2024 - 2026
Stack: Python, Jinja2, Java, JavaScript, Nginx, WebSockets, and bash.
SunBlock is an autonomous solar-powered server, built to explore the viability of solar-powered servers for mainstream compute. SunBlock was built end-to-end, from the solar setup (panel, battery, controller), to server computer, and software.
I was the lead engineer responsible for the entire tech infrastructure and the open-source maintainer for SunBlock. I set up the solar hardware, built a server manager over the web, built the telemetry page for users to know the live state, and built the Minecraft mod as the end-application for SunBlock.
All SunBlock code is open-source, ready to one-shot setup a solar-server without having to interface with low-level electronics.
In the grand scheme of things, computer gaming does not rank high on the list of things to worry about when it comes to decarbonization and energy transition. While great gains have been made in the energy efficiency of computers and consoles over the last fifteen years, game culture has only recently started to awaken to the increasing climate impact of global game culture across players, game developers, and hardware manufacturers.
SunBlock is a research-creation project synthesizing a solar-powered server running modded Minecraft bringing solar-data into the game-world as a game mechanic, illustrating a need for infrastructural intimacy between transitional systems and their users.
The goal of our project was to blend the material conditions of gameplay (the computer hardware, networking, and energy infrastructure) with the production of the game world. Rather than just playing a game with thematics or a message around energy transition, we are endeavoring to provide a direct, tangible, and playable experience of the energy infrastructures which make that experience possible.
I was responsible for all the tech. Setting up the solar infrastructure (thanks A levels physics!) and developing our software. I am also the open-source maintainer for this project.
Since then, we have expanded to a full set of solar-powered tools with tool healing, speed, and efficiency. We now have two servers that we call SunBlock One and SunBlock Two. We have published and presented around the world, and have launched a second survival multiplayer modpack: For the Trees.
Also, we got interviewed by CTV News!
Java (Minecraft Forge Mod), Python, Node.js, Express.js, Socket.io, React, SQLite, Jupyter
The irony of solar panels in Montreal, is not lost on us.