Objective: The concept for the Gravity Light was pioneered by Deciwatt, a company that manufactures and sells these lights to villages in Africa. The device is an LED light that runs when a sandbag or similar weight attached to the mechanism is dropped from a certain height. The conversion of the weight's potential energy into mechanical energy allows the light to turn on and run for some amount of time.

I was part of an initiative by Fab Labs concerning this device. We wanted to teach people in rural Bandarban and the Sundarbans to construct the mechanism from locally sourced raw materials such as bamboo and mud. Our vision was to teach them this and provide the necessary materials so they could eventually turn this into a commercial trade for themselves. Some of the parts would have to be bought, such as the dynamo.

Approach:  We would use reconditioned dynamos from cars and motorbikes that could be bought for cheap. In the end, we were able to build and demonstrate a prototype successfully. However, due to certain limitations and shortcomings in research, we were unable to construct the devices purely from locally sourced materials as we had hoped. We believe further research could solve this problem, but we had to drop our own research after that point.