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| Let's drop in
on Wily and look over his shoulder at his latest project.... |
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Touch Activated Battery Powered Latching Relay |
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Wily was just finishing his first cup of coffee when he got a
call from a home remodeling company. They needed a custom touch
activated switch for one of their clients. Wily sipped his coffee as
the caller described the switch.
The unit needed to be
fairly small. It would be wired into the underside of some kitchen
cabinets. A wire from the touch switch would be connected to a strip
of copper tape mounted just under the lip of the cabinets and would serve as
the touch sensor. When touched, they wanted a relay to switch 120vac
power to a string of fluorescent or LED lights, mounted under the cabinets.
With each touch of the
strip, the lights would toggle between an on and off mode. The total
light power was to be less than 100 watts. Wily gave this request some
thought and decided he would take on the project.... |
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con't page 7 |
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Wily Widget,
the Lone Inventor
with Gadget & Gizmo |
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| WHAT
THE WORLD NEEDS NOW is a.
Broadband Antennas for Metal Shops
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| I
recently moved to Lubbock Texas. I’m still in the process of setting
up my new electronics lab in my 30 foot by 40 foot all metal shop. The
shop is some 100 yards from the back of my house. Although I have good
cell phone, WiFi and Cordless phone signal strength over my entire acre lot,
all those signals drop to zero once inside my shop. The metal acts as
a large Faraday shield, blocking nearly all RF. The only radio signal
which we can pick up inside comes from a strong AM station, whose radio
tower is close by. Nearly all other AM and FM stations are useless.
I sure wish there were some kind of broad band antenna system which could
route RF signals into and out of a metal shop..... |
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con't on page 6 |
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Tiny Solar
Panels Using Photodiodes
By: Dave Johnson |
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There are times when you would like to harvest just a little bit of energy
from the sun. Unfortunately, there are not many miniature solar panels
available. Most panels are 10 to 50 times larger than needed. One way to
make your own miniature solar panel is to wire multiple small photodiodes in
series. The result might look something like the drawing below, which is a
made from 12 small BPW34 photodiodes. This panel is about ¾ of an inch
in each side and can produce about 6 volts at a milliamp. This may not
sound like much but for many applications it is plenty. Even smaller
arrays are possible if less power is needed.... |
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story con't on page 4 |
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Super Hot Ferrite Transformer |
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I got a desperate call from
an ultrasound cleaning machine company. For many years they had
successfully been making 350w units, which ran off 120vac and drove 6 big
40KHz piezoelectric transducers. But when the manufacture of the big ferrite
driver transformers they used in their driver board went out of business, they
were forced to find a replacement from another company. But, they could
not seem to get a replacement transformer to work properly. Transformers from
their new supplier would work for a while but soon got so hot, they smoked.
What were they doing wrong?.... |
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story
con't on page
3 |
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Bad Magic Mesh Screen
I saw this
product advertised on TV a while back and thought I would give it a try for my
shop. I have to leave the shop steel door open to maintain an RF
connection to the house through the cordless phone system. This leaves
the door open to bugs of every description. We thought this Magic Mesh
thing might be a good solution. Well, it does not work for me.... |
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story con't
on page 5 |
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Long Range Laser Communications
I got
an email from a hobbyist who wanted to know if a visible red
laser pointer could somehow be used in a long range free space
communications link, specifically an optical Ethernet. He
really wanted to know the practical range of a system using a
cheap visible red laser pointer. Based on my experience in
similar systems, I have a pretty good idea how far it could go
but let’s run some quick calculations and see what is really
possible.... |
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story con't on page 2 |
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