I started a store!

I've started a store to sell Raspberry Pi stuff! The list is being populated, but it's up and ready for sale now! Check it out at www.RaspberryPiranha.com!

Sun Tracking Steam Turbine!

What the fuck is this, and why should you give a shit?

 This is a power-generating steam turbine that anyone can make with standard commodity parts, which I am developing to sell but also open sourcing so that other people can also copy and sell it.  Mine will be a particularly nice version for sale with a target price of $500 and an output of 500 kw, meaning it can make a substantial dent in the average house bill for all the time it can run. 

The applications can vary- I am somewhat envisioning these being installed at the peaks of roofs on homes and so on, since they are relatively small and unobtrusive and could generate substantial power without changing the look of a house substantially (unlike standard solar panels), but it could also be used to expand the power generating capacity of some other kind of solar array, and there are two additional important footnotes about function:

First, part of the intent is to allow these units to be chained together, producing far greater amounts of steam, with which they can run conventional coal-fire power plant steam turbines, with minimal investment, and only moderate changes to the plumbing and architecture of those buildings.

Second, the use of steam with these units is not confined to power generation.  For various applications, I could forsee steam being used to accelerate decomposition and breakdown of organic wastes (such as in biogas digesters, or other things such as biodeisel), being used to desalinate seawater for drinking without the conventional overhead of fuel costs, and there are almost certainly other obvious and easy applications to use this on that I have not yet thought of.

So, this project is based around a few fundamental assumptions and an approach based on them.

1. While superior in terms of the lack of moving parts, solar power from the photo-electric has a barrier of production; the average person can't produce silicon crystals in their garage, or from basic machined parts up in the mountains somewhere remotely.
   
2. While inferior in terms of longevity, moving parts can be reasonably well made by the average person if they have the right tools to do this with and the knowledge of how to set about this practically, and so a solar power solution that relies on some mechanical conversion of energy, while imperfect, is exponentially more implementable by normal people without heavy expensive and dangerous specialized equipment.

Lots to update!

So, why the radio silence? What's been going on?

• an infuriating amount of nothing to report, followed by
• getting hired at a startup to install cameras before being assigned to build a pot-growing robot army, and then when I'd moved and gotten kids set up so I could really start kicking ass, they showed me the door, and I left with my own working robot that I'd developed for them in my bag that day.
• an escape from the lowest depths of poverty into the next step up (a struggle which continues, but thanks to services like Uber and Postmates, I'm actually free of bosses and self-funding!)
• the acquisition of a trailer upon which to build a Tiny house- build series coming soon!
• the founding of a site to sell Raspberry Pi electronics with the aim of training and equipping mad scientists everywhere (www.RaspberryPiranha.com)
• Further developments on the state of the sun-tracking steam turbine project, the farmbot project, and the Torrent project, which will be expanded upon here in more detail
• The Dadiot Podcast and Youtube Channels! I will be recording episodes where guests and I do mad science, exploring deep problems to the deepest practically applicable depths we can in a day, ideally while high on marijuana. Slated projects include food foraging, wireless network wardriving, glass blowing, movie stunts and stunt fighting, computer vision, a build series on the steam turbine, farmbot, and other raspberry pi devices for sale on the raspberry piranha store.
• This blog will be transferred over to a new site some point in the (hopefully near) future, and the contents of this blog will contain the notes, references, and externally hosted image accounts will be linked to and on display for visual aid or entertainment.
  
• Oh yeah, I want to go back and edit some of my shitty writing too.

Hope y'all motherfuckers have been happily proceeding about your respective kickings of asses in my absence.