Status: planning. Season one starts January 2027.
Nerdsquatch
The format
Draft copy

Same build, two yards.

Each outdoor build is installed twice: once in a test yard in Southern California, once in a test yard in Ghana. Same plan, same parts list where possible. Then every lesson gets sorted into one of three bins.

Why two yards

One yard proves it works. Two yards show why.

One yard tells you a build works. It cannot tell you why. Was it the design, or was it the weather being kind?

Two very different yards pull those apart. If a lesson shows up in both, it is probably about the build. If it shows up in one, it is probably about the place or the rules.

That is the whole trick. It is cheap, it is slow, and it is honest.

FIG. 1 · SAME BUILD, TWO YARDSYARD-ASOUTHERN CALIFORNIASAME PLAN · SAME PARTSYARD-BGHANASAME PLAN · SAME PARTSUNIVERSALGEOGRAPHICRULES
The yards

Two test yards

YARD-A

Southern California

The home yard, next to the lab. Builds go here first, so the easy mistakes get made close to the soldering iron.

YARD-B

Ghana

The second yard. A different climate, a different power and network picture, and a different parts shelf. The same build has to stand on its own here.

That is as specific as the locations get. No addresses, no faces, no names. Hands and hardware only.

The three bins

Every lesson goes in exactly one

BIN · UNI

Universal

True anywhere.

Lessons that should hold in any yard on the planet. If it only worked in one yard, it does not belong here yet.

Kinds of lesson
  • Sensor placement
  • Calibration
  • Sealing and strain relief
  • Reading the data
BIN · GEO

Geographic

Changes with climate and infrastructure.

Lessons that depend on where you are standing. The build is the same. The weather, the power and the parts shelf are not.

Kinds of lesson
  • Heat and humidity
  • Rain and dust
  • Solar yield
  • Mobile coverage
  • What parts you can buy locally
BIN · RULE

Rules

Changes with regulation.

Lessons that come from a rulebook, not from physics. These are notes on what the build ran into. They are not legal advice. Check your own local rules.

Kinds of lesson
  • Radio rules
  • Drone permissions
  • Import duties
  • Data protection
  • Water rights
The log

How a lesson gets logged

  1. 01

    Write it down plain

    One sentence. What happened, on which build, in which yard. No theory yet.

  2. 02

    Ask the other yard

    Would this be true over there too? If nobody knows yet, the lesson is tagged “one yard so far” and it waits.

  3. 03

    Pick the bin

    True in both: Universal. Changed with climate or infrastructure: Geographic. Changed because of a rule or a permit: Rules.

  4. 04

    Attach the evidence

    A photo of hands and hardware, a slice of the data, or the exact change that fixed it. No evidence, no lesson.

  5. 05

    Publish it with the build

    Lessons live on the project page and in Field Notes, each with its build code and its bin. A lesson can move bins later. The move gets logged too.

In the format

Builds planned for two yards

See every build plan