hey sir.!! im really glad to see u in ur forum nd im doin btech 2nd year frm india..!! frm childhood im very interested in these microcontrollers play..!!!! frm ur forum im starting dis(wireless transmission of electricity) project nd i gt all d components with me nd i wnt to make theory work as first…!!! so please kindly send me links which r accurate standard pdf…to make it as theory…!!! plz help me up sir…!!!
If this was the first such request, I’d ignore it. Unfortunately, this is only the latest of many requests I have received from college engineering students wanting me to help them duplicate Jamison’s 6th-grade science fair project.1Jamison’s project is based on the Instructable, “Low-Power Wireless Charging.” As is typical, he is requesting the information I already provided.
Jamison defended his engineering project earlier today. The science fair was this evening. OMSI came to the science fair and demonstrated Sir Isaac Newton’s laws.
Update: I am holding in my hand a piece of paper that says:
This certificate is awarded to Jamison Logan
You have been chosen to represent Jackson Elementary at the Hillsboro School district Science-O-Rama on April 29, 2010!
Sunday was a big day! Jamison and I started with another trip to Fry’s. We needed more magnet wire, a better power supply to clean up the noise we saw on the cheap one we already had, and some perfboard. On the way home, we stopped by Home Depot for 6″ pipe and Fred Meyer’s for reading glasses. Never needed those before… B-)
Upon our return home, we set up our lab and pulled out the new power supply. After deciding to use a different scope probe and calibrating it (we missed that step last time), we got a nice, clean 5V voltage. Because we wanted to see the contrast, we then connected the probe to the cheap “wall wart” power supply. Look at that — a nice, clean 5V voltage! Huh. I guess the new power supply can go back and I’ll try to be more understanding when a customer calls for tool assistance and hasn’t calibrated his scope probes.
Jamison wrapped a second coil and we hooked it up to a green LED. Connect the power, move the coils close together. First light! Yes!!
Now it was time to improve Jamison’s project.1Jamison’s project is based on the Instructable, “Low-Power Wireless Charging.” We tried a full-wave rectifier to increase the LED’s brightness, with not a large (if any) effect. We built a two-stage Cockcroft-Walton generator, with much better success.
Next, we decided to improve the coils. We cut the 6″ pipe into short lengths, an inch and a half or so. We wrapped the magnet wire around them and used the oscilloscope to tune the number of wraps to get the desired frequency. It seemed like we were having to remove too many coils, so we found a formula for the inductance of a short air-core cylindrical coil. Plotting inductance as a function of wraps showed we could get by with much fewer than the 18 wraps we thought we needed for the desired 53 μH.
Emboldened with new information, we continued experimenting and found twelve wraps got us nearest to the desired 80-kHz frequency. We built a second, matching coil and we found we could transfer power much farther. The first set of coils had to be nearly touching. The second set could be more than four inches apart.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t left long enough leads on the coils, so we decided to wrap another set using all the information gained along the way. The forms were only an inch “long.” We sawed deeper grooves for the wire’s start and end so the coils wouldn’t need to spread and we spaced tape around the coil to hold them tight. I haven’t measured, but I think we can have six inches between the coils and still light the LED.
We want to try making a smaller secondary coil, maybe an inch in diameter. That will be for another day.
A couple of weeks ago, we last documented Jamison’s progress on his engineering project.1Jamison’s project is based on the Instructable, “Low-Power Wireless Charging.” Much has happened since then.
Decide on prototype
We thought we’d decided what project to build (I thought we were building Wireless Electricity), but Jamison changed his mind. After further research, he decided to build the Low-Power Wireless Charging he’d found on Instructables.com. I’m pleased. We’ll have more control over this project.
Buy materials for prototype
Once we knew what project to build, we thought it would be easy to buy the parts. Wrong!
Buying capacitors is a confusing process. The units are insane. The instructable specified a 100 nF capacitor. That sounds easy enough. Unfortunately, Fry’s shelf labels would list it as a 100000 pF or a .10 MFD. That’s if they actually had it. After trying to find the right caps, we decided to do our shopping online instead and headed over to digikey.com. We had all the parts we needed the next day. :-)
Build prototype
Prototype building went well, at least for the circuit. Once Jamison understood how the little holes in the breadboard are connected, the oscillator went together fairly quickly.
The first coil went together fast, too. The instructable said to do 18 wraps of 15 cm loops. Jamison wrapped the coil around a form, about 4.5 inches square, and then rounded the coil by hand.
Tune coil
Tuning the coil was a problem. The oscillator was designed for 80 kHz. We should have been able to tune the coil by connecting it to the oscillator and removing coils until the oscilloscope showed something near 80 kHz.?Famous last words. Instead of a nice sinusoidal signal, we got a noisy, stepped signal. Removing coils didn’t seem to do anything. Maybe the coils were separating, so we wrapped it in electrical tape. That made no noticeable change. Maybe the cheap power supply was causing the noise. Fry’s could rescue us with a nice benchtop power supply.
Time to call it quits and figure out our next step.
Today’s going to be a great day. We’re making progress on the project.1 Our plan:
Print prior art and put in a binder
Review prior art
Decide on prototype
Buy materials for prototype
Build prototype
Smoke test prototype
Experiment with prototype
Print prior art and put in a binder
We printed all the material we found and posted here and here, three-hole-punched it and put it in a binder. Thanks to FinePrint,2 we didn’t use as much paper as we might otherwise have.
Review prior art
So much for this being a quick process. Instead, we just found a bunch more to review, this time at YouTube.
It’s hard to beat cheap, so we’re going to attempt the Wireless Electricity (for under $20) project, though that cost estimate seems to assume already having a stocked experimenter’s lab. This is sending us down the bifilar winding rat hole and into Tesla territory. A lot of strange stuff (and denizens) there.
Instructables continues to be a great resource. At least, we hope so. We haven’t tried building anything quite yet. That will change soon. Here’s a few more links:
Jamison and I are starting an engineering project1Jamison’s project is based on the Instructable, “Low-Power Wireless Charging. for his school’s science and engineering fair. This is the second year his school’s fair accepts engineering projects. Instead of doing a science experiment using the scientific method, we get to engineer:
Identify a problem
Research how others have solved it
Develop our own solution
Refine our solution
We want to transfer electrical power over a short distance without a direct, hard-wired connection. Here’s where we’re starting our research:
You might be a geek if you have one of these license plates:
For the non-geek readers out there, here’s a little interpretation:
LOTR — Lord of the Rings. Just in case you needed help understanding the FLA, the owner of this license plate spells it out for you, right above the plate (click the picture for a larger view).
0X0D — This is how many computer languages represent the binary pattern 00001101. In ASCII, 0X0D stands for carriage return (CR).
POWER — This license plate is owned by a field application engineer for a company that produces multiphase buck controllers, the devices that regulate the power in your computer.
I found these license plates at work without really looking. I wonder how many more there are.
What’s the geekiest personalized license plate you’ve seen (or own)?