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.

Projects done so far:

• Finished the oil burner prototype and fired it.
• Decogged a Fisher and Paykel Smartdrive motor.
• Created a mini DVI to VGA adapter for a early 2009 Macbook
• Started Folding@Home on the Macbook (SMP/CPU and GPU)

Projects to continue on with:

• Bring the oil burner out of the prototyping stage, complete a fuel recirculation system, upgrade the upper oil reservoir.
• Research into high temperature castable refractories suitable for use in a foundry.
• Make a 12V to 16.5V boost converter to power the Folding Macbook from a car battery.
• Attempt to set up a renewable power system to feed some devices (Macbook etc.)
• Make some blades for a Smartdrive based wind turbine.

With that, the major projects I'm focusing on at the moment are the renewable energies, due to the carbon tax coming into effect this week (no more $0.2c/KWh!). I've stumbled across my dad's 30W solar panel which is likely to be the first item to be put to use for this, may even try to create a sun tracker for it if I'm feeling overly inclined. The next item is the Smartdrive based wind turbine, I'm not sure how this will turn out, so far I've decogged the motor so it can be spun with less effort from the turbine. Still have to figure out the best design of blades, and have a shot at making them. 

Unfortunately as the solar panel is 12V it's likely my system will be constrained to that voltage, creating for more losses in wiring, which could be circumvented by stepping up the panel output but I doubt that will happen very soon, as I've already ordered some parts for the 12V Macbook supply.

Assuming I actually have the motivation to proceed with these projects, chances are there will be further posts about them. Cheers for reaching this far!