Hi,
I'm contemplating some projects where it would be handy to:
A) sense motion
B) generate power from motion
I would imagine A is not crazy talk, but my googling has not been fruitful.
Ideally, it would be really groovy if there was a thing which could convert motion to a small amount of current--perhaps enough to power an LED?
Do either of these things exist? Any input would be greatly appreciated!
lee
You need to get a whole lot more specific in regards to "motion". Linear or rotary?
mechanical motion or just human motion detection?
@edgemoron: not what I was thinking about, but actually kinda interesting 
@tinman13kup: rotary is what I was thinking of, but I'd be interested in either. I'm still in the "see what's out there and see if you can figure out how to use it" stage, which would definitely influence what I might do with it.
@Noobian: mechanical. My vision is, for example, that X device senses it is moving, and Arduino can pick up that information and do stuff. Or, X device starts moving and automatically starts generating a little current.
rastoboy:
Hi,I'm contemplating some projects where it would be handy to:
A) sense motion
B) generate power from motion
I would imagine A is not crazy talk, but my googling has not been fruitful.
Ideally, it would be really groovy if there was a thing which could convert motion to a small amount of current--perhaps enough to power an LED?
Do either of these things exist? Any input would be greatly appreciated!
lee
Not crazy at all, but not very useful, either.
Years ago I bought a big bunch of LED flashlights(torches?) that ran on power stored from shaking the light. The housing is transparent plastic. A large magnet is free to move back and forth in a large coil of wire. The generation mechanism. Sure enough, when I shook the light up and down to move the magnet, then turned on the light, the LED came on quite nicely.
Then I tried another one. No shaking, but there was light. WTF??? Close examination shows there are two coin cells down deep in the mechanism. they power the light! The rest of the mechanism is to get you to buy the light.
I could send you a couple to play with.
Paul
Oh yeah, the shake me flashlights. My mother thought those were the end all of flashlights, so she bought 20. Worthless pieces of plastic they are. She also thought I should get a "free energy" generator for when the power went out. I just nodded. It's easier than trying to explain why that was a scam.
As for the OP, if it's rotary, then just spinning a dc motor will give you some current. Of course you would have to do some figuring for load, speed, and output to make it of any use.
@tinman13kup: You have blown my mind. That actually seems doable. I've read that they act that way but it didn't even remotely cross my mind. Do then sell like metallic brushes you could connect to the leads to direct the power to a moving object sliding across them? I know they work inside DC motors like that...hmmm.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. 
Heh, it appears the brushes inside DC motors are not what I thought they were. I guess maybe their more like slot car leads? Or I guess I could use a metallic brush if the surface they're contacting won't me quite so homogeneous.
https://www.aliexpress.com/popular/dc-motor-brush-springs.html
One could perhaps use a few of these for each pole, with a capacitor in the loop to even out the current?
I need to play with a motor to see what kind of current I can get out of it.
and on the other front, back home in Arduino land, this bad boy has a built in accelerometer:
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-primo-core
Kinda expensive,
at the risk of being tedious, while googling some practical examples of how to use a DC motor this way, I came across this:
and it appears they're soldering both leads of LED's to a sheet of iron? I am totally confused.
and it appears they're soldering both leads of LED's to a sheet of iron?
No they don't.
Instructbles for electronics are by and large are crap. Never use them to try and learn something new. Never use them unless you know a lot more than the person writing them.
I'm contemplating some projects where it would be handy to:
A) sense motion
B) generate power from motion
I would imagine A is not crazy talk, but my googling has not been fruitful.
Ideally, it would be really groovy if there was a thing which could convert motion to a small amount of current--perhaps enough to power an LED?
At the risk of sounding ridiculous, do you think you could just stop beating around the bush and just tell us what you are trying to do , instead of all this "devuce X" nonsense ?
Are you working on an invention which you are trying to keep secret or are you a terrorist trying to build bombs ? What's with all the secrecy ? Why not just post like any normal OP:
"Hi, I have a project where I want to water my garden automatically etc etc etc.""
@Grumpy_Mike: roger that!
@raschemmel: lol on my honor I have only vague notions. Like I said I just want to find out what's out there and fiddle with it.
If you look at the parts list in that instructable , item #8 is shown as a "1 ohm resistor".
As anyone with any electronics experience can tell you, any resistor specified on a parts list should include at the very LEAST, the following:
A- VALUE
B- WATTAGE
Any other specs (like tolerance) are considered Optional. As you can see, the WATTAGE is NOT given.
This should be a RED FLAG , to someone reading this Instructable. Unfortunately, a beginner would not know that the wattage is MANDATORY, not OPTIONAL. Obviously the author of the Instuctable thought was someone who thought he knew something but knew not what he did not know ...(or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN)
Step 1: Step 1 : Getting Right Material and Tools
material required:
- 4x(1 watt white led)
2)12x(3mm red led)
3)key board button
4)sellotape/transparent tape
5)2x(zip ties)
6)nut and screws
7)dc motor from old tape recorder
8)1ohm, resistor
9)iron sheet (4x10cm )
10)aluminium sheet
11)2x(7805 5v regulator)
12)diode 4007
tools used :
1)hot glue gun
2)soldering iron
3)wire cutter
4)pliers
5)screw driver
6)drill machine with 3mm bit
7)board pin
8)pen /marker
Thanks for that detail.
Yeah I'm a rank novice at electronics but very long in the tooth as a software developer, and the importance of knowing what you do not know cannot be overstated. And is also frequently super easy to be wrong about lol.
I appreciate the heads up on what to look for in something like that, and I'm slightly less ignorant than I was a few minutes ago
You probably don't remember self winding wrist watches that had a small rotating weight and a ratchet mechanism that wound the spring when you rotated your wrist, I saw a modern version using the weight motion to drive a tiny generator keeping the rechargeable battery topped up.
Kinda wish we had a Like button, here lol.
We do, it's called Karma, check yours.