Nice Easy Magnetic Generator Light

Intro: Nice Easy Magnetic Generator Light

People look like they are having a good time charging up those other magnetic torches but it's definitely more fun to watch. This one may require 2 hands but at least you can go all night if you want to.

All you need is a stepper motor and some White LEDs, but a handle is optional.
If you think you have a stepper motor but aren't sure, turn it and see if you can feel the steps.

This motor came out of a big old floppy diskette drive but I think they are very common in other stuff
I took apart, like printers.

A resistor is probably a good idea because it's so easy to make power that you can burn out the LEDs.

It's easy to find the wires on a stepper motor that will light up an LED
but soon I'll show a good way to connect several.
Sorry about the blurry picture I'll update this and fix it soon.

Ok here it goes, this is one time that it's nice that the camera takes so long to take a picture.
I just fixed it up a bit and found something like a propeller to crank it with too.
And dont get mad... because that finger is not the one it probably looks like.

STEP 1: Step 1

Under construction.

I know I'm being bad but the magnet contest is almost over.

The schematic below is basically how I have the stepper hooked up now.
The diodes are white LEDs. The resistors are not there yet, so sometimes the LEDs blow.
The resistors will probably be 100 or 470 ohms.
They may be moved off the center tap because they really belong in series with each LED.
I may add reversed LEDs in parallel to get twice as much light,
but then I expect the motor to be harder to turn.

There was a crank on the motor but someone broke it off.
It was just a wire with a loop at the end to put a finger in and go around in circles.
This particular motor can blow LEDs without the crank which is why I didn't bother fixing it Yet.
It's pulley can be turned instead.

Stepper motors may have 4 (no center taps) or 5 (common center taps) or 6 (2 center taps)
in their stator coils. The rotor is a magnet with lots of virtual north and south poles so that
there are a lot more than 4 steps per revolution. Too many to count easily. It seems to have
end pieces with lots of teeth.

Figuring out the wires can be done with a meter. Except for the 5 wire motors there is
no voltage or continuity between the two coils. The center taps will have half as much voltage
or resistance than just the ends of the coils.

For 4-wire motors you can't just have 2 LEDs facing each other like this,
need to reverse the polarity of one (and maybe put it in parallel with the other one,
and leaving out that LED is another option).

Summary, you can easily connect up to 8 LEDs to the stepper motor to use all of it's power generating phases,
but you can also get the LEDs to light just by trying different wires,
and current limiting resistors seem practical and essential.

A hand crank, or a pulley with a finger-hole in it is very good too,
because otherwise just turning the shaft gives annoying pulsing light output.

This does not "charge up". It produces light as soon as you turn it, and until you stop.
But it could... batteries or capacitors may be added. Maybe I will do that later.

STEP 2: Afterthoughts

I guess I decided that the schematic I made on the last page is good, and 100 ohm resistors are good.
It is bright enough to see and walk around outside in the woods at night as long as I don't drop it.
(Maybe I should put phosphorescent matter on it so I can find it in the dark.)
I am very surprised at how easily the steppers make a useful amount of light compared to real products.

I guess later I'll make one that uses a 4-wire stepper, draw another schematic for it,
and maybe add a couple more sharper pictures of both lights that clearly show the works.

Tired... more later. Oops, sorry, I guess this is it.

Comments

[elainek]

Reading the posts, and I see where a lot of "can't create energy" thinking enters in - true, we can't 'create' energy, but we can tap all kinds of 'free energy'. There's a wonderful batch of information in a free, downloadable book - PJK book - it can be viewed at http://www.yudu.com/item/details/203017/PJK-Book-July-2010 and other sites.

I liked the comparison of a sail boat crossing the ocean; the energy put in by humans was minimal compared to the 'free energy' of the wind. Energy is all round us in many forms - sound, wave, vibration, magnetic, electric, heat, water, decomposition - learning to recognize and tap into these isn't 'free' energy or 'creating' energy, but it's the principle of 'catching the wind' with a sail.

The PJK book is around 2000 pages of massive information! I'm not experienced enough to absorb a lot of it, but it's fascinating.

[rpvanpatt]

 hey, I was wondering if you have had any progress on this project?  I wand to make something similar, like a dynamo charger or something.  You may have said already, but what are all the parts that you need to make you basic plan, and maybe if you know how to add in somethin like AAA battery charger to it.  Thanks

[paper warrior]

just an idea: Attach an electric motor to the generator instead of leds and replace the crank with the moving part of the motor then tap it for infinite energy.

[CameronSS]

uh... no. Wouldn't work. If you had a 100% efficient system you could make the motors spin infinitely, but friction will slow them down, and you cannot create energy. Well, you can, but it requires a nuclear reactor, a nuclear or thermonuclear bomb, or a star.

[girrrrrrr2]

what if you had a few highoutput generators..., a few doubling circuts..., a motor..., a gew gears..., a chain..., and a few batterys..., and of course batterys... you can see where i am going with this right... would this work better???

[CameronSS]

No...I will explain as well as my brain-dead mind will allow. I just got home from a week of travel and I leave at 6:30 tomorrow morning. If you had a 100% efficient system, it could run indefinitely, but without an output. If you tap any energy, whether it be a sound, lights, motion, anything, it will slow the system down. Perpetual motion is physically impossible. I drive an electric truck, and you have no idea how many times I have heard the comment, "You know, if you hooked a generator to one of the wheels, you could recharge the batteries and extend the range." It DOESN"T WORK.

[jimbo333]

perpetual motion/energy is not physically impossible, we just have not accomplished it yet. with the right system it could work.

[VIRON]

Regenerative braking reclaims SOME of the energy in electric
vehicles when you stop or go down a hill, and that energy was
used first to get up to speed and up the hill. This is not perpetual
motion because lots of that energy was lost by friction, but it does
"extend the range" just not to infinity.

A nice illusion of PMM can be made only when you have an external
energy source and a load that doesn't need all of it. For example,
clocks can be powered by a barometer and watches can be
self-winding. Calculators can run on very small solar panels.
Even a weak solar / magnetic levitating motor is easy to build.
Solar magnetic levitating motor

[CameronSS]

I never said that regenerative braking didn't work. We would hook it up on our truck if it was an AC motor, but its DC, which can't do regen without a huge cost. The concept I always hear, and all the other guys in the local EV club hear, is to attach a generator to one, two, or four wheels, depending on the genius, which would run constantly, thereby topping off the battery pack and giving us infinite range. If that worked, someone would have put it into use in the last hundredsomething years that EVs have been around. Regen works great! I know some people with Solectria Forces, which were nice AC drive cars made some time ago, factory converted Chevy Geos. They have drum brakes, but they are never used because the automatic regen works so well. It just doesn't reclaim that much energy, and not what Toyota wants you to think the Prius does.

[girrrrrrr2]

i was just putting that out there... and i only ment would this work better as longer... but thanks for explaining it to me...

[Punkguyta]

Lol, I can't wait till scientest discover a way of actually creating more matter, as for now, we are simply reusing matter. So for people that don't know what I'm talking about, there is no way to actually "make more matter" but rather it gets processed and turned into something else. Sorry for the crappy explanation, but it's hard as hell to explain that. Perhapes you have a better explanation?

[VIRON]

You can create all the virtual matter you want. You also have two choices: almost totally free or ridiculously expensive.

[Punkguyta]

Virtual matter, yes, but as far as actual matter, soil, elements, materials that make up this world all get reused and made into other materials, so in other words, we can't actually "destroy" or "create" more "matter" because this is all we have to work with. That's what the laws of physics say, I'm a bit rusty on that one, but I remember have a in depth discussing with my science teacher about it one day.

[VIRON]

There is plenty of real matter in the universe. How much more do you want?

[Punkguyta]

Not saying there isn't plenty, but just saying, there isn't a way to add matter, just use what is already there

[Slushba132]

I understand you. Everything in this entire existence is recycled on its own to make way for new things to come and go. planets and stars will blow apart and collect to make new planet and stars. Trees will die so other things can eat it and die and then give back to the trees which once helped it. I tried bringing this up in science class and no one understood me at all. I guess thats the problem with being 14. I don't see why we recycle though. If you look at it aren't we just making carbon fumes melting stuff were to impatient to just let sit there and decompose?

[Punkguyta]

Well yes and no, because we could let these things decompose, but because a lot of the stuff in the landfills are mostly man made products, they tend to take several decades for things to start decomposing, I honestly don't think anyone has that kind of patience. You know why they're melting things down even more today than 20 years ago? Because everyone knows natural supplies are running out.

[Slushba132]

You know what I don't get. Why don't stores just sell us the bottles and then sell the contents separately like from a soap dispenser all you would have to do is get like one bottle for shampoo and just refill it. But then again I guess the petroleum bottle's are made and the chemicals that are made after reusing...Why don't we just get rid of plastics all together.

[VIRON]

How about: Ceramics, pottery, and glass. They've been around since beginning of history, and they're natural, and still around, in museums, along with old bones and rocks. But that's ok.

[Slushba132]

Yeah but ceramics decompose just as slow as plastics do. We still have pots from hundreds of years ago. I think iff we switched to pots we would have the same problem with not being to wait for it to decompose naturally.