Kenya. Either paid or free of charge, this matter of sanitation isn’t something I would like to leave to some environmentally aware NGOs (who of course sometimes have the necessary funds) only, but instead make it an international priority with a business approach.

Eh voilà, there you go with your low-tech idea on one hand (that actually works!) and the NGO approach on the other hand. With a possible sale of fertilizers, I hope that this isn’t the only financial incentive to promote these low-tech, low-cost toilet systems. Reason for mentioning all this is that I see a potential conflict between the typical NGO approach and a sound business idea based on ecologically sustainable toilet systems. If, of course, we only charge for the use of good toilets, those who require them the most, won’t be using them, and if they are only promoted by non-commercial interest, I currently don’t see the required acceptance among the public.

(to be continued..)