Kinetic Project
In order to demonstrate how we turn motion into light, we decided to use a DC gear motor to generate electrical power to illuminate 3 LEDs inside our small house.
Our Process
Our house was designed and laser cut by me. Our 3 LEDs were appropriated from some electrical tea lights I had leftover from another project. We initially attempted to capture the power of the wind by attaching a Rotor that we 3D printed (Thingiverse file linked to image). It quickly became obvious that the Rotor may not be the most efficient tool to convert the motion of the wind into motion in the motor. We found an anemometer on the junk shelf and attempted to use this instead. While this was catching wind more easily it was still not enough to get the motor to spin. We tried increasing the size of the anemometer cups by adding cardboard but recognized we would still need more wind force than we could conveniently harness.
At this point, we started to explore ways we could create a small hand crank that we could attach to the motor. After revisiting the junk shelf, I pulled a set of gears from a broken printer. We used these, some other found parts, and a lot of hot glue to finally create a hand crank that could spin the motor fast enough to generate enough power to turn on the lights.
About our Motor
Open Circuit Voltage: 4.5 Volts
Short Circuit Current: 0.5 Amps
About our Lights
Voltage Needed: 3 Volts
Current:
Because we had initially planned to use wind capturing devices that could only spin in one direction we had no need to rectify. We switched to a hand crank after soldering the rest of the circuit together so right now the crank can be spun in the opposite direction and nothing visually happens. Going back we would either add a mechanical stop so you can only turn the crank in one direction or a rectifier circuit so the LEDs can be illuminated no matter which direction the crank is turned.
