Written by our very own electronics instructor, Paul!
Well, there’s certainly no shortage of amazing electronics projects around Make lately. This week’s meetup started with advanced rotor and stator designs for Charles and Kevin’s DIY wind turbine generator. Their creativity and construction quality continue to be very impressive. But electromagnetic physics is an incredibly complex field, and the performance differences between designs were a constant surprise to all of us. One design produced only a couple of volts at 1/4 amp, while another produced almost double that.
Charles also brought in an interesting experiment. He purchased an inexpensive $20 DC motor that we took apart to see how a cheap commercial motor is constructed. As you can see from the photos, the machine wound rotor is incredibly dense. Since DC generators are just DC motors run in reverse, this resulted in a device that can produce almost 10 volts and 1 amp. It’s not suitable for a wind turbine for other reasons, but it was interesting to see the difference.
Michael also came in to show us the final design of his radio-controlled “dragster.” This is the final project for a class he has been teaching to younger Makers. It’s another of his impressive builds, made from inexpensive off-the-shelf parts and laser-cut wood. After a lot of effort, he was able to convert his code from C++ to MicroBlocks, which eventually worked perfectly and was easier for students to understand and modify on their own.
Finally, a very young Maker came in to show off his underwater robotic submarine. He did have a little help from a parent, but it was still a very impressive build for a 10-year-old. He obviously understood exactly how it worked because, when he demonstrated it to me and one of the switches wasn’t working properly, he excitedly explained the how and why of the problem.
If you’re interested in going a bit deeper into using microcontrollers with various input and output devices like joysticks, motors, LEDs, etc., you might find the Electrics & Microcontrollers: Inputs + Outputs class interesting. The next one will be on Thursday June 11th from 10-2 are there are still two spaces left. Hope to see you there!