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GoSun Releases DIY Kit to Get People to “Tinker” with its Solar Oven

by Chris Albrecht
July 31, 2019August 1, 2019Filed under:
  • Low Tech
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If making your own meals at the top of a mountain using only the power of the sun just seems too easy, then GoSun has a deal for you. With its new DIY kits, you can now construct your own solar oven as well.

GoSun builds fuel-free ovens that use a combination of parabolic reflectors and a cylindrical cooking chamber to cook food using only direct sunlight. The company makes a range of solar ovens from an ultra-portable version that weighs only two pounds ($139), to a higher-end solar + electric cooker ($399).

But all of those versions have actual designs with the components already built. With GoSun’s new DIY kit, which costs $119 or $149 depending on the size you buy, all you get is the chamber, a roll of reflector material and some cooking tins. Not only do you have to assemble it, but you have to come up with an oven design to base that assembly on.

That seems pricey, especially given the time it will take to design and build your own oven, but the cooking chambers are specific evacuated tube ovens, and not just something you’d grab at the Home Depot.

The idea of a DIY solar oven is in keeping with the ethos of a company that crowdfunds new products. But I reached out to GoSun Founder and CEO Patrick Sherwin to see if this was part of any larger initiative for the company. He emailed saying that this was “more of an experiment” and “our customers are frugal and DIY oriented. we are trying to serve more solutions to get more people tinkering with vacuum tube ovens.”

We’ve written before about how selling DIY kits could be a smart path for smaller startups. Companies can spend fewer resources on assembly, shipping parts is cheaper than shipping fully finished products, and customers are increasingly sophisticated about making things.

There are downsides however, as I’ve learned first hand. Companies need to make assembly instructions super clear, a lack of QA can lead to faulty parts being shipped, and any accompanying software in particular must be as bug-free as possible.

GoSun, however, is foregoing most of these issues by turning the entire process over to the customer. There are no instructions to follow and no software to install. Customers for the DIY kit will probably self-select, meaning that they’ll be fine with the lack of guidance, and will probably look forward to building their own oven and sharing designs with the GoSun community.

Of course, if GoSun’s DIY kit is too much work, people can always turn a Pringles can into a solar cooker.


Related

GoSun Goes to Crowdfunding to Kickstart its Series A

GoSun, the company behind the eponymous solar-powered ovens, announced today that it was cowdfunding its Series A round of financing. Technically, the company is looking to, pardon the pun, kickstart its Series A by raising just $500,000 on the StartEngine equity crowdfunding platform. If it reaches that goal, it will…

GoSun Debuts The ‘Solar Kitchen’ So You Can Cook (and Chill) Around The Clock

If you think solar powered cooking is something you can only do when the sun is out, think again. That's because GoSun, the company which got its start five years ago when it debuted its first solar oven on Kickstarter, has evolved its product line to what is essentially a…

GoSun Debuts the Dream, a Hybrid Solar-Powered Tiny Home

Apparently being the king of solar cooking wasn't enough for Patrick Sherwin. That's because this week the CEO of GoSun, a Cincinnati-based startup focused on building solar cooking products, debuted a hybrid solar-powered tiny home on wheels. Called the Dream, the portable home is packed with features for the sustainably-focused…

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