I have a pocket-sized solar panel I bought intending to charge my phone on the go. When it arrived and I tried it out I remembered that I live in bloody Auckland, New Zealand, where we’ve never actually seen the sun, so that was a bust.

I’ve got a few bicycles and a tree in my backyard that produces edible nuts.

A wrench, hammer, screwdriver set, and pliers.

I’m not sure this counts, but the best upgrade I ever made for my home was having new windows installed 20 years ago. I couldn’t open the old ones.

During the summer, most days I can avoid air conditioning just by opening the windows and getting a cross breeze. I hear my neighbors’ airco turning on, while I am smug with the knowledge that I made a long-term frugal and green investment.

We have a large window in our living room the cats love but got way too hot. Planted grape vines to cut down on the light back there so we can keep the curtains open but still let the cats see birds.

On the actual “tech” side we’ve been going the opposite of new things to reduce usage. Wax paper wraps, older wooden everything where possible (cutting boards, furniture, wicker laundry baskets) most of which we got used from my wife’s family, those all will get recycled somehow when their time comes.

I’m hoping when our water heater finally goes we can get one of the new heat pump models. Reduce some AC needs and not need a humidifier in the basement (which I try to run as little as possible already).

I started messing about with Linux/Raspberry Pi, Arduino, LoRa/Meshtastic in the past couple of months due to being (further) breadpilled with podcasts about open source, greenhouse automation, autonomous text-based communication and such.

I’m not a tech person so I’m literally doing kid-level electronics tutorials on the Arduino (“Congratulations! You’ve made your first circuit!”) and still get a kick out of running sudo apt-get update/upgrade and seeing the lines of text scrolling by.

But I really like the concept of appropriate tech in conjunction with open source “stuff” and, since I’m in a position of being able to listen to ~6.5 hours of podcasts during my workday, I might as well learn something. I hope to get comfortable with electronics for DIY solar eventually, too

A rain barrel, fruit and but trees, guerrilla gardening knowledge

Edit: guess which word was autocorrected

An air-to-water heat-pump and a solar-thermal (vacuum tubes) hot water heater combination.

Solar powered battery banks which keep a few things up and running in my office (glass sliding doors, so I get plenty of light. Also use them to charge my phone and such.

My bike, which I used to ride to the bus to get into work until I went full remote. Has a small solar kit for my lights to stay charged on long rides. It’s been a bit due to some joint issues, getting back into it now, but used to do centuries every weekend. Didn’t need to it charge to full, whatever trickle worked just to extend it past the 4 or so hours it would do from full, then charge on the battery banks.

Gardening and associated sensors. Working on moving those over to lorawan, right now the updates are a bit spotty even at once every 4 hours updating due to distance.

I’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s running on lightweight chips, like esp8266’s and ESP32s, to do things like Bluetooth beaconing, lights (wled), etc.

It’ll be a bit, but we are going to need to move to something with a bit more space, so other plans (solar + battery for the whole home, indirect solar water heating, etc) will be on hold for a bit.

A stack of ewaste laptops I’m fixing up to give away, and this jailbroken Chromebook I reinstalled with Alpine Linux which has become my writing computer whenever I’m out and about.

Solar powered calculator.

Right now, not much but building quickly!

My troupe and I just bought camper trailers to live in on a farm and have been fixing them up. In mine, the stove and fridge both run on electricity and gas and we’re excited to set up a biogas digestion system, so I’ve been researching how to build that as well as convert the appliances to methane.

Excited to set up a biogas water heater for showering as well!

Currently, I am about to set up LoRa nodes and receivers. We already have two in my city and I’ll be adding two more stationary nodes and getting some folks set up on the system so that’s super fun!

Otherwise, we also have a communally owned household e-bike as well as a whole apothecary fit with multiple interesting tools for processing herbs and foraged food.

We of course also have our garden and have been planting lots of veg and herbs at the farm site we’re moving too!

We’ll be setting up solar panels eventually (a little out of our budget right now for our full energy needs), but biogas can tide us over a little while we adjust.

will be utilizing a composting toilet system as well as a hand-wash and hang dry laundry.

There’s also a greenhouse in shambles that we’ll repair and some goats, geese, & a pond on the farm :)

Doing permaculture style

Otherwise, we’re also low waste and getting lower by the moment so gradually replacing all home items with sturdy, no-plastic alternatives. Working on repairing lots of clothes sewing by hand, repairing our shoes, and working with saponin-rich plants for soap is an ongoing process

Shanks’ pony

Needle and thread.

• Renault EV hacked with OVMS and mostly running on locally produced electricity. Runs 80 km/h, seats two and always finds a parking spot.
• Kon-Tiki Oven to produce bio charcoal which we use a lot to make our soil somewhat less compact.
• Small Solar Power Roofs to keep the rain or the sun away when sitting on the bench (one can be seen behind the car).
• Total of about 50 kWp Solar, which we enjoy a lot - produces reasonable energy even during the Winter. Unfortunately, when the grid goes down, our own solar will go down also. People often underestimate the effort and investment needed to make a large solar system workable off-grid.

• New facade with about 25 cm of insulation made from wood fibre. All materials locally sourced, mostly from our own grounds. Keeps the building cool in summer and warm in winter.
• OpenWB EV charging of EV only when we have excess solar production.
• Rain water is not sent into the city collection system but kept on the grounds and further down is collected in a little lake.
• Cheap Solar Lights with motion detectors. Help a lot to not tip over during the night - even works reasonable during winter when the days are very short.

• Home-grown power management system: In winter we use excess energy to heat up the workshop ensuring it does not freeze during the night (if that’s not enough, and it cools down below 1 C we automatically use grid power to keep it from freezing.
• The fridge for the drinks is only run on excess power.
• Well insulated workshop build beside the house, providing additional insulation to the living quarters.

• Reactivated the old well, added a manual frost resistant water pump
• We are looking into using solar power to fill the reservoir from the well on demand. But this will need some trench digging.
• AirPods Pro or any other good noise-cancelling equipment to avoid getting def and dumb by roaring farm machinery.
• We have a shepherd’s wagon without any electricity. Basic services like warmth, light, coffee and pizza can be provided by fossil means.
• We have something like a tiny house completely running on off-grid on solar: electric stove, baking oven, warm water, floor heating, etc. Works very well for 10 years now.