We spotted [Kerrin Mansfield]‘s lovely solar engine on ladyada’s rantings. It uses 16 1/8th inch solar cells to collect power. At night, an orange LED pulses at .2Hz. He doesn’t have a specific write up on the construction, but from the component layout, it looks identical to [Gareth Branwyn]‘s schematic in Make 08, which you can find in the PDF.
i think i’ll make one of those. looks neat and simple.
This is actually a BEAM bot. Schematics can be found here: http://www.beam-wiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Pummers
That is indeed the schematic I used, though I should say I found it amongst the documentation on solarbotics.com. Just replace the batteries with a BIGFARADS cap, experiment with resistor values to get the desired pulse frequency and woohoo!
Thank you for blogging this. 8^)
After more detailed reading the PDF this blog entry refers to, I’d like to add that if you choose a smaller electrolytic to store power — I used a 2.5V 3.3F Gold capacitor for aesthetic reasons — then you should use the 74HC240N octal inverting buffer IC, instead of the 74AC240, due to the former’s lower operating voltage and increased stability at lower voltages.
Anyone have schematics to make this?
-Thanks
the more detailed the better. I am new at building.
-Thanks again
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Dang Elliot, you’re a beast with the hacks today.