Apollo-NG --- Mobile Hackerspace and Research, Development and Fab Lab

Campfire
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Ahoy there, I’m new here because I saw a video linked by almereyda and realized: Oh, so there are more people also doing Unmonestary/Matera where elf-pavlik wanted me to come to but I couldn’t because of $dayjob :frowning: After watching the video I just saw that our doubts, ideas, goals and definitions of another way to the future are basically matching pretty much:

  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/mission:statement

I am building & pushing this as a means to survive myself and to go around, deploy a Hackerspace/FabLab anywhere and promote our ideas and, at the same time, research, develop and test new technologies and generally do stuff either alone or hopefully with more people, which, in the end, enables people to help themselves. And share all of it obviously:

  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/mission:log:2014:11:04:howto-setup-use-and-secure-a-local-spark-cloud-server
  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/mission:log:2014:06:17:new-fresh-global-cloudmap-distribution-service-xplanet

Like those library buses back in the 90’s, to go to places where no public library is available. Go there, invite people, show them what they’ve forgotten they can actually do and inspire to go organize/create themselves, while providing experience and a good package of tools/knowledge to bootstrap from.

A number of projects have progressed into available demonstrators so far:

Unified Clear-Sky Solar Prediction Model

  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/lab:ucsspm

Universal PID Oven Controller

  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/mission:resources:picoreflow

RaspberryPI Geigercounter Interface (PiGI)

  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/lab:pigi

Others are in development and will take more time & people like:

DSpace

  • https://apollo.open-resource.org/lab:dspace

It seems to me, we’re striving for the same, by similar means and ideas, sometimes with slightly different taxonomy though, but who cares :slight_smile: I would like to add Apollo-NG to the projects site, because riding on the edge is basically what I do pretty hard and would love to have more ties to “virtual” communities like edgeryders so that more people’s brains get exposed to our way of thinking over different areas of interest or need (like sustainable power, resilient infrastructure and small scale fabrication etc.)

And it’s really great to see so many people out there going in this direction even though often cast out and sometimes treated like terrorists. Looks like humanity hasn’t learned much since the days when there were other nerds, reflecting on the state of things and experimenting and realizing, hey, the world is not flat and the sun doesn’t rotate around it. Our society just seems more advanced on the surface, because we don’t burn people like us on a public market place anymore :slight_smile:

But, we have Internet. So we all can connect, share our knowledge in a instant, all of it, everywhere, anytime. That gives us the edge people like us have been waiting for all along because the speed of open development will increase very exponentially over the next years to leave the old stuff behind.

Time to weigh anchor. Happy to see/meet you in person, somewhen, somewhere :slight_smile:

so long, chrono

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Whoa

Hey again,

Between your mobile hackspace and @Matthias’s '68 reconverted firetruck-in-the-making, why would we need a homebase or spots for harmonious hackathons? :slight_smile:

If you want to create your own project here on Edgeryders, go ahead and do it. There’s a caveat though: there are over 130 projects already and many of them inactive for obvious reasons. If you want a space to coordinate your work, that would be the way to go. If you want to actively look for collaborators I suggest you go where they might be already: on the top of my mind I’d recommend Kiderwind (open-source project which aims to harness the wind at high altitude in order to generate power), @Billy_Smith's OSHW, or Harmonious Hackathons which is becoming quite popular. Once you post inside any group, you automatically connect with its members (get notifications of replies & new content if you want to). Your choice of course, welcome again!

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Great to meet you here

So @Noemi was so fast again and made the introductions while I was writing the piece below (thanks!). I’m posting it anyway :slight_smile:

Hey chrono, nice to meet again here :slight_smile: We were briefly connecting before, I think over EarthOS and you were looking for a special-sized trailer for your mobile hackspace and I unfortunately could not help with that.

I also think that you’ll like it here in the Edgeryders community … I guess its special charm is being so cross-disciplinary, collecting people from the multiple edges of society :slight_smile: You might have got a feeling for that from the LOTE4 video already. That video is a great piece on its own, produced by @SamMuirhead here … like I said, it’s a diverse crowd here :slight_smile:

So, you’re very welcome to present your projects (just create a project node). I’d also love to get engaged in some of your open hardware projects more deeply since I am living in a truck now and have a very real use case for, say, the super efficient DC-DC converter that I remember you were working on. Sadly I have way too little time for hardware projects currently. Edgeryders and our network barter marketplace / moneyless crowdfunding project (Makerfox) keeps me busy these days. And apropos moneyless crowdfunding: if you have use for in-kind donations (products and services by peers) for one of your open hardware projects, let me know. We’re preparing the first set of moneyless crowdfunding campaigns these days.

One addition to Noemi’s list of projects to connect with: ESSENTIAL (started that some time ago, kind of a longer-term vision … you might like it).

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Whoa indeed

I am really impressed. Is Apollo live? Can we see a picture?

I tried to access the presentation of DSpace, but it is either massive or broken or I have a very selective connectivity problem… I cannot visualize it.

(I know it’s not relevant, but I cannot un-notice that you skipped a generation: Apollo is the grandson of Chronos)

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Thanks for the warm welcome and all the possible connections

Yeah, the video was pretty well made, very uplifting and also very true :slight_smile: Apollo-NG as a name is basically an homage to Apollo 13 (successful failure and same vehicle configuration/names). My name (chrono) is basically just the short form of chronoton and has no link to the gods at all. Only to time.  Pictures and Videos are in the Hackerspacecraft section of the wiki. The Aquarius (HAB/Trailer) is still not available since I was actually aiming to get it financed all by myself to keep my independence and not to become a burden to someone else. However, the roadmap/technology/infrastructure is already here, a complete set of fabrication utils including a decent 3D printer as well (already printed wind turbine parts with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er4YR2oRwUc). The HAB already has a live open-data dashboard (called VFCC - the Virtual Flight Control Center), basically everything including me is ready, except for the vehicle situation. As of know I’ve already invested more than 25k of my own money into it, just about everything that I didn’t have to spend for rent and survival on a 3.50Euro food budget per day. But it’s still not enough…

However, it seems I won’t have the time to wait much longer, since I’ve been basically evicted here and need to find another place. Or just get on the road for good, which I’d prefer anyways, since this has been my goal for the last 3 years. So I’d like to try to put out a crowdfunding campaign for the whole project and not just one of the subprojects (that can some once underway and time is more than available).

Up till here, all people and Sponsors were only asked for non-monetary support, i.e. products and services, again, because I didn’t want any contracts or other binding agreements that would force me to give up independence and freedom to do and say what I feel is right. I’m not willing to lie, fake or social-engineer to get something. I’m not a good networker, therefore I don’t have much of a crowd to share directly. The Apollo-NG website however pulls over 100 people per day, looking for specific content/solutions the Apollo-NG project can already offer, from all over the world, to share indirectly.The DSpace presentation is quite big (lots of images) and was just a quick hack for a talk (not optimized). Sorry :slight_smile:

So, if anyone here needs something or knowledge/experience the project as a whole or I as a person can offer, especially in terms of scalable (large and small) big/open-data, infrastructure, energy, extreme-low-power solutions, eletr(on)ics, film/foto, human-machine-interfacing, you’re always welcome to holler. I’d like to see more people/projects striving for more independence looking for sustainable/sensible/resilient alternatives that could use some of the stuff produced here, so that my time researching/learning/developing/documenting/sharing hasn’t been in vain. Spread ideas, hardcore inception into people’s brains, because it’s true, once an idea has been seeded it can’t be removed anymore. And with our current speed of communication they don’t take hundreds of years anymore to spread around and manifest themselves in one way or another.

I need the edge, because to me the saying, necessity is the mother of all invention is very true. Only in such a constrained and minimalistic environment I can really shine and realize anything I put my mind to, because I’ll have to :slight_smile: And hopefully be a beacon of hope on the road to find some people I can inspire to think differently and give motivation/freedom to allow change. If only just some. I guess if I ever stop dreaming death will have caught up with :slight_smile:

Again, thanks for the sweet welcome and the warm feeling of being connected to people who came to similar conclusions as I had to.

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coming to 31C3?

At least 8ppl participating in various Edgeryders lead operations plan to come:

https://edgeryders.eu/en/agora/task-4069

Also I already pointed @Marc to some of your work: GitHub - apollo-ng/UCSSPM: Unified Clear-Sky Solar Prediction Model

And you had chance to exchange some emails some months ago with @CommonFutures and @hexayurt

Last but not least: 'sup dude :smiley:

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sweet, dude :slight_smile: But 31c3 seems no option at all at this time, I don’t know how long my “grace period” here will be and I might find myself out on the street sooner than I’d like. Which would put me in a really bad position, where recovery would only be possible with tremendous losses. I reckon I’ll have to put in the rest of my vacation time in december and focus on getting out of here. No time for play and social stuff :confused: And like always, you remain MY shining beacon of hope :slight_smile:

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Hey Chrono!

Since you obviously are interested in collaboration, you might want to have a look at/hook up with Bilal here. It has been a while since I saw something come from his direction but who knows what a nudge can do?

Also, from their faces back then I would say that his sponsors are interested in the collab field. @Noemi not sure who is the best contact for funding sources, but they certainly seem sincere and compatible, so perhaps you can pass that along. I would be happy to lend a hand if someone gets active with regards to them.

Lastly, you got some pretty darn cool stuff on your list there. If you ever make into my neck(s) of the wood I sure would like to sit down with you for a tinker & talk - ideally with a subsequent transcript to ER.

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Ahoy, sorry for not coming back earlier but my time is being stolen from me by too many people who seem to have no regard for the value of lifetime :confused: Where’s your wood currently? ATM I’m in the vicinity of Munich/Germany but we can always use modern technology, so if we don’t get a chance to meet physically we can use our HTML5/WebRTC video-conferencing testbed (CAPCOM):

https://apollo.open-resource.org/flight-control/capcom/

I’ve been using it to get in touch with people I’ve never met before and must say it works well, we can talk, exchange ideas, discuss and co-inspire each other without having the feeling that something “more personal” is missing (IMHO).  Due to my eviction I’ll probably be more or less offline for the next couple of weeks to move all Apollo-NG stuff into the new launch facility and set up shop there to regain productive output and continue progress. After the release of the latest projects, it’s time to dig into another funding round :slight_smile:

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Suggestion: composites

I’ve been going through your site in a little more detail, and there seems to me one more low hanging fabrication fruit to pick: composite work.

It takes very little transport space, almost no (non-embedded) energy, scales nicely, is fairly beginner friendly, very hands on - and can often use more than 2 hands - ideal for a 2-3 days stopover. And of course it allows you to produce a lot of crazy stuff in a small series approach. As your home base seems to be in Munich, I’d recommend looking at BMW, or the whole aero/astro-sector hanging out there. If you want I can try to match you up with someone. I had the BMW dev team visiting me in my last job but after some back and fourth it petered out (they kept restructuring till the day I left). SGL Carbon might be interesting in this context as well. Down here in Mars there’s more of the same, but AFAIK there’s not much in terms of radical experimental hands-on establishments in that sector, yet…

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Yeah, I try to avoid links to current business/industrial establishments, since their focus is inherently driven by continuous growth/profit and clinging to old structures. They may be innovative in some ways but in the end it’s nothing that enables open P2P transfer of knowledge and resources, therefore I don’t like to waste time with them but I hope that I can find a vehicle manufacturer that is a bit more open minded and less restricted by big companies politics, hierarchy and structures. Composite materials are definitely something to look into, some projects are actually already using stuff used in composite materials but not exactly in the way it was designed, more like little hacks where the availability of new materials spawned a whole new range of things we can do with them, apart from being used as intended :slight_smile:

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Avoiding links to money…

Hey, I think I can understand roughly where you are coming from. I think people like you are very valuable to a society - so please don’t feel pressured by this comment. That said, if you go to poc21 and scroll all the way down to “partners” you will read BMW/Quandt foundation. I have a truckload of reasons to dislike the organization, but I could still imagine many instances where I might take their money (on my terms), and they might also be interested in such a deal. Also, I do not think that all companies are fully addicted to growth(ism). BMW for example has a strong position in small series manufacturing (partly due to composite tech). I think they are more addicted to remain/become the top-dog (no matter what happens otherwise). Also I don’t think you want to look for vehicle manufacturers (or consumer product manufacturers in general), but a little higher up in the supply chain - since then you’ll be potential customer, not competitor.

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Also RiverSimple

A newcomer on the automotive market that seems to be into composites and unconventional technologies: Riversimple Urban Car - Wikipedia

I remember @Patrick_Andrews telling me he used to be involved with this company – maybe he still is.

But honestly I do not completely understand your conversation, @chrono and @trythis. Do ignore me if the suggestion is stupid, it is made in good faith.

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Thanks Alberto

Discussion was more about connecting to companies that are trying to be innovative and use new materials but are at the same time approachable and open to post-industrial ways of doing things. Testing and using new materials, like 3D printing or some of the hacks to increase efficiency (see Apollo-NG - picoPrint 3D Printer or SEEDStack - Open 3D printable seed/sprout system by chron0 - Thingiverse) are a part of Apollo-NG’s mission.

But that also means securing the final funding or, even better, instead of finding a company that will act as a monetary sponsor, find a company that actually produces trailers and would be willing to sponsor a trailer we can use to finally get Apollo-NG onto the road to increase dissemination and exposure of new ways/technologies and inspire people vis-a-vis and work together in a group, on-location, instead of just researching and publishing stuff online, which is great but only half of what I really want to accomplish with the remainder of the lifetime I have.

So the last challenges are to get a trailer and find someone who is willing to take care of insurance/taxes since no government and no insurance company is able to work with someone without a fixed address, so I need someone or some group/company to take care of this because in our current system, living/working on the road is inherently incompatible with being able to be mobile, except when you’re filthy rich by exploiting others and can finance a steady place (where you’re never at) and can pay someone to deal with snailmail and all the other old fashioned ways of managing the cattle (us).

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Have you considered Edgeryders LBG?

@chrono: Edgeryders-the-community has spawned a tiny social enterprise called Edgeryders LBG. I am one of the founders. One of the things we aim to do is to provide a corporation-looking interface to people in the community who are just starting with their projects (design principles and more info). We, too, recognized that “no government and no insurance company is able to work with someone without a fixed address” and thought we could create a shared interface for everyone to use. We do have an address, a VAT number, an accountant and all the rest of it.

Whether we in practice can stand in for Apollo-NG depends on a number of things, but we are definitely willing to discuss it. I know it does not solve all your problems, even if it works, but it could be a start.

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Hey @chrono !!!

nice to see you here :slight_smile:

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hehe

ditto :slight_smile: