We did some talks and got some funds!
It’s been an absolute whirlwind in the past six months. Let’s recap some of what we’ve been up to.
Hiria was asked to speak at the Internet NZ Speaker series: Things and the Internet in December last year. We heard some great feedback via twitter including this tweet summing up exactly what we’re trying to do.
https://twitter.com/InternetNZ/status/806721249862782977
Hiria did an awesome job (along with the other panelists) and you can watch the livestream video here.
Brenda and I were very honoured to have been selected as speakers for the 2017 Linux Conference Australia conference. We flew out to Hobart and arrived in a very sunny and warm city.
Our talk was on the journey we’re doing at Whare Hauora. Both from the technology we’re using but also the obligation we have to residents.
The Internet of Houses: Whare Hauora
New Zealand’s housing is cold, damp, mouldy. Lack of heating and insulation means that homes are ill-equipped to deal with winter temperatures. These poor conditions are linked to increased illnesses and infection. Our homes are making us sick.
To fix a problem (and convince people to fix it) you must first measure it.
Whare Hauora trust uses sensors to measure the temperature and humidity of a room. The sensors must be:
Very low cost
Respect the privacy of the occupant
Be, look and feel friendly and safe
For a subset of the deployments, they must work:
without internet
without power supply
Whare Hauora is working with residents of social housing, and to empower those who currently have the least power over their living conditions.
This talk is about the journey to create Whare Hauora, the technology we used, and the generosity of the open hackers communities in New Zealand.
Our presentation was recorded and you can see the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaRjThUGXLE
We launched a Give a little page to see if we could get some donations to get a few tasks completed. Thanks to some amazing donators we managed to raise $850 on top of the funding us founders contribute. We really appreciated it and it allowed us to hire someone to help support us with application funding.
We applied for the Māori ICT Fund — the Ka Hao fund. This fund application took a lot of our time to pull information and research together and build out a plan and costings for the next year. We would love to thank Tim Herbert for all of his work to help put our application together. Without your help we wouldn’t have got it in!
It was a nervous wait but we’re super stoked to say that we were successful! We’re in the middle of planning and organising everything we need to do to deliver on our goals and outcomes for the next year. We can’t thank Te Puni Kōkiri enough for giving us an amazing opportunity.
Which brings us to today.
We’re currently organising a website redesign, setting up our internal operations so we can hire staff, setting up our first prototype in a suburb, translation of Whare Hauora into the top spoken languages (spoiler alert for the suburbs we’re entering it will be English, Samoan & Māori). We’re trying to organise this all so that we can deliver on our goals that ultimately ensure we empower and support those in poor living conditions. Here’s to a big year!
If you’re keen to help us with our open source project you can check out our github account or you can get in touch with us at hello@wharehauora.nz.
