RSSLED blow light
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Apr 30, 2007 06:00 AM
Electronics |
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Definitely look forward to an instructable on this!
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A beer can propeller would be cool.
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LED blowies! Genius name! And we can definitely do it for less than $20. Let us know if you find a good motor to use. Let's put them on our bikes and car antennas.
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Best bet would be a vibrating pager motor with the counter weight taken off and replaced with a propeller.
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"Best bet would be a vibrating pager motor with the counter weight taken off and replaced with a propeller."
I just read that comment and thought "no way you could get that kind of voltage of a cell motor", so I checked it out. A normal cheapo super standard motor made the red 1.8v LED I grabbed flash up for a split second. A few circuits float up in my mind of how you could make it glow better, but I don't see any room for such circuitry in the model above.
So, time for the cell phone motors. I tried 3 models, spun them inefficiently by hand. Nothing I could see. So I spun a larger one with another motor and I got light, but that's a lot of speed.
I was aware that standard DC motors weren't the best generators, but I never bothered to find out why until now: http://www.otherpower.com/toymill.html .
So, in summary you need to spin the motor something like 20% faster than it's rated standard operating RPM's to get the kind of voltage the motor is rated for. If you want better performance from a standard motor you need a low-RPM one that isn't brushless (anybody know why?). Otherwise make a real alternator and use that. I'm willing to bet the toy here uses a small alternator specifically intended for the kind of RPM you get off of that fan, and there are 2 blue LED's for a reason: one operates on one phase and the other operates on the other (poll reversed) phase. That way the fan is spinning at a descent enough speed to have both LED's lighting up in alternating cycles fast enough to be perceived as simultaneous.
So, let's look for suitable motors or tiny alternator systems?
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Kagetsuki! Thanks for the link.
The rest of your comment made sense after going there.
I suggest it to others that read the comments also.
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what about combining this with the sloar engines developed for solar rollers and other BEAM type robots?
i'm a big fan of the FLED as a circuit myself.
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How about a propeller POV gadget?
Would be neat to have on some pinwheel garden decorations.
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Can somebody point me to a source for very small alternators?
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Would the motor from an electric tooth brush work, for say the bike or car ant. mounted idea?
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