Aqua Port continues to get ready for field testing, but have experienced a change of plans recently. Due to a setback, we were unable to go to Ghana in September as planned.

Fortunately, our setback seems to have a silver lining, as some great opportunities have come up in the meantime.

In one of our most exciting developments, we had a conference call with the founder of Hippo Water Roller, who we are excited to say would like to lend us some assistance with growing Aquaport!

On the design front, we were fortunate enough to meet with two engineers from national design firm IDEO. They will help us brainstorm some important changes to the current design and structure our research.

While the trip is postponed, we have plenty to prepare for, and continue to work on our model.

In the meantime, we have been looking to expand our team, and have been recruiting MIT students to work on the project and potentially come with us to Ghana.

Last week I (Mary) attended the International Development Fair at MIT to get the word out. I met some very qualified students who will make a great addition to the team.

Photos of the aquaport table below!

Back from Maker Faire

Dapo recently returned from the Maker Faire in Accra, and has made some great contacts while there. We are starting to form a valuable network of people in Ghana, which will be extremely helpful when Rebecca and I are in Tamale in September.

Until then, we are working out of a prototyping lab at MIT to create something more robust for testing, and working out some logistics for the trip.

As usual we have all been pretty busy, but steadily making progress and preparing for testing!

check out an interview with Dapo on Core77 here: http://www.core77.com/blog/videos/driveby_video_aquaport_at_maker_faire_africa_2009_14564.asp

The Aquaport is going to Ghana

Many exciting opportunities have come our way since the IDEAS retreat!

This August team member Oladapo Bakare will be traveling to Ghana to present the Aquaport at the Maker Faire in Accra. Maker Faire is an annual convention that showcases a wide variety of inventions by African entrepreneurs. The convention draws people from all over the continent, as well as Africans living and inventing abroad.

check out more info about the Maker Faire here!

In other news, the team's been quite busy preparing for our upcoming field testing in Tamale. We have been working on design changes, and brainstorming ways to conduct our research.

We have also begun an exciting partnership with MIT professor Susan Murcott, and her Tamale-based NGO, Pure Home Water Solutions. PHW has been creating and distributing low-cost water filters in Northern Ghana since 2007, and has so far made clean water accessible to over 100,000 people!

With PHW's help, we will test Aquaport with multiple families in the region, and research how to make changes to Aquaport so it utilizes locally available materials. Team members Mary Bergeron and Rebecca Smith are planning to travel to Tamale in the fall, to kick off our research on the ground.

Overview of the design

The Aquaport is a modular device that can carry up to 90 liters of water. It consists of several modular units that are aligned along a metal axle. A 36" handle snaps onto the axle at either end. When the user pushes or pulls the device (or a combination of the two!) the units roll easily back to her home. Because of the rolling feature, the user feels as though she is transporting only 20 liters of water instead of 90!

Each modular unit (which our team dubbed "portlets" during one particularly creative group meeting) is designed to be durable yet easy to handle, practical and cost effective- not such an easy task when the device is meant to move 200 pounds of water over difficult terrain.

We took on these challenges by making multiple mock-ups of the design, and testing them for ease of lifting, filling at the water source, pouring once home, and assembling together. We also wanted a way for the units to lock together, so that they would not separate when rolled.
Also, We decided to turn the handles of each portlet into a locking feature, so that we could save plastic and create two functions with just one element of the design.

As the handles are designed to aid the user in lifting the device, the cap is designed to aid in collecting water and pouring. We developed a dual cap system of both a large cap and a small cap on top of it. When at the water source, the user unscrews the large cap, dunks the unit into the water to collect it, and screws it back on. To pour, the user flips open the small cap. With this design, the user can both collect at lot of water at once at the source and dispense a reasonable amount once home








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The IDEAS retreat was a great way to kick off the "post-class" continuation of our project! The retreat helped us to strengthen our business plan, and formulate a clear list of goals for the summer, the coming year, and beyond. :)
It was also awesome to see some really amazing MIT projects, including a system to charge batteries in off the grid areas of Africa, a "Braille labeler," and a system to document hazardous public water conditions the world over.