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| Let's drop in on Wily and
look over his shoulder at his latest project.... |
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Earth Battery |
| It seems that Wily gets these
kind of calls every month or so. This call came from an inventor who
thought he had the solution to all of the energy problems of the world.
As the drawing below illustrates, the inventor pounds two metal rods into
the ground. One is made of copper; the second is made of aluminum.
When he measures the voltage across the two rods, he sees about one volt on
his voltmeter. His plan was to wire up 100s of these rods together to
produce enough voltage to power his house. I asked him if he had measured
the current this battery of his could produce. Well, no, he h ADN’t.
Wily strongly suggested he make that measurement. Wily also suggested
that he use the simple volts times Amps equation to predict just how much
power such electrodes in the ground could produce. Wily told the
caller to call back if the current was more than a few tens of milliamps.
The caller never did call back.... |
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7 |
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Wily Widget,
the Lone Inventor
with Gadget & Gizmo |
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| WHAT
THE WORLD NEEDS NOW is a....Large Outdoor Thermometer |
| I got an email from a guy in
Death Valley California. He worked at a general store where the
outside temperature often exceeds 120 degrees F. He wanted a large
analog thermometer display with some advertising nearby, so patrons could
snap photos in front of the display, showing these hellish temperatures..... |
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Stiff Wires
from China
By: Dave Johnson
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| I’m seeing another
disturbing trend coming out of China. I see more and more devices with
cords and wires attached which are brand new yet the wires or cords are very
inflexible. About once each year the wife and I have to buy a new
electric blanket. I’ll save that story for another rant about the
terrible quality of those devices. Anyway, the last blanket we bought
came with the usual set of dual heat I setting controls for.... |
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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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X100 Scope Probe
By: David Johnson
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| These days, I seem
to be designing a lot of circuits, which run on very low power. Often
the resistors being used in these circuits are in the multiple megaohm order
of magnitude. When looking at signals across such resistors, even the
10M load a typical X10 oscilloscope probe will produce large measurement
errors and will influence the circuit operation. |
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Infrared Remote Battery
Voltage Droop
By: Dave Johnson |
| A while back I bought a new
small flat screen TV for my bedroom. My wife wanted one so she could
watch and listen to the TV while in bed, before rolling over to sleep.
After a few months of use, she noticed that the TV would often not respond to
the infrared remote. I too noticed that you had to point the remote
directly at the TV to get it to change a channel. When new, the remote
would be able to do the same channel change while pointing at the ceiling.
I took the remote down to the basement lab and cracked it open.
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con't on page
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Bad Throw Rug |
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A while back my
wife and I bought an area rug from Lowe's. I think we paid a couple
hundred bucks for the thing. It was positioned in a heavy traffic area
between our front door and the dinning room. Within weeks after the rug
was laid down, I noticed that one corner of the rug started to curl. My
wife tried to flatten the thing out by placing a sticky pad under that corner,
to help hold the thing down. However the curl progressed and got even
worse. It now looks as the photo below slows. We have tried tying
a cord on the corner and maintained a constant stretching force without any
success. The rug was made in India. What ever happened to the good
old US rug manufacturers? |
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Hydrogen Energy
Storage |
| In spite
of all the research going on around the world, there is still no
ideal way to store electrical energy. Batteries are still
the gold standard for most off-grid homes. Off-grid power
system owners are always looking for ways to capture and store
energy since there is no AC power grid to do an energy exchange
with. Like a careful money manager, they have to try and
make more energy than they need and put some aside for a rainy
day. Poor weather means pulling energy from the savings
account. When their account (battery) in empty, they then have to
fire up their gasoline or diesel generator and replenish the
battery reserves..... |
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