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| Let's drop in on Wily and
look over his shoulder at his latest project.... |
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Musical Chairs |
| Wily was
reading one of his science magazines when he got a call from a company who
puts together various interactive systems for museums around the country.
They were given the challenge by their client to design a musical chair game
for small children at a museum in a big city.
They experimented with
various pressure switches and strain gages to detect when a child was
sitting in the chair but they couldn’t seem to find anything that worked
consistently. Could Wily help? Wily listened to the
companies requirements and thought that a capacitance method would work.
After gathering some more information he agreed to take on the project
The company already had
the computerized system all designed and tested. They only needed
Wily’s help with the child’s fanny detection. The sensor needed to detect
when small children where seated in small wood chairs...... |
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con't page 7 |
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Wily Widget,
the Lone Inventor
with Gadget & Gizmo |
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| WHAT
THE WORLD NEEDS NOW is a....Hot Car Cooler |
| It has been
hot this summer. The wife and I are planning to move to Texas. During
the move we will have to do a lot of driving with my two Beagles in the back
seat of my van. There will be times when we will have to leave the dogs
in the car for perhaps 30 minutes at a time. But, how do I keep them
cool, when the car is baking in the sun?.... |
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story con't on page 6 |
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New Products 2009
New product announcements are made nearly every
day. I subscribe to many trade journals and each is filled with
hundreds of flashy advertisements. But, only a few of those product
ads catch my eye. Since I’m a circuit designer, I especially like
those components that trigger many new application ideas in my mind.
Sometimes it is the smallest products that are the most useful. I
often discovered new products in surplus electronic catalogs. The
surplus companies often buy up stock that came from companies that went out
of business. Bad marketing or bad management may have killed a
perfectly good product idea. Their loss can be your gain if you can
spot the bargain.
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Low Power AM Transmitter
By: David Johnson
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A while back, I got an email from someone who drove around in a restored 1960s
car. He wanted to be able to leave the old car’s original AM radio
intact but he wanted to play music from his Ipod MP3 player through the car’s
radio..... |
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story con't on page 4 |
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Wrong Capacitor Selection |
| I received a
frantic call from a company who could not figure out why one of their products
was not working properly. The circuit was a fairly simple motor
controller which pulsed a motor in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise
direction. The motor movement opened and closed a small fluid valve,
which was part of complex industrial system..... |
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story
con't on page
3 |
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Solar Powered Car Vent |
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The other day, I saw an ad for a solar powered
vent for my car. The device was advertised to help keep the inside of a
car cooler by pushing out the hot stale air and drawing in cooler air through
the car’s own air vents. I bought one of these devices to see if it
might work. What a joke. This thing just does not move enough air.
When placed out in the sun, I could almost feel a bit of wind coming from it.
But, in theory, the concept may have some validity.... |
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story con't
on page 5 |
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