I have been thinking about giving a lot in the last few years, what does it mean to give a gift?
@eco-alex was correct in the first #ecoTrain competition posts when he stated that giving was best when you dont give someone in need enough for them to survive until tomorrow, that you give them something that will help them move into a life that no longer needs your help. He also said its best to do this without any need of reward or recognition.
The Power of Many
Of course my competition response is about what gift I have given, but it only makes sense in the context of what so many other people are doing, and its related to crypto-currency and so its important to explain my journey.
My Journey into Crypto-Currency
I dont have an exact date, but being a bit of a nerd I heard about Bitcoin fairly early on, I was intreagued, but it was worth very little and I was using my computing time on something much more valuable. For over a decade I have been participating in BOINC... 'what on earth is that?', you may ask. The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is a way to effectively crowd source millions of computers together, to solve some of the most important scientific/humanitarian problems around today, like looking for disease cures such as AIDS, Ebola, TB, or searching for very cheap and easy to produce solar panel materials. I have contributed squillions of hours of computer time to all kindsof endeavours over that time, but no this isnt my story of my greatest gift, but it is a great example of the 'Power of Many' into solving big problems, please consider signing up today (if you worry about energy costs you can claim your #gridcoin digital currency as well!).
My Journey into Solar Energy
Being able to earn Gridcoin for my BOINC contributions, sucked me into crypto-currency. A short while after, I decided to install solar PV on my home, because I wanted to do something for the environment and do my BOINC work in a the least energy consuming way possible, but no, this isnt my greatest gift either.
Thinking about crypto-currency and solar energy, I wondered if there was a version that worked for solar PV interests, and I found #solarcoin, you basically get given 1 free SolarCoin for every 1 MWh of energy you produce, the idea is to incentivise solar PV globally in a stable way without worries about government incentives being withdrawn.
My Journey into really Giving Something
I became more involved in SolarCoin and I soon found a sub-group started by a couple of visionary guys, they were thinking of a concept called ElectriCChain, what if you could gather real time data, from solar PV systems, into a block-chain? You could do all kinds of things like help control power grids, use the data to improve solar PV efficiency by comparing installations, you can do climate science by using insalled solar panels as ways to measure if its sunny or cloudy, and all the data can be free and open to use in the block-chain, not owned by anyone, and free for everyone!
This inspired me to become far more involved, I started teaching myself about Linux, and with some help from the community (Power of Many), I figured out how to compile the SolarCoin wallet onto a Raspberry Pi. I was a nerd before, but my involvment had always been using what others had created, not actually doing anything new to help.
Now we had a small community running the blockchain on ultra-low power, 2 Watts per SolarCoin node, the next step to help ElectriCChain was to actually start logging data from a solar array into the block-chain. I decided I was going to make this my goal; but first, I had to learn how to do computer programming!
I had done some basics at school in the 1990s, but nothing else. After teaching myself rudimentary Python 2.7, I set about figuring out how to get my solar PV system to integrate with the SolarCoin blockchain; a few months of hitting my head on a wall later, and I had created the datalogger.
Here is the datalogger running on a Raspberry Pi and registering my solar PV data onto the blockchain
Here is a video that shows the datalogger working
My Gift
This datalogger could be a business opportunity, but I have given it to the world completely free and clear under the 'Unlicense', please feel free to use it, copy it, improve on it and help to make the world better though renewable energy improvements and climate science data.
I cant claim my gift will have huge impact, that does depend on others and the 'Power of Many' to pick up on it and make it great, but I have given months of time and effort to this idea, with no expectation of return and no desire for recognition or reward.
I wish all the contestants in the EcoTrain Question Of The Week; good luck!
Please think about supporting some of the things I mentioned; BOINC, Gridcoin, Solarcoin and ElectriCChain!