Ask HN: An "open source hardware forge"?
Some context behind my question: I'm an Indian and India has been making rapid progress, specially in the last ~10 years. Now that's mostly a good thing except with rapid progress and industrialization comes increased power usage. People who were using desert coolers earlier are now using ACs. ACs are both complex, have a "stored/laggy" effect, and also have an enormous electricity usage.
A couple of examples: My winter electricity bill (very mild winters so I don't use heater) is Rs 440 (=$5.5), it's about 44 kWh of consumption. My peak summer electricity bill (temperatures can get up to 44C) is Rs 6600 (=$83) for 66 kWh of consumption. It's very common these days for middle class families in India to have a 2 or more ACs.
This doesn't bode so well for the energy consumption in future and frankly I see this as a problem that needs to be looked at now to avoid a crisis later.
So to continue, if there were open source AC designs which were modular and supported multiple air outlets, that might reduce electricity consumption. Central cooling isn't a concept you can expect homes to have (if it even makes sense at such a small scale?).
Also, given how hardware companies are progressively locking down their platforms and becoming increasingly user hostile, I wish that the Open source hardware platform can provide a competition to them thus making them improve their act (Kinda like Linux vs Windows). Maybe if it becomes popular, someone like the framework company could sell high quality components?
If such an Open Source hardware platform doesn't already exist, what do you guys think prevents it from existing? What will have to change or improve?