Harnessing sound power

Step 3 More

To increase its output you can place the speaker up against a speaker playing some music or if you happened to own a jet, you could strap it onto the engine and make some serious electricity!

Comments

[4sc4n10]

Sometimes you have large signs printed on plastic fabric, mounted on sandows. Just add a voice coil and you've got a huge transducer !

[morgangalpin]

Would using a microphone produce more energy than a speaker? Are they not designed to be sensitive to collecting sound? You might be able to collect a wider range of sounds. Maybe a microphone is just a speaker in reverse much like you've done here.

Here's a random link I googled: http://www.marktaw.com/recording/Electronics/MicrophonesSpeakers.html

I think the cone/funnel idea is an excellent one for increasing the sound collected by a single speaker. I would definitely expect it to increase the power output.

I'm going to try this today.

[Super_Nerd]

Well it depends on what microphone you use some types of microphones only change resistance and do not convert sound to voltage...

[hifatpeople]

microphones and speakers are built the same, the only real difference is that speakers are made of thick material and microphones are made of very thin material.

Speakers are thick so they can produce louder sound.
Microphones are thin so they can be vibrated easily (more sensitive to sound)

[Applebohn]

That's a very interesting idea! I bet you're right, it would make perfect sense that a mic would generate more electricity than a speaker!

[talhakamran2006]

Guys, I am desperate to make electricity. I am from Pakistan and we are facing electricity crisis here. My house is out of electricity for more than 12 hours. I have all sorts of nasty experiments to do with this idea.
My personal thoughts are that instead of bass pitch sounds like the one you get after a slap in your ears would work better :). I saw in a video that a guy re-magnetised ferrous magnet by using such sound from his speakers. Which I take as kinetic force to align poles ones again in a magent.

wish me good luck guys.

[Vissy]

I'd seen a video/interview with a guy (from a university?) tat was using the same concept to use sound to produce cooling in a desktop PC.

I assume this works the opposite of powering a speaker. Yay magnets!

[Applebohn]

that awesome, sound interesting!!

[omgitzstegman]

Cool idea, did you think about using a very large "speaker cone" attached to your speaker coil?

[mortso]

...and let's not forget the whole range of powerful Cell, Radio transmitters out there... basically putting energy into the air in a certain spectrum— like sound! How about capturing that energy as a pure energy source... no "listening".. just watts of RE-captured power. just "another" thought! lol

[Applebohn]

LOL

[mortso]

I wonder about using a "bank" of speakers... several in series or parallel to capture the entire range of sound... several octaves in both directions from human hearing... placed into a busy "city" environment... I'll bet you could generate 24 volts and up to a couple of amps. Worth a try? How about a long "wire" mic next to busy trains and freeways? Or what about capturing the very rumble of the earth in ultra low freq piezos? the possibilities are endless. Mankind soon will be groping for such salvation technologies. I'll bet my 57 years on it.

[MaXoR]

sorry for another one.... Mankind will ALWAYS have to take the cost of harnessing such power, against the gains you receive. How much will they have to spend, to gain how much energy?! I like others on here would like to see a scaled up model put to actual tests. I doubt this theory would be anywhere near to an "answer" for our energy crisis.

[MaXoR]

I have a question.... where did you get your voltage math from? Just pulling numbers out of the....air?

[Applebohn]

YES! That would be awesome!!

[Applebohn]

Na, hadn't thought of it, but now that you mention it, it makes perfect sense. Focus the sound on the speaker... good idea!

[omgitzstegman]

I don't really mean "focus" the sound but more like a large rigid surface that you could even attach to the regular speaker cone. It would act like a larger piston to move the coil. BTW I'm not sure how you could rectify that AC into some useful DC for your LEDs. Good luck!

[MaXoR]

use a bridge rectifier, and run it through a smoother circuit. I run LED's off generated AC, converted to DC..... good as gravy!

[dasruckus]

You should make a circuit that uses that energy instead of displaying the volts, which is basically potential.

[Applebohn]

Ya, that would be a lot more fun! Maybe it could light up an LED....

[coonass]

Seems as though the speaker doesn't have enough surface area to collect a useful amount of sound energy for electrical power generation. Perhaps a large horn going into the magnet serving as a transducer would work as well to concentrate sound energy for power. That's how the "sound gun" the Navy and commercial shippers are field-testing against pirates off the East African coast works - horns channel the energy emitted by the sonic transducers (and the German Army also used a directional horn to concentrate the sound of enemy artillery and tank units for intel purposes, mounted on an armored car). I live just south-southwest of Denver International Airport - if I could harness the bass notes made by those big passenger jets on approach and taking off over my house to top off a battery stack, it'd be interesting to compare the power output from that, a solar power array and a wind turbine.

[Applebohn]

That's a great idea to put a horn over the speaker, it's kind of like those old record players where they use it to make the sound louder. I wonder by how much it would improve to energy intake....