I’ve taken apart many disk drives, CD drives and floppy drives. The magnets are awesome! Another fun part is the motor. In the case of floppies and CDs, the head stepper motor is small, relatively powerful for its size, and can be used as a generator to drive a red LED connected directly to it
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I’ve built and blogged a ring oscillator that works good for making LEDs look like marching lights on a marquee. I think I could get 9 LEDs, the circuit and a 9V battery into an Altoids tin, and it would look cool. I’d have to paint over the ‘Curiously..’ whatever on the outside, though. The
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Two years ago I decided that I wanted to get a light meter. I had two old light meters for setting a camera, one was a Weston and the other a G.E. Both were not sensitive enought to give an accurate reading of a LED. I had some other choices, one was to use a
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I’m reading a timeline or chronology of the electricity in the U.K. It has a listing with a few U.S. items under the years 1980 and later. Indented text is from the chronology, my comments follow. U.S. legislation – 1. Power plant Fuels Conservation Act provided for converting 80 U.S. power stations from oil-firing to
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I got an alert with an Instructable question (pardon the poor txtng-like spelling): How would i used a joule theif and power 10 to 50 led on a circuit if i used a 5v power supply or a battery.? I wuld like to make a banner out of leds for my wife and i am
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Quantsuff sent me a link to this article about researchers who found a new or different way to increase the efficiency of a solar cell – make it more like a LED. I relate this experience to demonstrate that there are technologies out there that are waiting to make a major change in how the
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Quantsuff sent me a link to an article about a table that is used to grow moss and which furnishes a small amount of electricity. It is in the research stage, so not enough power is generated to do anything more than power a small device such as a LED for a short while. But
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I found this website that has some interesting info, including what to use for EM absorbing material. He says to use magnetic recording tape.
I got an email from QS showing how he put the buck DC-DC downconverter right at the point where it plugs into the proto board. This is really the way to go to eliminate any IR drops from the resistance of the leads. There are two items which I am concerned about, one being
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A friend asked me to repair a PC board that goes into one of his kids’ entertainment devices, I think it’s some kind of music organ. As can be seen, the current was so high that it vaporized the PC board trace. A few other parts look like they were overheated. He said the fan
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