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Air quality monitor like PurpleAir only it costs $25 instead of $200 so everyday proles can use it.
Cheap durable portable computers of some type can be useful for homeless people. Just an internet box with wifi, maybe a pager sort of thing if that's a tall order. Anything for that makes communication easier than walking to where you think someone will be and hoping for the best.
That's what is already being used. If you can jailbreak/reset devices with passwords then collecting old phones and tablets, doing that and getting those to the homeless would be great. Of you're with an org a dropoff for that stuff would be useful as hell. Chargers are also a huge need
There is a general need for devices, most are hand me downs or phones other people dropped and lost somewhere and sometimes stolen as well, the latter two need to reset the password to use. They also break more frequently since they're almost always on bags or pockets with a bunch of other stuff that can crack a screen or can get wet easily.
Wall Chargers are better than none but portable chargers would actually be very useful for sure. Outlets can be found but not necessarily at all times, portable chargers would be handy as hell.
There was one in an emergency shelter a local org had set up in a park. Basically people without homes could get on a list to get a shack built for them, basically an insulated shed with a window and a cot for sleeping but it was dry and had a lock on the door so people could own more than they carry. This fire happens at just the wrong time when things were opening up after covid. They let these shelters go ahead without interference because it covered their blind spot over covid restrictions on shelters, now they're interested in tourists again so that one fire got the rest torn down.
Phones are underrated harm reduction tools for addicts as well. If you have a phone you can have a steady dealer, steady dealer means you're more likely to have safe buys and not get bad batches and stuff like that.
What level of device can you quickly and cheaply manufacture?
Hmm, i was thinking some sort of GHz jammer. Like to knock out drones. That's probably pretty illegal though
First, what are your thoughts on the Industrial Revolution and its consequences?
spoiler
Sorry, I hope someone who does hobby electronics has an actual good reply.
Edit: oh and I also mixed this up with the other post which I'd seen earlier
I don't have any specific ideas, but LoRa radio modules might be cool to tinker with. Communicators/gateways built with them could be useful in situations where you can't or don't want to send traffic over third-party networks. If you implemented some decent encryption on top of it, it'd hypothetically be untraceable. And not that security-through-obscurity should ever be relied upon, but I don't know if anyone would even think to monitor those frequencies.
If you're talking about appliances.
Fans...
Specifically, box fan style that has a way to easily replace the thermostatic fuse. Its getting so hot that once we turn off a fan, there is nothing moving heat away from the motor and the thermo fuse burn out.
Not being a person who does these types of repairs on the regular but I've sacrificed one dead fan for an autopsy to see if the others could be salvaged. It seems like it should be possible to replace the fuse, but they are just kinda... encased in insulation that has to be destroyed to be removed and then woven into the copper coil of the fan motor. So deffinitely made for the average person to not be able to repair them.
Which sucks, because on at least two of the dead fans there are tiny glass fuses at the plug, so somebody was thinking that an end user should be able to replace some thing.
The YouTube channel N.O.D.E. has some cool diy cyberpunk-ish hardware projects you may want to check out.
