Tech innovators don’t see the rural poor as a viable market. They don’t put money into inventing better and cheaper ways for very poor people to light their homes, cook or run appliances off the grid. “But because of the things you desire, these things have become reality,” Gaurav said. “LED technology, very efficient batteries and a falling solar panel price have suddenly allowed lights to be delivered to off-grid households at a fraction of the cost. “
The need is overwhelming. More than a quarter of the world has no electricity; about half have no piped water, 2.5 billion have no piped gas. The poor turn to substitutes that are dangerous and expensive. For light, most of the poor burn kerosene — and they are paying 600 times more for each unit of light than people who use incandescent lamps. Kerosene costs the poor 10 percent of their income or more — and it is a major contributor to indoor air pollution that kills 2 million people a year. On top of all that, it doesn’t produce very much light.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!
Maker Business — Robotics manufacturer Anki shuts down
Wearables — Brace for fabric
Electronics — DRC Confusion
Biohacking — Senolytic Therapies
Python for Microcontrollers — CircuitPython 4 released, upcoming hardware, and more! #Python #Adafruit #CircuitPython #PythonHardware @circuitpython @micropython @ThePSF @Adafruit
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.