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Open Tech Collaborative (OTC) is a cooperative company about a year old that develops open source commercial products and provides public education programs. The group’s technology is developed under open licenses, and it encourages people around the world to build and modify it, and start their own local businesses. “Working outside of the normal patent system invites the growth of global networks of people with diverse skills who work together to co-create solutions to their common problems,” said Co-Founder and Project Manager Aaron Makaruk. To that end, the organization has launched some initial projects that have garnered significant interest.
The Open Source Beehive Project, written up in Wired, BoingBoing, Fast Company, Salon.com, Popular Science, the New York Times, and OpenElectronics.com, has created open source, sensor-enhanced beehives. OTC is promoting citizen science as a way to study and develop solutions to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has killed more than 10 million bee colonies in the last six years.
The project reached its funding goal on Indiegogo this week, where it was described: “Each hive contains an open source sensor kit, The Smart Citizen Kit (SCK), which can transmit to the Smartcitizen.me open data platform. The sensor-enhanced hive designs are open and freely available online, the data collected from each hive is published with geolocations, allowing further comparison and analysis of the hives.” A hive take only 30 minutes to manufacture on a commercial CNC router, and can be flat packed and shipped for less than traditional box hives.
OTC co-hosted the Forever Home Design Challenge in partnership with Architecture for Humanity Denver. The event challenged participants to design open source, earth block homes. People from more than a dozen countries around the world got involved. An online archive of 18 house designs will be made available at no cost to anyone who’d like them. Designs will also be published for an open source, low-cost compressed earth block press that can manufacture more than 1,000 blocks in eight hours for less than $3,000.
“Open source is about sharing technology and skills, and empowering entrepreneurs to make things,” said OTC’s Alec Brewster. “We’re developing a new grassroots economy and expanding regional capacity so wealth stays in the local community. Investing in education and infrastructure helps promote local resiliency.”
