Progress – Problem – Progress

By Rihab Hammami July 20, 2017 Edition CHIC 2016-2017Discover Trobak, give value to your waste project

Hello dear reader,

After two more general posts we’re back at what we do best : work (héhé).
As you know we are now in Shenzhen in order to develop our first prototype. As you probably don’t know, our designer Dylan couldn’t make it to Hong-Kong or China and as if this was not a sad news enough, the mock-up he created with love and patience couldn’t make the trip either.

Isn’t he adorable?

But we won’t give up, we are now focused on finding an alternative to create a cast that could host all the mechanical and electronic parts. We also realized that the shredder we planned to use and 3-D print was too expensive so it’s also something we are gonna have to deal with.

So Pierre and Erika went to Huaqiang Bay, the famous Shenzhen electronic market in order to buy the motor we will use, and also find some material we can use to create the cast of Trobak.
He is now sweating in the hackerspace :

 

About the PCB, it is almost done! Thanks to Valerie dedication and patience, there are only a few modification to make in order to make it fit the motor requirements!
Look at this baby:

But that “technical” work isn’t everything, Rihab is now studying the Chinese market in order to identify the locals’ pains and how they feel about recycling/sorting their waste. He reads yeah but it is not enough! You have to get your hands dirty too and go meet the Chinese in person ! This is why he spent a lot of time looking for some that would agree to answer his questions but ABOVE ALL some that speak English ! Well this is not easy at all and the cultural differences between here and Switzerland are even more brought to light.

This is it for this post, but there will be more in the next few days so as usual, stay tuned !