Its been referred to as the ultimate solar powered man-cave and appropriately, it was built by a guy named Jono.
Unlike some man-caves found in Australia, it isn’t decked out with beer cans from all over the world; nor stolen borrowed found reclaimed rescued road signs – it’s all rather luxurious and very high tech.
Jono’s man-cave is also a tower – an ubergeek treehouse of sorts called SkySphere.
“From an early age I have always liked to make things,” says Jono, who is a Plastics Engineer/Graphic Designer as well as director of his own IT company. “The only difference these days is I import 4 tonnes of steel from China instead of raiding building sites for wood to build my tree houses.”
Among SkySphere’s many features:
- Remote Controlled by custom Android app.
- Fingerprint entry motorized door
- Refrigerated, in-couch beer dispenser <— yep, there’s the beer.
- Miracast wireless display projector
- Wireless sound system
- Computer generated voice dialogs
- 360 degree viewing window
- Custom built queen size Bed
- Dimmable colored LED lighting
- High speed point to point wireless internet
- Central ladder
- Rooftop viewing platform
- Natural Light Portal for column
The tower is also fully solar powered and uses custom designed, semi flexible solar panels.
The smartphone app used to control SkySphere is also quite impressive – and of course includes beer functions. Perhaps not surprisingly, it appears a great deal of thought, effort and expense has gone into beer related features for Jono’s hangout.
For all the whizz-bang technology, there is one glaring omission given the amount of beverages that may be consumed within the SkySphere – the lack of a bathroom. Jono says he just pees off the roof, which you have to admit would be kind of fun (assuming you’re a guy). Noting the wind direction would probably be a good idea before doing so though – and the lack of a safety rail could pose a significant danger.
You can drool more over the SkySphere here. Jono’s not planning on selling SkySpheres – yet – but even if he does, we imagine the shipping costs to Australia would be rather steep. He may have a great market here for the beer dispenser technology though.
Jono’s previous project was the TreeBach; a real tree-house and a much simpler affair. It also uses solar panels, but was built with mainly scrounged materials and cost around USD $1,700. SkySphere cost USD $50,000 just for the materials. Jono estimates he spent around 3000 hours building the SkySphere project.
