Wind Generator with Hard Drive Magnets

By mrkooo From Otherpower.com Discussion Borad
I decided to build my first wind generator. No problems with the blades, they are 1m each (2m diameter rotor), I try them without load and work fine, very happy when I saw running so fast. But with the alternator, is anoother story, is very hard to get the magnets here in Peru, so I used HD magnets, I broke them in 2 pieces in order to have one pole. The problem is that nopw I have very little magntes. My winds are #21 wire and 160 turns, I expect to obtain al least 12V to charge a battery. Detail...

See Also...

• Hard Drive Generator From Hacker Gadgets

Hacked LED Mouse Light

by Alan Parekh From hackedgadgets.com
Most of us have a bunch of these old mice laying around collecting dust. If you didn’t make some cool art with your mice last week here is another idea to recycle it into a cool project. This article will show you how to turn an ordinary mouse into a flashlight, perfect for looking into computer cases that always seem to be in the darkest corner of the room. More...

See Also...

• Optical mouse cam From spritesmods.com
  

Mousebot Revisited

By jacob@makezine.com From instructables.com
Mousebot is a simple bot that uses two "eyes" to sense light and then turns towards the light. A single large "whisker" is mounted on the front of the mouse to detect collisions. A collision with a wall will cause the mouse to reverse and turn then take off in another direction. This project is pretty cheap, if you have a mouse to use the other parts can be obtained for less than ten dollars. Detail...

See Also...

• The Betall Bot - How to Build a Robot By robomaniac From instructables.com
• Simple Robot How-To From uC Hobby
• BEAM Robots From Simon Fraser’s
• Wikipedia gives quite a good definition what BEAM robotics From BEAM Wiki
  
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Electricity With Stepper Motors

From reuk.co.uk or TheBackShed.com
small stepper motors can be perfect for the job. Found in old computer printers (dot matrix, daisy wheel, and some laser), stepper motors are cheaply (if not freely) available and generate AC power at low rates of rotation (far lower than similarly sized DC motors for example). Therefore small wind turbine blades can be mounted directly onto the motor shaft rather than through a noisy and complicated gearing mechanism. Small stepper motors (i.e. under 1 inch diameter) are only really useful for powering a couple of LEDs, larger motors can be used to recharge batteries and much more. Detail...
See Also..

• PVC Wind Turbine Blades Form reuk.co.uk
• Stepper Motor Basics. Form reuk.co.uk
• Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States Link...
  
• Wind Energy Resource Altas South East Asiaresource data on wind speed
• Pringles Wind Turbine From instructables.com
• Wind Turbine FAQ From rpc.com.au
  

CDROM to Building a USB Fan

DIY: Building a USB Fancool USB Fan, so you can get cool all the summer while in front of your computer.
Detail..

Scanner Parts - Desk Lamp

by jpitz31on from instructables.com
Transform your old scanner that is just collecting dust in the closet into a cool tech lamp.

“This instructable shows you how to make a desk lamp out of scrounged scanner parts and a few extras from Home Depot. I have set up a small solar array, controller and a storage battery. I wanted to make some low power lighting that I can use in my office that would not consume a lot of power. I had a bunch of scanner parts lying around and decided to put them to good use.”

See Also..

• intro The return of the dead flatbed scanner from instructables.com , Makezine , hackedgadgets
• How Scanners Work from howstuffworks.com
• Using the scanner lamp inside your computer from ovelha.org

DIY Floppy Disk Craf

By: Kathreen Ricketson, Canberra, Australia
Source: Treehugger.com

The floppy disk was the medium of choice during the 80's and 90's, they are now relegated to landfill, and cost dollars to dispose of correctly. People are great at finding ways to recycle and are making the floppy disk into something useful! Instructables has a great 'how-to' on how to make stuff out of floppy disks. Try your hand at making a bag or if that is too much for you get some crafty geekery for your home office with this floppy disk pen holder from Etsy. Others ideas for re-using these floppy disks include, notepads like this or this and there is a simple little 'how-to' at gear log for these and more fun floppy disk geekery, but for something slightly more stylish try this bag.

More Info:

Floopy disk at Wikipedia

Diskette Handbag, Diskette Notepad from Fractalspin.com

Floppy Disk Bag from instructables.com

Make a starship enterprise out of an old floppy disk

Floppy Drive Pan WebCam

Making an web-controlled webcam panning unit out of an old 3,5" floppy drive, old CD-box, a paperclip, two nails, a rubber band and about 2 Euro worth of electrical components

Milan Gajic has made a cool Web controlled floppy drive powered pan cam. Some simple right and left commands on this page allow anyone on the net to have the floppy drive move the camera around to get look out of Milan’s window.

See also...

• How Floppy Disk Drives Work by Gary Brown From HowStuffwork *****
• Anatomy of a Floppy Disk Drive From From hardwaresecrets.com *****
• Floppy drive stepper motor by ashishrd
• Controlling Floppy Drive Stepper Motor via Parallel Port By Ashish Derhgawen. From CodeProject
• "Floppy" the Robot by E. Teevan and J. Herbert
• Floppy drive RC car - by Eliot Phillips
• Converting a Floppy Disk Drive into a Simple Robot II and I by Chris Barron
• How to use disk drive stepper-motors by Tomi Engdahl
• Electricity with Stepper Motors From reuk.co.uk
• SunFlopper , The dirt-cheap floppy-drive active solar tracking unit by Brian S. Julin

Wind turbine from Harddisk

By Brian S. Julin Link...
Another fantastically easy wind turbine, made with a hard-drive motor with the right type of pressure plate and some identical paper clips about as long as the drive radius. Again, there is really nothing to explain that the pictures don't easily convey, except I had to be careful not to strip the tiny soft-metal plate nuts. The resulting product is actually very well balanced when spinning.
See Also...

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