Get Me An Alt
Many everyday gadgets, like a $149 smart plant waterer, are really just about $25 of pumps, tubing, and screws inside a custom plastic shell.
Core trick
Argon writes OpenSCAD for a product's printable parts, compiles them to STL and 3MF, and packs them onto plates.
Description
Many everyday gadgets, like a $149 smart plant waterer, are really just about $25 of pumps, tubing, and screws inside a custom plastic shell. Anyone with a 3D printer or an online print service could build their own, but figuring out the parts, sourcing hardware, and modeling printable files takes hours.
Get Me An Alt does that work for makers, students, and hobbyists. Paste a product link, YouTube video, or photo, and it generates a DIY build kit: a priced bill of materials with store links, STL and 3MF files packed onto build plates, an interactive exploded 3D view, and animated assembly instructions.
README excerpt
# Get Me An Alt > **Don't buy it. Get an alt.** Paste a product link, YouTube video, or photo of any overpriced gadget—a coordinated swarm of **Gemini 4 Argon** agents reverse-engineers it into a DIY alternative built from **plate-packed 3D-printed parts + off-the-shelf retail hardware**, complete with a live-priced BOM, compiled OpenSCAD/STL & 3MF print plates, IKEA-style animated 3D assembly instructions, and an interactive exploded CAD view. Built at the **Gemini 4 Argon SF Hackathon** (Google DeepMind × Cerebral Valley, Oct 25, 2026). See `AGENTS.md` for the build spec, `COORDINATION.md` for lane contracts, and `MESSAGEBOARD.md` for live multi-agent coordination logs. --- ## Live Links - **Production App:** [https://get-me-an-alt.vercel.app](https://get-me-an-alt.vercel.app) - **Flagship Instant Demo Project (`plant-auto-waterer`):** [https://get-me-an-alt.vercel.app/projects/plant-auto-waterer](https://get-me-an-alt.vercel.app/projects/plant-auto-waterer) - **Live Demo Manifest API:** [https://get-me-an-alt.vercel.app/api/objects/demo](https://get-me-an-alt.vercel.app/api/objects/demo) --- ## The Problem: 6× Retail Markup for Injection-Molded Plastic Consumer hardware gadgets—smart plant waterers, studio art easels, smartphone microscope stages, benchtop lab liquid handlers—routinely retail for **$120 to $600+**, even when their functional core is **$15–$30 of commodity microcontrollers, pumps, sensors, and metric fasteners** wrapped in proprietary injection-mold