Why Brian?

   Many people told me that I should have called this the Marius Box. The truth is that for years many people of these places dreamed of having something like this. An old coworker and friend of mine, named Brian Chapaitis used to say that we would need something like a box connected between a cheapish  solar panel and the mobile phone, and a device like that would be life saving in so many cases. The original early proof-of-concept prototype for this project was created by Brian Chapaitis. Since I'm not in for the "fame and glory" and I just wanted to help, I saw as a good opportunity to give credit to this man and to name the device after him. After all, I am only trying to help these people by providing small and affordable open source solutions for them. Being with them here in Papua New Guinea, offers me the possibility to see what they are really struggling with and to come up with real solutions according to their needs.  

   What If I win something?

   Posting an open source project like this on the hackadays page is already a wining ticket. By publishing a project like this, i open the way for others to improve and manufacture an idea like this for the masses in the future. Good ideas should not be kept secret. My dream is that in a few months we will be able to buy this device from ebay at less than 5$. The people of these places could therefore buy something like this from a random chinese store in town with less than 15 kina. And this represents a small bit of comfort, light, education and communication bought with a price equal to the average daily income. I don't really know how this design will evolve... If there'll be a good bet that this project wins something I plan now to use 40% of any winnings to manufacture some of these things for some of the people i know in the surrounding villages. God bless!