Bottle light inventor proud to be poor

[etler]

This isn't an alternative to the light bulb. This is an alternative to the window for people living in slums that can't afford glass.

[hcarvalhoalves]

Probably you've never seen a slum, so let me explain:

- Houses are juxtaposed to each other, there's no room for windows

- Roofs are corrugated, so you can't easily fit a top glass panel even if you have the money for one.

- There are transparent, fiber glass roofs, and some people use those, but often they don't get to choose the materials used to build the house, just use what is available.

So this is a quite nice hack that works for most houses.

[reedlaw]

These bottles refract light thus illuminating a larger area. A skylight primarily lights the area underneath. Also, these bottles are less likely to break in a storm.

[rickdale]

The title of this article bothers me since the article focuses much more on the bottle and light and rather than how poor and proud Alfredo Moser is. Regardless, pretty cool exposure of life in the slums, I'd bet there are more 'hacks' as a means of survival that are necessary there, but we wouldn't think twice about.

I will say the article is good, just don't like the title.

[throwaway420]

I can understand being proud of a beneficial invention and offering something to people without taking money for it. He's done an amazing good deed and hopefully will be remembered for this. But I don't understand the title of the article because I think taking pride in poverty is a weird position to be taking. The headline might just be catchy click bait.

[casca]

Interestingly, the link from the BBC News main page under the Most Shared and Most Read tabs has the title as "The light inventor who is poor but proud" which seems far more appropriate than the one on the article.

[julianpye]

True hacker, if I ever saw one.

[D9u]

I live off-grid, and have done so for nearly 20 years, and I never needed indoor lighting during daylight hours.

I also dislike the idea of poking holes in my roof, for any reason.

I'm much more intersted in the gravity light which was featured here a few months ago.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for-...

Although the initial cost may be prohibitive for the poverty stricken, it may be well within the acceptable price range for many others, and the gravity light has the added bonus of not requiring any fuel, nor does it require punching holes in one's roof.

(I live in an upland rainforest)

[Klinky]

Lights are used indoors all day long in much of the world. If you don't like poking holes in your roof, then you probably don't like sun windows either.

The gravity light requires manual labor to produce light, has moving parts that are more likely to fail, is more costly, and produces less light.

[CompelTechnic]

> I never needed indoor lighting during daylight hours

The way I figure, people in need of one of these lights probably won't have windows to let light into their homes, so it makes a bit more sense for their application.

Just my .02

[eksith]

Would you share a bit more about your off-grid setup? (Power, water, sanitation etc...)

Or do you have any pictures you've shared or would like to share publicly?

[hcarvalhoalves]

I see how a gadget might be more appealing to someone living off-grid by choice, but you can't beat a bottle filled with water.

[lightyrs]

This headline is offensive. Nowhere in the article does he indicate that he is proud to be poor. Not that there would be anything wrong with that — quite the opposite, in fact, however, this headline reeks of elitism.

[kefka]

Hmm. This would also be really useful in doing underground greenhouses.

A tin sheet is cheap. You dig a hole, however long, wide, and deep. Then, you can get in the hole and plant whatever in there. Once done, you can cover it up with the sheet (or wood or whatever) and put the bottle-lights inside.

That way, you keep the pests out of your new garden.

[mattgrice]

It does not seem like that would be very practical.

Very few economically important plants will thrive in anything less than full sunlight. This makes sense because most plants become economically important because they are productive (good at turning sunlight into something we want like calories or wood).

The exceptions are plants that are grown for some valuable quality which is only needed in scarce quantities, like some spices or flowers.

[leke]

I was thinking the same thing. Dig a deep hole, or make a mound, then you can grow your weed with good privacy.

[e3pi]

Down below, a deck prism illumination is astonishing. Drilling a round hole in the cabin sole is way easier, and a discarded plastic bottle is far less expensive than a vintage Criitenden & Willcox prism. Separate the bleach if you get real thirsty? Watch your head(pun?).

[jared314]

Deck prisms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism

The main difference here is that deck prisms are flat on top, which limits the amount of light entering the prism. The water in the bottles is filled to the top, creating a dome shaped concentrator. Since water has a refractive index close to glass (~1.3 vs ~1.5) the bottom of the bottle has a similar effect to the deck prism, except with slightly more light.

[tzm]

This is effectively a lightbulb that uses wireless energy.

[opminion]

Interesting invention. For me, the main thing to learn from this is how much some people depend on artificial light during daylight hours (a reminder of how important hands-on experience is when hacking things to help others).

[gngeal]

The numbers don't make sense to me. "It depends on how strong the sun is but it's more or less 40 to 60 watts." <- I hope that's for the whole roof we see in the picture, not for a single bottle. What's the insolation of a single bottle top anyway? (Unless, of course, they're talking about your grandma's old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs.)

[sophacles]

Well, at the surface, when the rays are hitting perpendicular to the planet, it's 1000 W/m^2 (approx).

Of course the real problem is they are measuring the light in terms of incandescent bulb power draw, rather than something useful like lumens or candela, but due to a century of ubiquitous light bulbs, we've been rating light in the wrong units.

[JoeAltmaier]

"The lamps work best with a black cap..." - why would that be so? Wouldn't a reflective cap work well too?

[lutusp]

All I can think of is that a black cap won't degrade as quickly because of ultraviolet exposure. Most plastics (long polymers) have chemical bonds that can be broken by the energy level provided by ultraviolet photons, so over time they turn from polymers into quasicrystals and lose their strength -- disintegrate. But a black plastic, by excluding the ultraviolet light, protects itself and lasts much longer.

So a bottle that's composed of a clear plastic that naturally resists ultraviolet degradation (there are several) should be capped by a more rigid plastic (to maintain its shape). So the cap needs to be black (or at least a dark color).

A reflective cap would work just as well at first, but plastics are made reflective by being painted, and the paint soon falls off, because of ... wait for it ... ultraviolet exposure.

[msantos]

The explanation is lot simpler in practise than most comments have explained so far.

From my own experience, in lame terms, if you use non-black caps, for arguments sake let's say you use a red cap from a coca-cola bottle, that red cap will reflect some light as well as the water. And inside the room the bottle will not "shine" as bright as it could and depending on the Sun's position the room will have red'ish rays - like a rainbow.

So using any colour cap and covering the bottle cap with old photographic film containers like this one http://www.kveller.com/images/Article_images/film-canister.j... will prevent the non-black cap from stealing sun rays from the water.

[cma]

In earlier articles the method I saw was using a plastic film canister over the cap, because it resists UV degradation etc.

[mnml_]

You can't turn off the fucking thing.

[fnordfnordfnord]

It automatically turns itself off at night. And then back on again in the morning; and not in with the shocking "argh! my eyes!" suddenness of an incandescent, but a gradual taper that allows your eyes to adjust slowly.

Also, you could use a cup and a rubber-band to cover it if you needed darkness mid-day.

[maxhowell]

It's like a Window. You can “turn off” a window by putting a curtain over it.

[vincie]

I thought of this general idea many years ago, but then decided it might be better to cut up the bottles, flatten the plastic and sew the flat pieces together to make panels to use in roofs and windows. Never got around to actually doing anything about it though.

[cafard]

At some point, Heineken shipped mostly-oblong bottles to somewhere in the Dutch West Indies for use in walls. I have the impression--I read this years ago--that it was more or less a hobby of the owner. Still, it worked.

[xanderstrike]

My dad built a treehouse with exactly this with liter water bottles in ~1994, he said he saw it when he was growing up with glass bottles. I hate to be a spoil sport, but this is hardly a new idea.

[marcosdumay]

I've this guy on TV a long time ago. I'm certain it was at the 90's, but I don't remember the exact year.

It's not a new idea in any way, and was certainly invented more than once. Yet, it was this guy that (by luck) made the life of several people better by communicating it.

[return0]

The comparison with edison is just ridiculous.

[gadders]

Daft title and poverty or wealth are morally neutral. You could be equally proud of either.

[Fuxy]

That's such an obvious solution I can't believe nobody thought of that before this guy.

Weird.

[lbebber]

Being very petulant here, but Uberaba is in the southwest, not in the south.