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Hardware

Big Nerd Idea's hardware work lives inside its projects, not as a standalone program. This page records the org-wide principles that govern any physical device or vehicle BNI touches; the actual builds and device tracks are documented under each project.

Sustainable-hardware principles

Per the Sustainability & Carbon Awareness directive:

  • Reuse over new manufacture. Refurbishment, repair, and extending hardware lifespan are mission activities, not cost optimizations — the carbon cost of manufacturing new electronics dwarfs its lifetime operational energy use.
  • Solar and low-power as design defaults. For anything that physically deploys in the world, solar and low-power operation are first-considerations. GoSun is the reference design pattern for portable solar cooking (passive solar concentration + efficient thermal mass).
  • Carbon as a first-class design axis. Hardware specification choices name their carbon trade-offs explicitly, with the same [HYPOTHESIS] → [PILOT VALIDATED] discipline as any other claim.

Where the hardware work happens

Boot Up — refurbishment

Donated/refurbished laptops rebuilt on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS are Boot Up's primary device track; refurbishment-vs-new-manufacture is the program's headline carbon-avoidance story. The Librem Mini v2 (Purism — hardware kill switches, coreboot, PureOS) is a reference for evaluating purpose-built privacy hardware for specific tracks (e.g., a reentry participant needing hardware kill-switch assurance) — [HYPOTHESIS], not a committed curriculum track. See Boot Up (migrating).

Toaster Chef — the real-world Trike

The GoSun Solar Cargo E-Trike is the reference design for a real-world Toaster Chef Trike — the physical counterpart to the in-game Trike + Pilot mechanic, designed around GoSun-inspired solar cooking rather than grid plug-in or fossil fuel. [HYPOTHESIS] — the real-world trike is not yet committed or funded. See Toaster Chef (migrating).