Living without standard utility hookups like electricity, Internet, water, and sewer comes with a whole host of challenges, all of which are most commonly solved by spending lots of money. For electricity, a solar array or a generator is fairly common. The Internet can similarly be accessed via a satellite link if wires aren’t available. For water, most people will drill a well, but that gets similarly expensive. [Cranktown City] recently bought an off-grid home and needed a way to get water to it on a budget, so he built this water trailer instead.

The trailer started off as a standard single-axle utility trailer. The weight rating was probably around 3,500 pounds or 1588 kg. A few support structures were welded in. The supports serve double duty as a frame for two IBC totes, which can hold about 550 gallons or 2082 liters of water. The trailer also got upgraded wiring, including some extra wires to support a backup camera. The two totes were then plumbed together with a ball valve for an outlet. That valve was mated to a motor that can be remotely activated from within a truck to dump the water out into a cistern.

On the cistern side, [Cranktown City] welded up a door with a linear actuator and a remote control. When he’s ready to dump the water into the cistern, he can easily back up the trailer using the backup camera, open the door to the cistern remotely, and then activate the ball valve on the trailer to start filling the reservoir. It’s a clever solution to bringing water to his off-grid property at a fraction of the cost of a drilled well. We’ve seen some other unique ways to live off-grid as well,  like this hydroelectric generator, which might offset the cost of an expensive solar array.

Amazon’s Ring is rolling out a $5,000 solar-powered surveillance trailer for parking lots, construction sites, and events — part of a broader expansion beyond the doorbell and into commercial security.

The new Ring Mobile Security Trailer, announced Tuesday morning at CES, is designed to be an alternative to the heavy-duty rigs often seen at industrial sites. It uses a 360-degree camera with 4k resolution, which the company says ensures high-definition visibility without blind spots.

Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018, has renewed its focus on security under Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who returned to the tech giant last year after his 2023 departure.

The move puts Ring in more direct competition with commercial security players like Verkada and Motorola Solutions, which sell cloud-connected cameras and mobile surveillance systems, and traditional industrial providers such as Bosch and Hikvision known for rugged security gear.

Ring’s strategy appears to be leveraging its brand recognition in residential security and Amazon’s infrastructure — including Amazon Sidewalk connectivity and AWS cloud services — to undercut competitors on price as part of a larger system that bridges home and business security.

Set for release this spring, Ring’s trailer can run on line power with battery backup or operate fully off-grid via solar panels. It comes with built-in LTE connectivity, meaning it requires no external internet infrastructure to work. It can also be detached and mounted in a truck bed or used as a standalone station, making it adaptable for temporary deployments like festivals.

It’s part of Ring’s new “Jobsite” security portfolio, which also includes a new Ring Elite camera line designed for large-scale business settings like logistics yards and campuses.

Separately, Ring introduced “Fire Watch,” a new feature developed in partnership with the non-profit Watch Duty. It provides real-time wildfire alerts directly within the Ring app and allows camera owners to voluntarily share periodic snapshots with first responders.

Apart from its new commercial offerings, the company announced several new residential security features and products.

• “Unusual Event Alert” uses AI to learn a home’s routine patterns to filter out false alarms.
• “Active Warnings” use computer vision to identify potential threats and play automated audio messages to deter intruders.
• An updated Ring Car Alarm, available for pre-order today for $50, uses GPS and Sidewalk connectivity to track vehicles and send motion alerts even when parked remotely.
• The new Ring Appstore marketplace will let third-party developers build specialized apps that integrate with Ring cameras and data.
• A new line of sensors priced between $30 and $70 connects via Amazon Sidewalk to operate without Wi-Fi or hubs, covering security, safety, and smart controls.

Ring announced that the Sidewalk network itself is expanding globally, launching in Canada and Mexico in the coming months before reaching Europe, Australia, and Japan later this year.

An old joke in physics is that of the “spherical cow”, poking fun at some of the assumptions physicists make when tackling a new problem. Making the problem simple like this can help make its fundamentals easier to understand, but when applying these assumptions to real-world problems these assumptions are quickly challenged. Which is what happened when [Seth] from Berm Peak attempted to tow a huge trailer with a bicycle — while in theory the bike just needs a big enough gear ratio he quickly found other problems with this setup that had to be solved.

[Seth] decided on a tandem bike for this build. Not only does the second rider add power, but the longer wheelbase makes it less likely that the tongue weight of the trailer will lift the front wheel off the ground. It was modified with a Class 3 trailer hitch, as well as a battery to activate the electric trailer brakes in case of an emergency. But after hooking the trailer up the first time the problems started cropping up. At such a high gear ratio the bike is very slow and hard to keep on a straight line. Some large, custom training wheels were added between the riders to keep it stable, but even then the huge weight still caused problems with the chain and even damaged the bike’s freehub at one point.

Eventually, though, [Berm Peak] was able to flat tow a Ford F-150 Lightning pulling a trailer a few yards up a hill, at least demonstrating this proof of concept. It might be the absolute most a bicycle can tow without help from an electric motor, although real-world applications for something like this are likely a bit limited. He’s been doing some other bicycle-based projects with more utility lately, including a few where he brings abandoned rental e-bikes back to life by removing proprietary components.