Philip Cadoux ITP Blog

Energy: Kinetic and Measurement Project proposals

February 15, 2021

Kinetic

Update 3/1/21

I’ve made some good progress over the last week.

Kinetic

First on the kinetic front, I have done the following things.

  • Took apart a laser pointer and stole the diode

Pointer Stripdown

  • tested the diode in circuit

Diode in Circuit w 33ioT

  • Ripped apart a shake light
  • Pull out the contents, desoldered the original LED, soldered wires and the laser diode on

Solder

Prototype

  • Tested the laser reactive vinyl

The biggest things I learned is that I am not producing enough voltage to power the UV diode enough to make an impact. I am outputting about 2.7 volts and need around 4 most likely.

I have ordered new spools and begun preliminary work on the housing. I am at a standstill until it arrives.

The other thing I need to explore is a new capacitor. This one doesn’t discharge all of its energy fast enough to get a nice feedback loop for users.

VIDEO

Measurement

This was a bit rough. I printed this: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:802284, but it failed for me. I am back to the drawing board unfortunately.

Update 2/22/21

Please reference the below for concepts.

Since then, I have done a bunch of research into materials and feasibility. I am beginning to understand exactly what happens with electromagnetic induction, but am still wrapping my head around how much voltage it can provide. I am hoping to hop into office hours to go over a few things related to materials.

You will see in the below pictures, I have mapped out a better (although flawed, I’m sure) picture of what the circuit may look like. I want to charge a capacitor with energy coming from Faraday’s Law induction, then use the cap of the can as the “button” that will complete the circuit. This way, it can be charged up and stored for much longer than any other way. I still do not know a lot about capacitors, but I think we go over that this week.

I also spent some more time on the measurement project. I want to measure the output energy from my shower. Initially I had planned to use the “rainfall” part of the shower, but I think it makes more sense to create an attachment between the pipe and shower head that uses the full force of the water to rotate a motor.

Update 1

Faraday Spray Can

I was looking through all of the kinetic energy conversion mechanisms and I was having a lot of issues with thinking of pieces with rotational energy. I just didn’t have a lot of ideas. So, when I read about the faraday light, it was like a ~lightbulb~ went off.

So, I began to think of things that we shake often (i.e. sodas, spray cans, etc). When spray can popped into my head, I thought about how I could do that with electricity in some interesting way. Here is my idea:

Faraspray can

To push this idea further, I would like to store energy in a smaller capacitor (I want you to need to shake often). I could also see if there are ways to change colors on the UV sensitive paper (just not sure).

Measurement

Shower Head

My shower head is INTENSE. So, I’d like to know how much energy I can get from it. I think I can 3D print some blades that will rotate from the water pressure, then use insulated wires to grab the output and measure it with a multimeter.

Shower Measurement

Written by Philip Cadoux, current ITP student and Creative Technologist. Follow me on Instagram