Get the ultimate DIY solar power device!
It’s happening! More solar, more autonomy with Lytefire 4.
Get access to 300-350°C / 572°F solar heat at your place.
Build your own super solar stove to cook food for your family and friends.
We’ve worked and built solar concentrators in over 9+ countries! Now it’s your turn. And by downloading your guide, you’ll be able to access to the forum and to all the resources of the Lytefire builder’s community!
Now it’s time for you to grow your autonomy and to embrace the free power of the Sun.
With family and friends, start your solar meals, cook, grill, boil, roast your coffee and grow your autonomy with a new clean energy source!
But before that, you have to build your own super Lytefire solar concentrator !
So check your tools, prepare your wrench, your bolts and your welding machine, and invite your maker team.
The Lytefire was invented to develop autonomy also in community garden, eco-village or offgrid living.
It becomes a central place where people come together around sustainable energy and good solar baked food.
For fairs, festivals, schools and camp sites, it also creates an immersive educational experience!
Join the Lytefire community!
By purchasing your guide, you’ll join the Lytefire community. We call it the Lytefire Hub. It’s a place to exchange with other creative and enthusiastic DIYers. On the Hub you’ll find a community page with inspiring news, a forum to ask questions and a map to see where other Lytefire users and enthusiasts are located. Buy the guide now to join the community!
Is it efficient? Hell yeah!
The Lytefire has a very high efficiency, for use in events, community gathering and semi-professional uses.
You can easily cook for a large amount of people, thanks to this big mirror surface which concentrates massively the power of the sun (more than 100x !)
What to do with a hotspot up to 300-350°C / 572°F ?
Spend awesome days in the sun with family and friends, cook and grill amazing food and grow your independence with this new source of energy!
“The Lytefire 4 has the amazing tendency to bring people together wherever it’s used.”
- Lucas Catro, solar enthusiast from Basel, Switzerland
Now, How to Get It ?
Here’s the fun part: you have to build it =)
But don’t worry, everything is explained.
From the dimensions of each part to the tool to use, with videos and plans, you will exactly know what to do and how to do.
Our super Lorin (the maker guy in the video at the top) builds it almost everywhere with local materials and a beginner teams.
Testimonials
Your design is easy to understand and straight-forward to build. We achieved the advertised temperatures in the first try with none of the complications experienced by other students that used a different solar concentrator design.
Bilal Gondal, Engineering Undergraduate, Pakistan
We made popcorn as a snack this morning, (look how hot the cooker got at 9am). Then this afternoon the students used it to make a stir-fry using ingredients from the garden (collard greens, garlic, onions, eggplants, and herbs).
Shawn Connell, Staff at GrowNYC, USA
These tools are quick to build and effective for the job. As indicated by the Lytfire team it really did take us 2 hours to calibrate the mirrors but then our surprise was great once the water started boiling and the veggies and burgers started to sizzle in the pan!
Kurt Baumann, Building Teacher, Switzerland
I’m especially excited about this technology because it can be built locally, so it will not be limited by the harsh import duties imposed on us
Moutasem Hassan, builder and entrepreneur, Palestine
"Instead of buying charcoal, we use the sun", great to see such a simple solution with so many applications - including commercial food production - in so many places (many in Africa, but also the video features Switzerland and Finland).
J. Turner
FAQ
The following estimates are based on 1) having the basic tool set, the three jigs, as well as grinder, drill press, vice grips, C-clamps and metal chop saw, 2) 1 competent fabricator and a dedicated workspace, and 3) all material onsite.
A setback-free build can take 32 hours. 40 hours is a reasonable guess for an experienced builder.
You can seriously decrease that amount of time by putting on some good music and inviting enthusiast friends.
Good vibes and memories under the sun, this will be too short for you!
Video: The Lytefire 4 in action - here it’s used in freezing cold Finland in November - of course it works anywhere else there’s sun!
A: A variety of materials are required for the build. Below, we attempt to describe where to purchase the requisite materials.
Steel: all structural steel profiles for the Lytefire 4 should be available from most steel retailers. The stainless steel for the oven might be more difficult to find, but most sheet metal retailers or distributors should be able to help.
All fasteners (screws, nuts, bolts, rivets) should be available at any big hardware store (Home Depot and Leroy Martin, etc).
Mineral wool or glass wool insulation should be available at most large building centers. (oven version)
2 or 3 mm mirrors are available at many custom glass workshops. Cheap mirror is available at recycled home works stores (for example, Habitat for Humanity ReStore in North America). Also, Walmart has 4 foot by 1 foot bedroom mirrors for $7.99CAD that are 2mm thick mirror and yield 4 mirrors each, compared to 5$ per mirror cut by local Toronto glass shop)
Most of the bits and pieces (for example, wheels, latches, hinges, drill bits, cutting disks, etc) are available at big hardware stores like Home Depot and Leroy Merlin.
Every single thing is listed and detailed in the manual.
The Video Tutorials
Why Online Content
After Covid-19, we have decided to bring our knowledge to your doorstep.
Since we embarked on this journey to decentralize access to clean energy globally we’ve worked and built solar concentrators in over 12+ countries!
Our project managers have taken hours of footage in this process, explaining everything that’s needed to know about Lytefire 4.
In parallel we have created a graphical construction guide allowing anyone to build the technology.
Now it’s time to spread it all over the world. And Internet is the most powerful tool for that.
To Go Beyond - We have done so many things with the Lytefire 4!
The focal point, or hotspot, of the solar concentrator can accommodate a wide variety of cookware, but it can power a lot more than just cooking: it can power for example an oven, a roaster, or a dehydrator (the cooktop is included in the Lytefire 4 Construction Guide).
The size of the concentrator can be increased or decreased (the heat output changes accordingly) to suit individual needs and the materials used for construction are basic metal and glass parts that are available in any larger town no matter if you are based in Southern Africa or Northern Europe.
You can build (or repurpose) a small oven, roaster or dehydrator which can be mounted on the upward reflector, or replace the upward reflector entirely to power something else.
For example, to make pizzas we used an off-the-shelf pizza stone and just mounted it on top of the upward reflector with a large lid to create top-heat. We measured temperatures up to 400°C on that rock!
Build It, Spread It!
We are a team of makers and we are very happy to help you and all the other solar enthusiasts over the world to build it and spread it.
Share your pictures and videos, ask anything you want, we are solar brothers and sisters.
Join us in this adventure.
Lytefire Online Material
Access immediately:
- Lytefire 4 construction guide.
- 1st Tutorial: Installing the Mirrors
- Tutorial 2: Building the Upward Reflector
Lytefire 4 - Specs
The standard application for the Lytefire 4 is the cooktop also known as the upward reflector. The upward reflector redirects the rays of the sun upwards to strike the bottom of a pot, wok, frying pan, small oven, or kettle.
Technical Specs
Produces 2000 Watts of thermal energy
Reaches up to 350°C / 662°F
Width: 2m,length: 3m, height: 2m
Contains 4 square meters of mirror
Requires a sunny space at least
4.5 meters in which to operate
No fuel costs
The cooking surface and focal point are at a convenient waist-high height and you are far enough from the mirrors so that you can stay cool using a big beach umbrella while cooking.