It is wonderful to see what great things people accomplish to improve their lives using sensible, and fairly simple, engineering.
15 Year-Old Kenyan Prodigy, Richard Turere, Who Created “Lion Lights”
He fitted a series of flashing LED bulbs onto poles around the livestock enclosure, facing outward. The lights were wired to a box with switches and to an old car battery powered by a solar panel. They were designed to flicker on and off intermittently, thus tricking the lions into believing that someone was moving around carrying a flashlight.
The astonishing aspect of this is that Turere installed the whole system by himself, without receiving any training in electronics or engineering.
This is a great video which includes good examples of the value to experimenting, learning and adapting. Iteration is a critical skill when developing solutions. Try out prototypes and learn from what happens. Use that knowledge to develop new solutions or modify the existing solutions and experiment some more. Continue to iterate and improve.
This is another great example of people using their initiative, creativity and engineering talent to create appropriate technology solutions to create solutions that improve their lives. It is great to see how these efforts continue over time, this BBC article follows up on Richard Turere several years after his initial success:
What happened to the boy who chased away the lions?
The Lion Lights system is now in 750 homesteads in Richard’s community and beyond, with the innovator making small tweaks and improvements to each version.
Lion Lights 2.0 costs $200 (£150) to install. Half of the money usually comes from NGOs while the rest is provided by the herder.
This version has 16 different flashing light settings and Richard’s latest update is a homemade wind turbine for days when clouds limit the solar power potential.
…
But while his idea has travelled, support for Richard as a young innovator and the implementation of his own Lion Lights has stalled in recent years. He thinks Kenya could do more to help young innovators like himself.
“There are many young people in Kenya with brilliant ideas, better even than mine – they just need support,” he says.
They need someone to be there to tell them, “this idea is really nice., let’s develop it to help communities”.
The efforts of so many great young people to create solutions that make the world a better place are inspiring.
Related: Electric Wind – Beehive Fence Protects Farms from Elephants – Appropriate Technology and Focus on Improving Lives at MIT – Using The Building of Robots to Engage Students in Learning
RSS Feed