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look over his shoulder at his latest project.... |
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Fence Alarm
It seemed to Wily that frantic phone calls
from clients always tended to come in the morning. He had just taken
his first sip of morning coffee when the phone rang. It was from a
cattle rancher in Montana. It was deer hunting season in Montana and
this rancher was fed up with hunters cutting his barbed wire fence, to gain
entrance onto his properly.
He called and wanted to know if there was
any way he could receive an alarm signal whenever the fence was cut.
The rancher had looked on the Internet and couldn’t find anything that
seemed appropriate for him.
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WHAT
THE WORLD NEEDS NOW is a. PIGEON SCARECROW
I have an area on my roof where a large flock
of pigeons like to roost. Their nesting materials and droppings really
make a mess, which often clogs my roof gutters. Perhaps one way to scare
them away is with a device mounted on the roof near their favorite roosting
spot.
The device could contain an infrared motion
detector. When it detected their motion, a spring loaded cover would
suddenly pop up, like a jack in the box. The thing could be equipped with a
small solar panel, which could charge up either a super capacitor or a long life
battery.
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Electrodeless
Fluorescent Lamps
By: Dave Johnson
Compact fluorescent lamps are quite popular
these days. They can offer more light for less power when compared to
standard incandescent lamps. When made by quality companies, they can also
outlast standard lamps. But, many of the lamps coming out of China are
poorly made. Very few of the lamps I have purchased lately have lasted more
than two years, even when the package says that the lamp would last 5 years.
I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences.
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New Products 2008
New product announcements are made nearly every
day. I subscribe to many trade journals and each is filled with
hundreds of flashy advertisements. But, only a few of those product
ads catch my eye. Since I’m a circuit designer, I especially like
those components that trigger many new application ideas in my mind.
Sometimes it is the smallest products that are the most useful. I
often discovered new products in surplus electronic catalogs. The
surplus companies often buy up stock that came from companies that went out
of business. Bad marketing or bad management may have killed a
perfectly good product idea. Their loss can be your gain if you can
spot the bargain.
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Light Powered Battery Charger
By: Dave JohnsonI’ve been thinking
about another way to charge a cell phone battery without wires. The
usual method, as outlined in my “wireless battery charger” post, is with a
magnetic field coupled circuit. This works but is somewhat complex and
expensive.
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Vapor Pumping --
About three decades ago I was working for a
company which manufactured and installed complex systems that measured the
pollutants belched out from utility size smokestacks in large coal fired power
plants. These probes were mounted toward the top of the stack and measured,
temperature, gas flow, particulates, oxygen, sulfur dioxide and nitric oxides.
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Bad Path Light Design |
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On one of my early morning
walks, I spotted a broken solar powered path light, which had been tossed out
into the weeds near a railroad track. I picked up the thing and put it
in my pocket. I thought some of the parts may come in handy. When
I got home and I took a closer look at the thing, I noticed something strange.
As shown below, at first glance, the 1.75 inch by 1.75 inch photovoltaic panel
looked like many of the other devices I’ve seen on solar powered path lights.
It looks like four overlapping solar cells with their shinny metallic
collector strips
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Shippable Energy Container
Let’s imagine a large cargo container, which would store electrical energy,
and could be transported from a source of energy to anywhere it might be
needed. The containers could be shipped by truck, rail or boat and
would provide electrical energy, much like a gigantic battery.
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