My food project: My food project is simple, give people a source of fresh, real, food that can be harvested year round for free, regardless of outside factors. I see this showing up as a self contained, solar powered food container that holds fish that poop, plants that use that poop as a nutrient source, and other plants that are used as food for the fish. The only energy input is from the sun, which is free. And I want to program this whole machine so that you just have to press a button and out pops a plate of kale. Essentially, I want to improve global food security through aquaponics.
Update 4/5/16:
More specifically I plan to build a low cost automation system consisting of:
Raspberry Pi running automation software
Arduino connected to:
An array of sensors
Open source Raman Spectrometer like such.
Small robotics machines for tasks, like adding pH buffer to balance things out in:
A tilapia fish tank
Biofiltration system that converts ammonia to nitrates and nitrites
water pump
vegetable growing platforms
fish food growing pond
It will look pretty similar to this in regards to scale and sexiness: https://grovelabs.io/ Props to you guys for doing some solid work!
Long term aquaponics questions:
Can I completely separate the fish tank system from the food growing system such that I can create a compound consisting of the nutrients from the fish water and be able to store that separately.
Can I use the above solution as part of an aeroponics system like this (my inspiration) (<youtube video, goes to the same place as the video below).
My housing project: This involves people having a place to live where they don't have to live in fear that their housing can get taken from them if they don't pay their property taxes. My vision is a group of us visionaries pick a place on the map that isn't SF or NYC, that is stupid cheap, relatively unpopular, and settle down there. Then we make that place awesome to live in. If there are property taxes, we achieve tax exemption status by forming a non-profit organization which gains tax exemption status. An easy and very useful one would be to provide a space where people can come and learn via kahn academy and work together to learn different sweet skills. Now people can buy their houses, so that banks can't take their houses away for missing a mortgage payment and the gov't can't take them away for missing a tax payment, because us revolutionaries won't have an obligation to either payment.
Update 4/5/16:
I've been quietly doing research on repurposing an abandoned property somewhere here in the greater Los Angeles area doing a pilot project to test out my vision and see if it can work on a small scale. I've located several potential properties and am now starting my homework of seeing what the status of these properties is. Questions I'm asking are, is this property truly abandoned or is the owner just sick or off on an adventure? Are there any liens on this property? Is this property structurally sound?
The other option is to find an abandoned or cheaply priced plot of land and build a shipping container based living and food growing structure on it. Something similar to these, except with a clear roof so vegetables grown inside would have access to direct sunlight is my current thought process.
