A sustainable solar headlamp for rural medical use.
In rural developing communities all around the world, electricity is scarce, and the closest doctor is a volunteer. When it's dark at night, and someone needs help, having hands-free direction light is a big advantage. This open-source solar headlamp is designed to be resilient, adaptable, sustainable, and affordable.
Qualities of the solar headlamp
Resilient
Designing a product to be easily repaired instead of "indestructible" to reduce electronic waste and increase educational and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Appropriate
Understanding the context of customer needs, and putting those needs first... even if it means using more basic technology.
Sustainable
Using a cradle-to-cradle approach to identify the positive and negative impacts of the product from a multi-faceted perspective (e.g., environmental, social, economic), and designing to cause the least negative impact possible.
Open-Source
Applying an open-source approach to hardware in order to more efficiently evolve the solar headlamp design, and more rapidly disseminate information for regionally-appropriate versions.
Check out the design files on GitHub: https://github.com/SmallTomatoes/Headlamp
Bamboo prototype created in Nicaragua
IEEE Humanitarian Technology Conference 2014, Montreal, Canada
Header photo by Topher Wright