Council and Wind Turbines

As expected, my email to the local City Council about erecting a wind turbine was met with uncertainty, although the fact that they didn't just say "No, we're afraid it'll make noise and blow up and blah" gives me a little bit of hope. I sure wish they were able to just say "Don't make it too big and ugly and make it safe" rather than wrapping it in the cotton wool that is rules and regulations and stuff.

I've been advised to submit a "pre-lodgement enquiry" which seems to be something to be mailed in, this makes me wonder if it's going to be worth continuing this project over these holidays, as once school starts again I'm going to be met with a little less spare time.

Oh well, guess life wasn't made to be easy!

Holiday update

Sorry about the lack of posts over the last month or so, it's school holidays over here and it seems I have too many projects. Slowly working my way through a few, but I don't seem to be able to stick on one long enough to finish it. Hopefully soon!

Projects

• I've just sent an email to our local council to see if it's legal and/or what restrictions there are on backyard wind turbines. Guessing that's a project that will keep me going for a while.

• My dad has a little 20W solar panel that I'm considering mounting and wiring up, which I may or may not one day make a sun tracker and/or a MPPT for. Things to do!

• On my foundry/furnace, I fired the burner again today and I need to get a better oil pump, probably one out of a scrap car or something. I've also put the ZVS driver in an old ATX PSU case along with a MOT to power it, maybe an upcoming post! I've sent an email to Refractory and Ceramic who are based down in Victoria, and it seems that for the two bags of refractory I need, the ceramic wool, crucible and shipping will likely cost me upwards of $500. Depending on whether they get back to me or not, I might end up just making a refractory that won't last near as long but it may be enough to tell be whether it's worth it or not. 

• I've got some dimmers that are pretty simple which I also need to make a post on sometime, although first I have to add some filtering and install them. (On a cheap and nasty gasless MIG welder)

• Apart from that I've also been playing around with our rainwater system, for which I want to get a low pressure cutout hooked up. Looking to one day also add a greywater side to this to collect our shower/washing machine water, filter it and use it for the sprinklers. 

And that's about all, it seems I'm lacking the motivation I need to really get these projects done, but hopefully I can finish some if the goalposts come back into view!

If anyone has any comments, or would like to see a project (hopefully) finished, please drop a comment below and I'll be sure to take it on board.

Converting Macbook keyboard/touch pad into USB keyboard/touch pad

For those finding the title not overly helpful, this post is about adding a USB cable to a Macbook keyboard/touch pad for use with other computers.

The inspiration for this came about as I scoured the house for any trace of a USB keyboard, which led me to the Macbook featured in my previous post, creating a mini DVI to VGA adapter. A quick Google search led me to Cryozap, who had already done the heavy lifting with this project by finding the pinouts of the connector used by the keyboard, as seen in the post MacBook Core Duo Logic Board Keyboard Connector Pinout. Here is how I managed to attach a USB cable!

Decogging a Fisher and Paykel SmartDrive

DISCLAIMER:
This post involves decogging a Fisher and Paykel Smartdrive motor, with the use of power tools, welders and human strength. If you're attempting this as well, I take no responsibility for injuries that may greet you.

Following along with my plans of making a wind turbine, this post shows how I went about decogging the motors. Reading through The Back Shed articles, the two main ways of decogging a Fisher and Paykel Smartdrive motor seem to be
1. grinding off the corners of the stator poles
2. twisting the stator poles.
For the sake of learning, I went with trying both.

Making a SmartDrive decogging tool

This post requires the use of power tools and welders so if you are following this, don't be stupid, and make sure you know how to handle the tools as well as protect yourself from them. I take no responsibility for injuries that may come about from this post.

EDIT 10/10/12: Found more pictures.


Making this decogging tool requires access to a welder, so if you don't own or have access to a welder (be it through friends or work), you will have to think up another way. If you're really willing you could make your own welder out of microwaves. Milling machines can also be used to make the tool as seen on The Back Shed, credit to Jarbar for making the tool and it's much prettier than my own (see right).

PowerTech 0-24V bench top power supply teardown

 Here's my newest toy, a 0-24V, max 18A PowerTech branded switch mode benchtop power supply. In this blog we'll take a peek into the supply and see what makes it tick!

Homemade Macbook mini-DVI to VGA adapter

With Apple's need to make things as far away from normal as possible, I found myself with two Macbook's with smashed screens. To fix those would have cost $200+, so that was out of the question. I could have also brought an adapter for them, but that takes all the fun out of it!

Here's how I made the mini DVI to VGA adapter using some old ribbon cables used for connecting PCB's together (not IDE type ribbon cable), and an even older mini VGA adapter for the VGA port, and don't forget the 10K resistor!

Newcason XC4070L inductance meter review/teardown

This is the cheapest inductance meter I could find on eBay, and here's a quick review/teardown into it!

Recycling

It's funny, I go out and wish I could find old things to reuse, like airconditioners (heat pump), fridges (air compressor) and just other stuff like misc. electronics... Then I end up at places like the local junkyard, or the scrap dealer. This world must be here to torture me.

Heat pump water heater ponderings

As of late I've also been wondering if it's worthwhile to turn an old scrap airconditioner into a heat pump to heat our hot water, based on Tesla500's. As a result of our house utilising a solar hot water system, the only time we need to use a booster is on overcast days.

Cairns.com.au reports that we receive approximately 1992mm of rain over 152 days, hence this leads me to believe it may be worthwhile, although I'm still uncertain. Anyone else got an opinion on this?

Holiday projects

With the holidays drawing to a close, I thought it'd be a good idea to summarise what I've done and what I have planned left to do.

Babington oil burner

With most projects, they have to start somewhere. One day I hope to make a foundry for melting and casting metal, and the logical place to start was the fire. After an amount of research and parent nagging the babington oil burner build was commenced... Here's the not very well documented build log for it.

"Green" cars

With the advent of all these greenies protesting to stop being so destructive to the environment with cars and their emissions, car manufacturers have taken on different methods of propulsion, marketing them as green and no emission technology.

For one, this is just downright false, and two, the new cars are likely to have even more resources invested in them compared to the ones already on our roads.

Games

This year I've tried to put more effort into finding people with interests similar to me. From this venture, I've noticed that an ever increasing number of people are using games, and television to pass their spare time (and even list these as their interests!).

ZVS Flyback Driver

Well, on route to one of my many other projects I needed a form of ignitor, couldn't get my hands on any neon sign transformers (the three local sign places either didn't have any, or wanted $100 a piece), and MOT's were too low voltage for my needs. My attempts at winding a step up transformer also resulted in a step down transformer due to lack of wire. Here's how I managed to create a ZVS driver and not electrocute myself in the process!

Electronic Goldmine order review

Picked up my Goldmine order today, and I have to say, I'm eager to get inside. Let's have a look!

Waiting...

Well, just got the card from the post office telling me I have a parcel waiting, shall get that tomorrow and see what I got! I'm so far rather disappointed with Electronic Goldmine, as it appears out of the 6 IRF640 I ordered, only two were in stock so they only sent the two (luckily, as those two MOSFET's drove the order, hopefully I don't kill any of them), and did not notify me of any change in the order, not give a refund as far as I'm aware (albeit not a large loss) of the 4 that weren't put in the order. Hopefully the parcel of awesome changes my opinion of that.

On another note, school is tiring... Got block exams coming up next week, and the teachers are piling on the revision, getting so sick of all things school after spending most of my spare time revising (when I can convince myself to do it, that is).

Got two views the other day, pretty happy about that, good to see the tags are working, although not sure what relevance a dental implants website has to my blog? Ah well...

Busy

Well, so much for trying to post often and get an audience. School is having fun with the numerous assignments and exams coming up, so I'm finding less time to be able to procrastinate... Oh well, so far it doesn't appear that I have any readers, ah well...

Coming soon, projects include a photo-interrupter switch (woo, nice and simple), and possibly a pressure switch of sorts using a pressure transducer from a smart drive washing machine. (these use a ferrite bead mounted to a diaphragm which changes the frequency the coil around it resonates at, according to the movement of the bead)!

Also, still waiting for my Goldmine order to ship, guess it takes a while to pack in all the stuff...

Shipping & Electronic Goldmine

Shipping...
Just finalised my order with the Electronic Goldmine, which originally was intended only to provide MOSFET's for my ZVS driver. I ended up having to bring up the cost of my order ($50 international minimum with shipping), to a reasonable figure, which I decided should be just over $40.

After getting a cost for shipping, I started wondering if the order was going to be worth it, over double the cost of the items, to get them shipped! I'm betting the toroid assortment had something to do with the 7-8kg weight of it, although the rest of that must be in the super surprise box. Hoping there's something well worth it in there... I believe that's the most money I've ever spent in one shot! (must be the scrooge coming out in me)

I find it kind of ironic, how we can afford to bring in tonnes and tonnes of products from places like China, overseas, and still have them sold for "bargain basement" prices whereas my puny order still manages to seem so much more expensive, surely the shipping containers they come in must cost some amount of money. Maybe they use cheap resources to power their transport...

Either way, I'll post pictures of what arrives when they do, to give the next person some idea of what they will get from Electronic Goldmine. Hopefully it's something noteworthy!

Edit: Turns out the shipping ended up being just under $100AUD, a lot more than I expected.

Second try at Blogger

As the title suggests, this is my second attempt at blogging. I've previously attempted it but ended up leaving my blog dormant for many moons at a time. Not very successful.

I shall attempt to keep this blog a little more active.

Thanks for reading,
Beau!