Lab Play: Wednesday 1/14/15

Playing around with an Arduino UNO with a Motor Shield attachment. Picked up a couple of 2 step motors from Radio shack and slapped them on a breadboard. This is just some video of the process of programming the Arduino & any attached hardware to perform a specific action, in this case we are simply alternating the motors simultaneously back and forth.

Lab Play: Tuesday 1/13/15

Decided to build out an autonomous land vehicle after work today, I purchased the pieces & materials from tinkersphere down town NYC. It's a fairly simple design, utilizing a circular base plate for main support, 2 separate motors (per wheel), a swivel wheel (for balance), an Arduino UNO (main controller board, also powers the servo which moves the sensor), H-Bridge Motor Driver chip (for sensor & motor control), standard prototyping solder-less bread board for routing power and data connections. There are 2 battery packs (currently 6-Volt), one powering the Arduino board which feeds a 5-Volt line to one end of the bread board distributing power, as well as another battery pack which feeds directly to the opposite side of the board.

The finished version SHOULD move autonomously avoiding obstructions along the way. Currently I am having what I believe to be a power issue, ultimately I didn't have any 9Volt power supply compatible with the UNO board, and after checking the rail from the 5-Volt lead, I observed only 3 or so volts actually coming through on the bread board rails utilizing a multimeter. It seems I will need to a 9'volt supply or modify an existing one to work. However I will pick up on this tomorrow as it was an after work special =).

Lab Play: Sunday 1/11/15

I'm planning out a DIY project (Bird Shelter) to get a more intimate analysis on the life of Bedford Stuyvesant birds. I envision utilizing a series of relay modules along with some IR motion sensors to detect movement (of birds of course) and activate lights & cameras. There may possibly be a servo powered auto-feeder if time allows. This would also be a great project for solar cells to power. I'll be gathering materials over the next few days and writing up a schematic - We will keep y'all posted!

Power of nature

Albert Einstein is world famous for his theory of mass energy equivalence, E=MC2. Simply put stating that there is a universal proportional equivalence when dealing with matter and energy. We are literally living in a world constructed by energy, and sustained by energy, we are literally energy beings living in an energy universe. We spend a lifetime, storing energy, consuming energy, and manipulating energy. 

I spent a great deal of my later years working with the manipulation of energy, specifically electrical energy. In a world where mutual repulsion is relied on so heavily, I find it an honor to learn it's inner workings and caveats.

In this experiment, I ran a simple but interesting proof of concept to the ideology that this world is constructed of energy. If so, then energy should be easily (or not so easily) extracted from some interesting places. We are familiar with Wind , Wave, Geothermal, and Energy, but what about energy that is within biomass? How easily can we harness electricity from say... a lemon?

Surprisingly, there isn't to much required to extracting electricity from a lemon, primarily because the high levels of citric acids will do most of the hard work for us. What we also will require is a few pennies (copper electrode), and few roofing nails (Zinc electrode). 

You will notice that the copper pennies are connected to a zinc nail via an alligator clip and some lead wiring. Our Final leads are connected to a multimeter set to measure the voltage generated by the lemons (1 1/2 lemons). The concept here is simple, the acid present in the lemon when in contact with the Zinc, liberates electrons from the zinc atoms. As these particles are freed from their atomic grip, mutual repulsion forces them to move along the connected leads looking for a new atom to bond to, moving along the wire connecting and disconnecting to the intermediary atoms along the way, and through to the copper electrode. The force generated which motives these electrons to move, mutual repulsion, is the force responsible for electrical current. As these electrons are in motion, it can be clearly be seen, we have generated approximately 2.1 volts of steady current from 1.5 lemons.

-- Peace