# A Look Back at How ZenH2 Actually Came Together | Emission Free Generators 

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- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:377714
- Published at: 2026-08-31 21:38:23 UTC
- Updated at: 2026-08-31 21:38:33 UTC

## Author
Mark Collins

## Subject
Emission Free Generators 

## Content
Hi everyone,Back in February, I shared that I'd signed with Epic Publishing for my book, Think It – Make It – Sell It: A No-Nonsense Guide to Turning Ideas into Reality. If you missed that update, you can find it here.One chapter, "Build Ugly. Build Fast. Learn Faster.," gets at something that shaped how we actually built ZenH2. As I put it in the book, your first prototype “doesn’t need to look good. In fact, I’d almost worry if it did. At this stage, you’re not trying to impress anyone—you’re trying to find out if the idea in your head can actually work in the real world." That's where we started with ZenH2.My recommendation in the book is to “use what you have, build something rough, and get it working as quickly as you can.” That's more or less the next stretch of this evolution you see with ZenH2.We started thinking the fuel cartridge, shown above in blue, needed to be flat, so we conceived the power unit to be a similar shape, oblong. We built it in cardboard and it looked good. Then we made a 3D model that looked fine and worked okay, a bit like an old PC, and it was a fine start. Then we hit a snag with water input, then fuel capacity, then space, then heat. The original idea was to make something that looked different from a standard gasoline generator, but ultimately we ran into issues.So, it was back to the drawing board. We built each internal part out of plastic, cardboard, and similar shaped bits we found around the kitchen, and literally old shoelaces to show the wiring control loop. It altered the original shape thinking dramatically.As I describe it in the book, “you start discovering all the things you hadn't thought about. You make mistakes, ask questions, find people who know more than you do, change things, break things and build them again."In our next phase, we built what's called a breadboard, a board with all the parts sprawled out on one level, and laid out every component we knew we had to have. We stuffed it full of everything we could think of, then started reducing the component count and improvising. We ended up creating new intellectual property just by shrinking items down to save space, and a new outer casing started to develop.We went box shaped. It's a practical route for any appliance, but by doing that we took away the unusual, unique technology we had formed in our minds. By being square, we were square. So we had to think outside the box.We tried triangle, flat, circular, but the internal parts became too expensive to fit that way, so cost of goods took priority over aesthetics. Back to the cardboard cutout drawing board… then, we went to curves. Smooth, calming lines, with a unique look for a generator. Zen-like. The invention started to form itself, developing its own personality as the internal parts found their own shape. A quiet power that can give certainty when everything around you feels like it's falling apart. Smooth, calm, clean and dependable. The ZenH2 virtually named itself, through a combination of evolution in mechanical design, chemistry, and electronics.By the time you get here, you can see what I mean when I say you learn more from working with rough prototypes than anything else. Somewhere in this progression, the rough idea started becoming something very different.What you're looking at in this last image is what all the earlier, rougher versions were working toward. A unit that is lightweight, fits in a footprint smaller than a microwave, and stands for quiet, clean, dependable and constant power in times of uncertainty, as well as for fun or practical usage. None of that shows up on a sketch. You only find out if a design actually holds up once you've built it, broken it (quite a few times!), and built it again.If you'd like to follow more of my writing on the inventor process, I've opened a waitlist for the book here: https://inventorcode.com/waitlist.