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Let's drop in on Wily and
look over his shoulder at his latest project.... |
Fireplace Fizzle |
On a cold bright morning
Wily was out shoveling show after a recent winter storm. He had just
finished throwing the last shovel full onto the side of his driveway when
his neighbor stopped by. After a few words about the nasty weather, the
neighbor asks Wily if he knew anything about fireplaces. Being the
only technical person in the neighborhood, Wily often got unusual questions
about this and that. Wily asked the neighbor if he was having problems with
his fireplace. The neighbor said that he indeed had a problem. His
gas fireplace would not turn always turn on. Some days it did and some days
it didn’t. .... |
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WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW is . Wind Power
Monitoring Blimp |
Wind
energy is becoming more and more popular. It is one of the fastest
growing sectors of all the renewable energy schemes. However, not
every location is suitable for capturing wind energy.
Trees, buildings and the lay of the land
can often conspire to reduce the wind energy to useless levels. One
way to determine if a location is suitable is to monitor the speed of the
wind over a period of time. The conventional way is to erect a tall
tower and position one or more wind speed indicators along it. Data
from those is then fed to a computer for later analysis. But, erecting
a tower can be expensive and time consuming.... |
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Bad Chinese
Capacitors
By: Dave Johnson
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I’m
seeing a disturbing trend. For several years now I have seen many
expensive electronic products die an early death due to poorly constructed
electrolytic capacitors. Nearly all of these bad devices are made in
China. Just last year I lost an expensive 1 year old HP printer due to
a bad capacitor. I traced the failure down to one bad capacitor, which
failed shorted. That shorted part killed a number of other parts.
So many parts were killed that repairing the printer was not practical.
A printer should last a lot longer than 1 year..... |
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New Products 2009
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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Magnetic Vehicle
Motion Sensor
By: Dave Johnson |
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Many months ago one
of my engineering associates (actually my software guy) showed me a neat
vehicle motion detection system he designed. To demonstrate how well the
thing worked, he gave me a powerful bar magnet and told me to go out into the
hallway, outside his laboratory office. He told me to hold the magnet
still while he turned on the system. He then closed the door. When
everything was set, he told me to wave the magnet up and down. I waited
a few seconds, and then moved the magnet rapidly up and down, from my knees to
over my head. The alarm sounded. I stopped moving the thing and
the alarm turned off. .... |
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Flaky Garage Door Opener
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On a hot summer day, I had just
finished mowing my front lawn when my neighbor walked over to me and asked
“you’re an engineer aren’t you?” I said that I was. He proceeded
to ask me if I might do him a big favor and have a look at his garage door
opener. I gave him a puzzled look but since he was just across the
street, I wiped my sweaty forehead and followed him toward his house. As
we were walking to his place, he told me that for the last several days he was
not able to close his garage door until later in the day, once it had
opened. .... |
story
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Bad Office Chair Wheels |
Last year I bought a chair for
my office. It is classic style with a high back and five caster type
wheels. The chair sits on a large plastic pad so the wheels easily roll.
One by one every one of the original casters has broken. I bought a set
of five replacement wheels and over the course of about 3 months I had to
replace every one of the original casters with the replacement wheels.... |
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Aluminum Pop
Can Energy Source
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Is it
possible to convert the aluminum in a pop can into pure heat
energy with high efficiency? How much heat could a bag of
crushed cans produce?.
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