Project
What It Is
Coder SPC is a product design and development studio founded by a small group of talented engineers who share a passion for living in a planet-compasionate manner and helping others do the same.
We are designing and building technology-based bits and pieces which can help almost anyone achieve a comfortable and satisfying ultra-low-fossil-fuel way of life.
Current Focus
Product development efforts are currently focused on structurally similar photovoltaic panel and solar trough sun trackers for tiny homes and other sustainable live/work spaces. The units are fully automated using our Bluetooth Mesh platform and are self-powered.
Each photovoltaic tracker provides charging functionality and supervision for a single generic solar panel in the 350 watt range and its storage battery. These autonomous trackers can supply a single moderate load point or be diode-paralleled for larger loads.
Our solar troughs supply solar-heated thermal transfer fluid for in-floor radiant heat, process heat-exchangers and thermal-mass storage in greenhouses and living areas.
Setup, monitoring and reporting is Bluetooth Mesh based with Internet connectivity optional.
The Back Story
Coder SPC is creatively applying proven technology to eliminate or dramatically reduce the fossil-fuel input on the various types of structures, machines and processes we have come to rely on in daily life, the structures, machines and processes which provide healthful food to eat, a warm safe place to sleep and daily opportunities for fulfilling activities with others.
In the spirit of The Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News, we intend to add a couple pages to the roadmap and supply a few innovative tools for a return trip to a satisfying, sustainable, self-sufficient way of life.
Two hundred years of rampant capitalism and the resulting industrialization has brought us to the brink. If we stop and reconfigure right now, there is still a tiny chance of achieving the equilibrium essential for a future humanity.
The platform Coder SPC has built is based on a layer of the same Bluetooth technology embedded in billions of devices worldwide. It is known as Bluetooth Mesh. Bluetooth Mesh is a low-energy, wireless networking protocol developed by the Bluetooth SIG (the international standards organization for all things Bluetooth). Mesh is directed at commercial lighting and industrial process control. Coder SPC has embraced the Bluetooth Mesh standard and our engineering department has become insanely proficient in it's implementation.
Coder SPC is using our Bluetooth Mesh platform to build device networks and systems which monitor, control and report on:
- Solar heating, lighting and electricity for small sustainable homes and minimalist dwellings.
- Self-sustaining, low-energy, neighborhood brewing, distilling and distribution.
- Personal scale ethanol fuel production.
- Year round, plant-based, home-greenhouse food production.
- On site anaerobic waste conversion.
Coder Solar Village
The Coder Solar Village is a scalable model for a self-sufficient and sustainable community powered entirely by the sun.
Energy Independence
Coder Solar Villages achieve energy independence by making hay while the sun shines; except instead of growing grass and making hay for animal food, we grow crops for people food and ethanol fuel. Each Solar Dwelling in the village is equipped with solar electric and solar thermal arrays which supply sufficient electricity and hot water to power the dwelling and to process starchy crops into ethanol for cooking, heating and transportation fuel.
Village Lifestyle
The Pandemic lockdowns of 2020 had a silver lining. They showed that for a large percentage of the population life can go on quite nicely without commuting to a day job. For a brief moment in time there was a measurable change for the better in the environment.
One way of understanding the Solar Village concept and the Solar Village lifestyle is to understand what it is not. A Coder Solar Village is not a commune. I is not a cult and it is not collective.
The Coder Solar Village is a place for people to live their best life as friends and neighbors with the shared purpose of zero carbon emission. In a Coder Solar Village, growing your own food and harvesting energy from the sun are not hobbies structured around your corporate day job. They are your day job. A zero commute-time day job that allows you to live lightly on the planet, comfortably and safely, with the time to persue any interests and passions you might have that are consistent with zero carbon living.
Sometimes understanding what something is not is as important as understanding what it is. A Coder Solar Village is not a commune, cult or collective. Each Solar Village dwelling has the equipment and land to supply the needs of that resident. Grouping Solar Dwellings into villages is intended to promote social interaction and the free exchange of knowledge and ideas. From strictly an energy standpoint, one Solar Dwelling on a remote plot can be as successful as a Solar Dwelling in a Solar Village of one-hundred.
Coder Solar Village Sites
| Site Name | Ovenell Park |
| Location | Stanwood, Washington |
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| Today | |
| Summer Solstice | |
| Winter Solstice |
- Use the Zoom control to Zoom out until the general area of your proposed site comes into view
- Drag the Pin to the vicinity of your proposed site.
- Start Zooming in and dragging the Pin until the Pin is in the center of a site anywhere on the planet. We call this a Solar Plat.
- Drag the green rectangle Solar Dwelling Plot to the Southwest corner (Lower Left) of your Solar Plat.
- Adjust the West to East and South to North controls to populate your Solar Plat with the number of Solar Dwellings you imagine.
- If the Solar Dwelling Plat looks promising to you, please fill in the remaining information and save it. If your Solar Plat seems reasonable we will followup with the contacts you provide. If we are successful, we will add your suggestion to the list of proposed sites and start exploring funding.
The Nodes Know
When your sole energy source varies every second of every day, monitoring and controlling the energy harvest is critical. Coder Solar Dwellings are made possible by our Bluetooh Mesh Controller platform which we have applied to the unique challenges of solar living. CoderSPC Bluetooth Mesh Controllers are wirelessly networked and function together to monitor and control the various Village systems. For example each solar panel and thermal collector are mesh nodes that transmit status messages every few seconds. Other Mesh Controller nodes monitor those messages and make decisions about switching the pump, motor, light or other device to which they are attatched.
Defining Characteristics
- Energy independent through solar produced electricy and hot water and the production of ethanol fuel.
- Given horizon to horizon sun and sufficent space for fuel crops, a Solar Village is scalable from one dwelling to many.
- Excess production from the year round greenhouses and brewery are available for sale.
- Common area for community meals and socializing.
- Companion, service and rescued animal friendly.
- Community provided Internet.
Call to Action
Coder SPC has developed a workable model for 100% solar living that can be deployed today. The engineering and design details have been developed to the degree that work on Solar Dwelling One and its systems could begin immediately given a 100 foot by 200 foot plot of land with horizon to horizon exposure to the sun and funding for parts. When Solar Dwelling One has proven the viability of the Solar Village concept we believe mass adoption will follow. The need is great and time is short. Coder SPC has chosen to illuminate a direct path to solar living not by promotion, promise and prophency but by practice.
Message From The Old Man
If during Reconstruction in 1865, America had made good on its promise of providing forty-acres and a mule to the freed slaves, the country would look a lot different today. I believe it would be more family-centered, agrarian and independent. Surely it would be kinder and less capitalistic. But the promise was not fulfilled and one-hundred-fifty years later, whether black, brown or white, most of us are now a different kind of slave, slaves of capitalism and consumerism.
Those of us working for capitalism's enterprises for less than a living wage are the true enablers of its social and environmental destruction.
If every coal miner were presented an alternative to working in the coal mines, perhaps in the form of a permenent residency at a Solar Village, there would be no pollution from coal. There would be no coal production. And with enough Solar Village built there would be no need for coal.
If every Amazon warehouse and delivery worker, now paid less than poverty wages, quit coming to work tommorow and instead became a Solar Village resident, the slow bleed from Amazon's stated global-monopolistic aspirations would be stanched. The work of local merchants, makers, craftspeople and tradespeople would again have value.
Forty acres and a mule; considering that which has been taken by coorporate greed, compulsive consumerism and the complicity of government, it's not too much to ask.
The Old Man
Coder SPC Chief-Engineer David Carlin has a lifetime of experience in construction, mechanical engineering, electronic design and software development. He has brought that experience to bear on the challange of making solar-energy living practical and obtainable for anyone who wants to transistion to a fossil-fuel free, ultra-low carbon emission life. The Bluetooth Mesh Controller platform Mister Carlin developed in 2020 to run LED grow lights and make low-energy-input IPA has evolved to provide wireless monitoring and control capabilities for entire villages.
PUD Temporary Pole Yard
Camano Island, Washington
Kristopherson Farms
Camano Island, Washington