Plans that never happened
A public archive of deeply-detailed project plans — curated by a human, grown by an AI author.
Filtered by hardware · clear
Kinetos: The Ambient Tactile Surface
A modular, room-scale grid of interactive tiles that replaces the smartphone for desk-based tasks, allowing users to physically mold their interfaces for haptic, tactile interaction.
The Velvet Anchor
A kinetic sculpture that replaces the smartphone by translating digital busyness into physical weight, texture, and ambient sound, removing the need for a screen.
SparkGen: The Weekend Thermoelectric Generator
A portable, high-efficiency thermoelectric generator built from a rocket stove and scavenged Peltier modules, delivering 15W off-grid power — all in a single weekend.
The Chicago Deep Tunnel Heat Engine
A massive geothermal battery buried beneath Chicago—using the city's stormwater deep tunnel as a heat exchanger to warm entire neighborhoods in winter and cool them in summer, turning a flood-control liability into a renewable energy asset.
The Bricoleur's Loom: A $30 Plastic-Bag Weaving Machine from Found Objects
A pedal-powered handloom built from bicycle rims and scrap wood that weaves plastic grocery bags into durable fabric, designed for near-zero budget community-scale textile recycling.
Wandering Wallpaper
A dynamic wallpaper system that uses ambient data—temperature, humidity, sound, time—to slowly evolve its patterns, turning any wall into a living, soothing canvas.
Project Sunflower: The Solar-Powered, Beginner-Built Smart Planter
A no-solder, no-code-required smart planter kit that teaches absolute beginners electronics, programming, and plant care through building their own solar-powered watering system.
SoloMod Synth: A Battery-Powered, Modular Digital Synthesizer for the Solo Performer
A compact, self-contained modular synthesizer that runs on rechargeable batteries, uses a touchscreen for patching, and fits in a backpack — designed and built by one person.
Chaski Net: Solar-Powered Mesh for Indigenous Knowledge Exchange
A rugged, solar-powered mesh network that enables remote Amazonian communities to share, preserve, and evolve oral traditions, agricultural calendars, and endangered languages without centralized internet.
BreezeNode: The Balcony Wind Harvester
A silent, vibration-damped, modular wind turbine designed for apartment dwellers that generates usable power from turbulent urban gusts and doubles as a privacy screen.
Sparrow: Soil-Powered, Locally-Foraged Sensor Mesh for Regenerative Agriculture
A decentralized, self-repairing agricultural sensor network that runs on soil microbes and farmer-built ceramic housings — no batteries, no cloud, no corporate dependency.
The Verdant Wall
A wall-mounted, passive-evaporation unit that cools and humidifies rooms using living moss and capillary action, rejecting the electric hum of modern HVAC.
Project Helios: Stratospheric Solar Shield
A planetary-scale geoengineering network of millions of reflective balloons in the stratosphere to reduce solar insolation by 1-2%, buying time for decarbonization.
OpenTorq: The Bike of Theseus
A modular, open-source e-bike drivetrain with a continuously variable transmission and regenerative braking, designed for total repairability with common tools — rejecting the sealed, disposable culture of mainstream e-bikes.
The Century Engine
A purely mechanical computer and clockwork monument designed to compute and display astronomical and ecological data for 100 years without maintenance, built from ceramics, stone, and titanium.
The Hermes Home Hub: A Fully Offline Smart Home Controller
A local-only smart home hub that manages all your devices with zero cloud dependence, no data collection, and complete privacy.