Brittany Bright flips a small white switch on a gray metal box and a warm glow radiates through the dark Hazelnut Grove library. Bright can finally enjoy a late night paging through the well-worn novels of science fiction writer Octavia Butler -- her favorite author.

The library is an escape from life in the homeless village, an ornate wooden shed donated by neighbors, but the glass doors don't let in enough light to read on cloudy days or after the sun sets.

There are 20 of the boxes at the homeless camp, donated by the inventors -- a group of high schoolers from Portland's private Catlin Gabel school. They created the JuiceBox, a solar-powered LED light and charger, to allow people living outdoors to connect to their communities.

Some use the boxes to power their laptops in the evenings, keep their phones functioning or just enjoy the evening.

"Especially in the winter when the sun sets at 5 at night, their day is over," said sophomore Solomon Olshin.

The 12-member InvenTeam at Catlin Gabel is an extra-curricular club that brings together robotics and engineering nerds with social justice-minded friends. Each year, they design a project that tackles a social issue with simple technology.

In years past, they created a water purifier out of a tire and a smartphone app that coordinates carpool rides.

This year, they focused on helping people without permanent housing, a problem the teenagers see more often as Portland's homeless population continues to grow.

"It's right here in our community, and they're people who need the most support," said Olshin, a sophomore. "There's a lot of need and it shows."

They brainstormed ways to incorporate solar panels into the project, a passion of another team member.

The JuiceBox - a play on calling energy "juice" -- is almost so simple it seems like it should already exist.

A solar panel connects to a heavy-duty battery surrounded by cut Styrofoam pool noodles in a metal box. The battery powers two large LED lights, a USB plug and a charging outlet.

Fully charged, it can run three to four hours a night for seven nights straight. But the solar panel with each of the lights means that they're recharging continuously most days, so they rarely run out of juice.

The team started in November and a few months later, installed prototypes at the village in North Portland.

The people at Hazelnut Grove used them for a while and then offered feedback for improvements. The boxes originally came with only a USB plug, but the campers needed to power their laptops and other devices wall socket-type plugs.

Olshin volunteered at Hazelnut Grove with his father sometimes, but most of the student inventors were unfamiliar with the issues homeless people face. Hazelnut Grove is a de facto village of more than a dozen people who built shelters and tiny homes for themselves on land in the Overlook neighborhood. They set rules for the community and police and support each other. The students spent time listening to the residents and were sometimes surprised at how many maintain jobs and lives outside of day-to-day survival.

"They really do need power and they do need these connections so they can be part of the community," said sophomore Layton Rosenfeld.

The students kept tweaking the design until the lights were simple enough to produce quickly, while being powerful enough to be useful.

Then they entered the Lexus Eco Challenge against hundreds of other high school teams with a plan to funnel any award money back into the project. They won $10,000, which should be enough for 30 more units.

Now, they're in phase two of the contest with $30,000 on the line. They need to show they can grow the reach of the project, and so are taking the JuiceBox to the world. The team published the design and instructions online for anyone to replicate.

Rosenfeld joined the InvenTeam with an interest in helping with outreach and communications. She had never taken a robotics course, but quickly learned how to put together the JuiceBoxes. The contraptions take two to three hours to make with the right tools and knowledge.

The ease that novices like her learned the design sparked the idea that others could easily pitch in. The InvenTeam hopes students across the country to start building JuiceBoxes for their communities, starting with nearby robotics teams they asked for donated batteries during the initial stages of their project.

"No matter where you are, there's a need for a system like this," Olshin said.

The team plans to also provide the boxes for the newly approved tiny house homeless village in the Kenton neighborhood. Ultimately, they'd like people in the homeless community to be able to make a JuiceBox for themselves or others.

"As you can see, it's not too high-tech," said Robin Attey, a senior, pointing at the pool noodles holding the battery in place.

"It's high-tech, but it's accessible," Olshin replied.

The cost and functionality of the components would have made this project impossible five years ago, said Dale Yocum, the Invent Team and robotics program director. But now, it's relatively affordable at $350 and even more so for the students because most parts are donated. They're hoping to secure a way to further reduce the cost of the most expensive part, the solar panels at $120 each.

It's not lost on the students that their project represents the gaping chasm between Portland's increasing socioeconomic divide. High school tuition at Catlin Gabel is more than $30,000 a year -- though about a quarter of the students receive some form of scholarship or grant to attend.

Rosenfeld acknowledged that, in turn, the students have access to a robotics lab that many high schools don't. This is one way to bridge that gap.

Attey loves robotics and joined the Invent Team for exactly that purpose.

"In high school, you sort of feel powerless in the world and you want to help," she said. "You can take skills you're already interested in and apply that to the real world."

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger