A CORUJEIRA

Lab

Off-Grid Design Lab

A place to tinker, in dialogue with the land.

Everything on this land was designed here and built by hand, from what the valley offers and what we could salvage. This is where we keep the record of it: the buildings, the planting, the art, and the small instruments that help us look after it all.

Each project has its own page with the method, the materials and, where there is code, a link to it. All of it is open, so another small project can borrow what works.

Principles

  • Do it ourselves. We design, build, repair and document what the land needs, and share how, so others can do the same.
  • Built from what's at hand: local timber, clay, stone and salvaged parts.
  • Solar-powered and low-energy.
  • Local-first: the instruments keep working without the internet.
  • Open, and documented for non-specialists.
  • Honest records: fixed methods, logged changes, open data.
  • Shared with the bioregion.

How we measure

We keep records over years with fixed methods, log every change, and open the data to anyone who wants to check it. Pouco a pouco, the records show whether the regeneration is working.

An invitation

We welcome ecologists to review our methods, funders to help grow these tools into a regional network, and neighbours who would like an instrument of their own.

Code on GitHub Substack Instagram

Instruments and tools

Solar-powered, home-built and open source. They watch for fire and track water and sunlight. The data stays on the land, and the instruments keep working when the satellite internet sleeps.

Vigia fire map around the land
Running

Vigia

the fire watch

Official fire risk, live incidents and satellite heat, gathered into one early warning for the valley.

Read more2026
The land dashboard on the kitchen tablet
Running

Land dashboard

the land at a glance

The kitchen tablet: the silo's level, the sun and batteries, the air in the yurt, and a land avatar who turns it all into plain advice.

Code2026
The herb garden guide
Running

Herb garden guide

a conversation with the garden

A guide to the 39 herbs of the medicinal garden, drawn from a trusted canon of traditional Western herbalism.

Visit2026
Identifying a surveyed plant with PlantNet in QGIS
Running

Plant mapping

every plant, to the centimetre

Each plant on the land is located with GNSS to the centimetre, photographed in place, and identified in bulk through a PlantNet plugin for QGIS that will soon be open source.

Code coming2026

Buildings

Small structures of timber, clay, stone and reclaimed material, each one a lesson in building with the place.

In use

The Sauna

the owl by the waterfall

An eight-person wood-fired sauna in Japanese cedar, modelled in Rhino, prefabricated over months, and shaped like an owl.

Page coming2025
In use

Clayhouse

a woodshed turned to clay

A solar woodshed reborn as a tiny house of clay, built across three summer sessions that doubled as open natural-building workshops.

Page coming2025
In use

Workshop

the makerspace

A sheltered bench with power tools, built in 2025 to give every other project a place to start.

Page coming2025
3D model of the reciprocal arch woodshed on its pallet deck
Built

Da Vinci woodshed

a reciprocal arch for firewood

A self-supporting reciprocal arch after Leonardo, woven from cryptomeria boards ripped into strips and raised on five Euro pallets. Its geometry was programmed before the first cut.

Read more2026

Land

The slow work of recovery after fire: replacing eucalyptus with a diverse, fire-resistant food forest, and planting medicine on the terraces.

Growing

Living firebreak

the young food forest

Seventy eucalyptus felled on contour beneath the power line, and more than 200 trees, shrubs and cuttings planted in their place.

Page coming2025
Growing

Medicinal garden

terraces above the creek

Terraces above the creek planted with more than twenty species of medicinal herbs,.

Page coming2025

Art and objects

Sculpture, light and living structures, made with other artists and makers.

Growing

The trellis

a living portal

A metal trellis sculpture at the way into the land, planted this autumn with a grapevine that should cover it by next year, in homage to the land's history.

By Jannis

Page coming2026
A ribbed wooden lantern lit and hanging by a window
Building

Lanterns

a fire that listens

Seventeen half-lap plywood lamps, sketched by hand, modelled in Rhino and laser-cut, now growing into programmable fire lanterns of 266 LEDs that respond to music.

Design Eska · Mechatronics Anca

Read more2026

Made with

Some of the work here is made together with other artists and makers. These are the collaborators whose work lives on the land.

Jannis

Metalwork

The trellis

Anca

Mechatronics

Lanterns

← Off-Grid Design Lab

Instruments and tools

Vigia

the fire watch

A fire lookout for a remote valley, bringing official fire risk, live incidents and satellite heat into one early warning.

Status
Running since October 2026
Runs on
Home Assistant, on the land
Cost
Free; two optional free keys
Power
No extra hardware
Licence
MIT
Vigia's fire map: alert rings around the land, a satellite heat detection, burnt areas from past seasons, rivers and creeks
Vigia's fire map: alert rings around the land, a satellite heat detection to the north-east, burnt areas from past seasons, and the rivers and creeks of the valley.

Why it exists

Vigia is Portuguese for a fire lookout.

About two decades ago a fire burned through this valley, carried by the eucalyptus plantations that still cover much of the Minho. In the summer of 2025 we watched the Gerês range burn from the hill above the yurt, ridge after ridge lit orange in the dark. Fire season here is part of the year, and living with it well means knowing early.

The information already exists, scattered across several places. IPMA publishes the daily fire risk for each concelho. Civil protection reports incidents to Fogos.pt. NASA's satellites pick up heat from orbit. The wind decides where any of it goes. Checking all of that on a phone, over a satellite connection, in the middle of the night, is how warnings get missed.

Vigia gathers these sources in one place on the land and speaks up only when a fire is close or heading our way.

What it does

A fire tile on the kitchen dashboard shows today's and tomorrow's fire risk on a five-step meter, any weather warning, how many fires are nearby, and plain advice when the risk is high.

A fire map covers 30 km around the land. Satellite heat is drawn as fire footprints, each one bright at the newest front and fading over 48 hours, like growth rings. Incidents appear with their status, alongside this season's burnt areas, the creeks of the valley, wind arrows, and the upwind sector shaded.

Alerts come in three tiers, each adjustable.

Close

Any fire within 2 km, whatever the wind.

Urgent: breaks Do Not Disturb and flashes the lamp-post lights.

Upwind

Within 5 km, with the wind blowing from the fire toward the land.

Urgent: breaks Do Not Disturb and flashes the lamp-post lights.

Watch

Within 15 km upwind, with wind of 20 km/h or more.

A normal notification.

Each fire alerts once, and again only if it moves up a tier or comes more than 1 km closer. Satellite detections older than 12 hours never raise a new alert.

How it works

Vigia is an open-source integration for Home Assistant, the platform that already runs the land's off-grid systems. Home Assistant fetches each source on its own schedule and keeps the results on site, so the tile, map and alerts carry on from the last data if the internet drops.

SourceGivesRefresh
IPMAFire risk today and tomorrow for the concelho; weather warnings for the district60 min · 15 min
Fogos.ptActive incidents reported by civil protection (ANEPC), often faster than satellites5 to 15 min
NASA FIRMSVIIRS satellite hotspots, up to about 3 hours behind10 min
EFFISThis season's burnt areas, © Copernicus6 h
Open-MeteoWind across the map30 min
OpenStreetMapRivers, creeks and lakes30 days
The land's weatherWind at home, for the alert ruleslive

A satellite hotspot can also be a sunlit roof or a farmer's burn, so satellite alerts say "heat detected" and point to Fogos.pt to check.

Vigia is a helper. Official advice from ANEPC and local civil protection always comes first.

What we've learned

  • Two kinds of data cover each other's blind spots. Civil protection reports often arrive first; satellites see fires nobody has reported yet.
  • Alerts need restraint. A tool that cries wolf gets muted, so each fire speaks once unless it gets worse.
  • Fogos.pt is a volunteer project. Vigia asks each user to request their own free key, polls gently, and credits the source.
  • Fire risk is published per concelho, and near a border the nearest one can be the neighbour's.
  • A pretend fire is the button we use most. Test mode places one upwind of home, so the tile, map and alerts can be tried safely.

Make your own

Vigia suits anyone in Portugal running Home Assistant. Fire risk, warnings and incidents are Portugal-only for now; satellite heat, burnt areas and wind work anywhere.

  1. Add the repository to HACS as a custom integration and download Vigia.
  2. Restart Home Assistant and add the Vigia integration.
  3. Request the two free keys, from Fogos.pt and NASA FIRMS, and choose your weather entity.
  4. Add the fire tile to a dashboard, and create alerts from the Vigia blueprint.
Install guide on GitHub

Related

Instruments · runningPlant mapping Instruments · runningThe land dashboard
← Off-Grid Design Lab

Buildings

Da Vinci woodshed

a reciprocal arch for firewood

A self-supporting arch after Leonardo, woven from short cryptomeria strips and raised on five Euro pallets to keep the firewood dry.

Status
Built 2026
Span
5.0 m
Depth
1.4 m
Timber
Cryptomeria, 45 × 72 mm strips
Base
Five Euro pallets
3D model of the woodshed: three families of bars woven into an arch over a deck of five pallets, tied together by runners
The arch modelled before cutting. The three colours mark the three families of bars that weave over and under one another.

Why it exists

The sauna and the yurt's wood burner run on firewood, and firewood seasons best somewhere dry with air moving through it. The woodshed gives it that, on a deck of pallets that keeps the stack off the ground.

Leonardo da Vinci sketched bridges made of short, straight timbers that lock together under their own weight. The same idea, now called a reciprocal frame, makes a strong arch from the kind of short stock a small workshop can cut and carry.

How it works

Each frame of the arch is built from short bars. Every bar rests on its neighbour and carries the next, so the load travels round the arch through a woven pattern of supports. Eight sections make the curve.

Runners laid across the frames tie them together along the depth of the shed. Each runner has a small notch cut under each end, 10 mm wide and 4 mm deep, which catches the edge of the bar it sits on and stops it sliding.

The geometry, programmed first

Before any timber was cut, the arch was worked out in a small tool. It takes the number of pallets, the span, the depth, the number of sections and the size of the timber, then draws the arch and gives the length and notch position of every piece. Changing one number redraws the whole thing.

The number of sections sets the height. The shed uses eight, which gives enough clear height inside to stand in.

The arch tool: inputs for pallets, span, depth, sections and base height beside the front elevation with its dimensions
The tool: inputs on the left, the front elevation on the right, shown here with a 4 m test layout.
Runner drawing: 1,600 mm long, 72 mm deep, with a 10 by 4 mm notch under each end
A runner from the test layout, with its notches marked for cutting.

Dimensions

SpanBetween the centres of the two foot cross bars5,000 mm
DepthFront to back1,400 mm
SectionsBars per side of the arch8
BarsCryptomeria strips, set on edge45 × 72 mm
RunnersNotched under each end10 × 4 mm notch
DeckEuro pallets in a row5

Build

  1. Lay five Euro pallets in a row as the deck.
  2. Rip 45 × 300 mm cryptomeria boards into 72 mm strips, four to a board.
  3. Cut every bar and runner to the lengths the tool gives, and cut the notches under the runner ends.
  4. Raise the arch on the deck frame by frame, and lay the runners across.

The build

The bare reciprocal arch frame standing on its pallet deck in front of a dry stone wall
The frame standing on its deck, before cladding.
The arch frame seen from the side, showing the bars weaving over and under one another
From the side, the bars weave over and under one another.
The woodshed clad in overlapping boards, with a ladder and a pile of firewood in front
Clad, with the first firewood waiting.

Make your own

The arch tool is open source. Set your own pallets, span, depth and timber, and it gives you a 3D model, the part drawings, a cut list and a printable build sheet. The defaults are the shed we built.

It calculates geometry only. Check the structure separately before you build.

Open the arch tool Code on GitHub

Related

Buildings · in useThe workshop Buildings · in useThe Sauna
← Off-Grid Design Lab

Art and objects

Lanterns

a fire that listens

Hand-sketched, laser-cut wooden lamps, now growing into programmable fire lanterns that respond to music and can join the land's fire watch.

Status
Building 2026
Lamps made
17
Body
5 mm plywood, half-lap joints
Light
266 addressable LEDs
Brain
ESP32, microphone, button and knob
Made by
Eska, design · Anca, mechatronics
A ribbed oval wooden lamp hanging lit on a rope cord beside a window
One of the seventeen lamps, lit.

The lamp

Seventeen wooden lamps were made in 2026. Each began as a hand sketch, was modelled in Rhino, laser cut from 5 mm plywood, then assembled with half-lap joints and wired by hand.

Rhino render of the lamp: curved plywood ribs held by two notched rings, one near the top and one near the base
The Rhino model. Curved ribs slot into two notched rings.
Laser cutting layout on two plywood sheets: rows of curved ribs and two kinds of notched ring
The cutting layout: ribs and rings nested on two plywood sheets.

The lantern

With Anca, the lamp is becoming an instrument. Inside, 266 addressable LEDs run physical simulations of fire, and the lantern can switch between them: a tungsten fire, a copper fire, and others.

A microphone lets the flame respond to music. A button and a knob on the lamp change the fire by hand, and an ESP32 lets it be programmed over Wi-Fi. Lanterns can be daisy-chained, and they can join Vigia, the land's fire watch, as one more way to raise an alert.

Soldering an ESP32 board to an LED strip, with laser-cut lamp parts and rope in the background
Wiring the electronics, with laser-cut lamp parts and rope cord nearby.

What's next

  • More fire simulations.
  • Linking the lanterns to Vigia's fire alerts.
  • Chains of lanterns for gatherings.

Credits

The lamp is designed and made by Eska. The lantern's mechatronics, from the electronics to the fire simulations, are by Anca.

Related

Instruments · runningVigia, the fire watch Buildings · in useThe workshop