Category Archives: 2018 Hackaday Prize

Video Quick Bit: Power Harvesting Hacks

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Majenta Strongheart is back again, this time taking a look at some of the coolest power harvesting projects in this year’s Hackaday Prize.

The entire idea of the Power Harvesting Challenge is to get usable power from something, be it solar energy, a rushing waterfall, or fueling steam turbines with hamsters. [Cole B] decided that instead of capturing energy from one of these power sources, he’d do it all. He created Power Generation Modules, or Lego bricks for harvesting power. There’s a hand crank module, a water turbine module, and enough modules to do something with all that captured …read more

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The “P Cell” is Exactly What You Might Suspect

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[Josh Starnes] had a dream. A dream of a device that could easily and naturally be activated to generate power in an emergency, or just for the heck of it. That device takes in urea, which is present in urine, and uses it to generate a useful electrical charge. [Josh] has, of course, named this device the P Cell.

An early proof of concept uses urine to create a basic galvanic cell with zinc and copper electrodes, but [Josh] has other ideas for creating a useful amount of electricity with such a readily-available substance. For example, the urea could be …read more

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How To Run a Clock for a Century

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What’s going to keep a clock running for a century, unattended? Well, whatever’s running it will have to sip power, and it’s going to need a power source that will last a long time. [Jan Waclawek] is looking into solar power for daytime, and capacitors for nighttime, to keep his clock running for a hundred years.

This project carries on from [Jan]’s previous project which looked at what kind of power source could power the gadgets around his house for a century without needing intervention – ie., no batteries to replace, no winding etc. [Jan] whittled his choices down to …read more

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Looking at Wind Turbines From a Different Angle

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When we think of wind turbines, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the typical Sim City-esque type – 3 blades, gigantic, and wired into the municipal power grid. In truth, the world of wind power generation is far more varied indeed – as [Vittorio]’s vertical-axis wind turbine shows us.

So what exactly is a vertical-axis wind turbine, you ask? Well, rather than the typical setup with blades rotating about a horizontal axis, as in typical utility turbines or a classic electric fan you might use to cool off on a sunny day, instead a vertical axis is …read more

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Intuitive Musical Books Accompany Alzheimer’s Patients’ Memories

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If you have a loved one with Alzheimer’s, you know how difficult it can be to hold a conversation with them that doesn’t constantly go in circles. A good way to keep them focused is to use conversation pieces like pictures and familiar objects from their past. Something particularly poignant might uncork a flood of memories.

Adding familiar music to these images can be doubly beneficial. [Annelle] found this out when she showed her mother a musical children’s book that plays nursery rhymes. Her mother’s face lit up with joy when she heard those well-known tunes, and her reaction inspired …read more

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Thermal Actuators: Hydraulic Motors That Feed on Temperature Changes

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These Fluid Displacement Thermal Actuators designed by [Andrew Benson] are a delightful and profoundly different approach to the Power Harvesting Challenge portion of The Hackaday Prize. While most projects were focused on electrical power, [Andrew]’s design is essentially a mechanical motor that harnesses the fact that Phase Change Materials (PCMs) change volume when they go from liquid to solid or vice-versa; that property is used to provide a useful hydraulic force. In short, it’s a linear actuator that retracts and expands as the PCM freezes or melts. By choosing a material with melting and freezing temperatures that are convenient for …read more

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PTPM Energy Scavenger Aims for Maintenance-Free Sensor Nodes

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[Mile]’s PTPM Energy Scavenger takes the scavenging idea seriously and is designed to gather not only solar power but also energy from temperature differentials, vibrations, and magnetic induction. The idea is to make wireless sensor nodes that can be self-powered and require minimal maintenance. There’s more to the idea than simply doing away with batteries; if the devices are rugged and don’t need maintenance, they can be installed in locations that would otherwise be impractical or awkward. [Mile] says that goal is to reduce the most costly part of any supply chain: human labor.

The prototype is working well with …read more

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High Efficiency, Open-Sourced MPPT Solar Charger

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A few years ago, [Lukas Fässler] needed a solar charge controller and made his own, which he has been improving ever since. The design is now mature, and the High Efficiency MPPT Solar Charger is full of features like data logging, boasts a 97% efficiency over a range of 1 to 75 Watts, and can be used as a standalone unit or incorporated as a module into other systems. One thing that became clear to [Lukas] during the process was that a highly efficient, feature-rich, open-sourced hardware solution for charge controllers just didn’t exist, at least not with the features …read more

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Flat Pack Generators

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We just wrapped up the Power Harvesting challenge in the Hackaday Prize, and with that comes some solutions to getting power in some very remote places. [Vijay]’s project is one of the best, because his project is getting power in Antarctica. This is a difficult environment: you don’t have the sun for a significant part of the year, it’s cold, and you need to actually get your equipment down to the continent. [Vijay]’s solution was to use one of Antarctica’s greatest resources — wind — in an ingenious flat pack wind turbine.

There are a few problems to harvesting wind …read more

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Vampire Charger is a Rugged Anything-to-5VDC Converter

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USB sockets providing 5 VDC are so ubiquitous as a power source that just about any piece of modern portable technology can use them to run or charge. USB power is so common, in fact, that it’s easy to take for granted. But in an emergency or in the wake of a disaster, a working cell phone or GPS can be a life saver and it would be wise not to count on the availability of a clean, reliable USB power supply.

That’s where the Vampire Charger by [Matteo Borri] and [Lisa Rein] comes in. It is a piece of …read more

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