Exploring Possibility of Test Automation Team (Builditnow)

The following comment was made by Builditnow on the thread for the latest MFMP test by Alan Goldwater here

Thinking ahead. IS ANYONE INTERESTED IN FORMING A TEAM TO HELP AUTOMATE ALAN’S TEST SETUP?
I personally think it’s a good system to run lots of tests, looking for excess heat greater than about 100 watts. With a few modifications it could be made more sensitive (with the addition of insulation and active cooling for instance).

I discussed with Alan a future thinking, “kicking the tires” idea of automating his system to enable experiments to be carried out production style. The reactors themselves are relatively inexpensive from a materials point of view.

The estimate is that Alan could do this automation himself in 6 months, with another suitable person, 4 months, 4 people 3 months, (20 people 2 years LOL ). There would be opportunity for others to contribute time such as monitoring experiments, helping run debug tests, buying supplies, collecting donations etc. etc.

Since Alan is in the Silicon Valley area, there are numerous people here with all the skills needed, it’s really a matter of are the right people interested and willing to put in the time. Of course, people here also earn nice big salaries, so, they are giving quite a gift to donate their time.

There is potential for a financial benefit, a quality lower priced product for monitoring and control that could then be sold to all sorts of garage startups who likely have a need for a similar as against the currently expensive “professional systems”. An add on board for a Raspberry pi for instance. Such a board does require very skilled design to eliminate the noise from the power control systems from the measurements. Alan does have related experience from designing audio studio equipment.

If you are interested or know of potential people, you can comment below for the moment as a way of “measuring the enthusiasm temperature” we have at the moment.

I have now run some errands, so I’ll check back later this evening for comments.

Builditnow