All too often, the commentors here on Hackaday display some parsimony in their engineering prowess. If someone uses a Raspberry Pi to blink a few LEDs, someone will invariably chime in that an ARM microcontroller would do just as well. switching a relay on and off belies the capabilities of a 32-bit Cortex microcontroller when a simpler 8-bit build would certainly suffice. Of course this can always be minimized to a 555 circuit and additionally still to conditioned pigeons tapping a crucial in action to either food or opiates. I’d like to take this opportunity to present a tutorial. Not just any tutorial, but the actual foundation of everything we love here at Hackaday: blinky, glowey things.
You can check out the rest of this tutorial after the break.
Batteriet
Put bluntly, every project taking care of electrical energy needs a power source. Whether through mains power, a solar cell, some sort of odd inductive contraption, or through a chemical reaction, every electronic project needs a power source. I have considered a few different power sources for this project including mains power (far too hazardous to use with a light bulb), a bicycle generator (I’m focusing on strength training this week. Cardio is next week), hamsters and wheels (burning the hamsters as a fuel source and using a heat exchanger to turn a turbine), and magnets (how do they work?). In the end, I settled on using a battery to power the light bulb for this project.
The battery used for this build. It consists of four ‘D’ cells connected together in series by means of a COMF UM-1×4 battery holder. It supplies 6 Volts across its terminals.
The power source for this project is called a battery, as it is made up of a collection of cells. [Benjamin Franklin] came up with this terminology, alluding to artillery formations. just as a lot more than one cannon is needed to form an artillery battery, a lot more than one cell is needed to form one electronic battery. Yes, this indicates the AA, AAA, C, and D cells are not batteries per se, but individual cells. They only become batteries when used together. One exception of this is a 9 Volt battery, itself made of eight AAAA (that’s quadruple-A) cells. Alvor. go take a pair of pliers to a 9 Volt battery and see for yourself.
For this project I’ve used ‘D’ cells, as they have a larger capacity than AAA, AA, and C cells. The longer life of D cells is vitally crucial for this project; I very much expect to have this project sit in the back of my closet or tucked away in some drawer for quite a while until I stumble across it one day and remember the stunning April morning where I wrote this tutorial fueled by at least two pots of kaffe.
Of course just simply putting a battery next to a light bulb won’t do any good. regrettably transmission line theory is far too broad a subject to cover in this short tutorial so I’ll just have to cover the basics ideal now. This battery has two leads coming out of it; a positive and a negative. If we connect the positive wire to the negative wire, electrical energy will flow through the gap. At higher voltages, a small spark may form. With the voltages we’re working with here, it’s fairly safe, although it is possible to electrocute yourself with even these small voltages. While this may only be possible by stabbing your heart with electrodes and applying power, safety is of utmost worry when playing with electricity.
Lyspæren
As connecting the positive and negative terminals of a battery together is amazingly stupid, we might as well throw in a light bulb. For this build, I’m using a 6 Volt light bulb that pairs perfectly with our four D cell battery. just like our battery holder, the socket for the light bulb is attached to a piece of plywood, much a lot more convenient and ergonomic than any flashlight or electric lantern.
You may notice the light bulb is off in the picture below. This is because the light bulb is not screwed down completely into the socket. Yes, unlike LEDs where electrical contacts are soldered on, light bulbs are normally wired into a circuit with a screw-type base. just as with the lid on a jar of peanut butter, you screw the light bulb into the socket by turning it clockwise. To remove the light bulb from the peanut butter, unscrew it by turning it counter-clockwise.
Before we get into the actual process of turning on a light bulb by screwing it into its base, let’s first consider how a light bulb works. The light bulb was developed by [Thomas Edison] after many, lots of failed attempts at creating a functional electric light. The light bulb I’m using passes electrical current through a tungsten filament, heating it up and producing light as blackbody radiation. before discovering tungsten as a best filament for an electric light, [Edison] tried hundreds of different materials from carbonized bamboo to the hopes and dreams of a young [Nikola Tesla]. Of course the use of tungsten wasn’tUten nedsidene – på den tiden var det ingen kommersiell bruk for wolfram og dets høye smeltepunkt, det høyeste av noe element, gjorde det upraktisk for bruk i industrien.
[Edison] bruk av wolfram i sin vellykkede lyspære garantert den fortsatte sysselsettingen av tusenvis av wolfram gruvearbeidere i Backwoods West Virginia Tungsten Towns. Livet det var ikke lett, Sellin ‘din sjel til selskapet Store og Watchin’ barnet ditt vokser opp for å ta jobben din etter at du er tapt til en tragisk hule. Selvfølgelig forbedret arbeidsforholdene etter Wolfram Miner Riots 1824 og inngrepet av guvernør Batman.
Til slutt var professoren på Gilligan’s Island en inkompetent idiot. Da han tydeligvis ikke var en materialforsker eller strukturell ingeniør i forhold til hans manglende evne til å fikse et hull i en båt, kan vi bare anta at han var en slags fysiker eller elektrisk ingeniør. Dette er ikke kongruent med professorens handlinger, skjønt; Selv et andre år EE-undergraduate vil kunne konstruere en grunnleggende gnistgapsender ved hjelp av komponenter som finnes i deres radio og ledninger funnet ombord på skipet.
“Å vent.” Du sier, “Bredbåndsoverføringer og dermed er Spark Gap-sendere ulovlige.” Ja, det er en slags tid. Jeg garanterer at hvis professoren bygde en gnistgapsender – og husker, er dette den enkleste senderen som kan gjøres ut av kokosnøtter og muligens en av fru Howas kveldskjoler – en amatørradiooperatør ville ha sporet dem ned innen få timer . Vi vet allerede professoren visste morse fra sesongen to episode, spøkelse en go-go, så det er ingenting som hindrer professoren og alle andre kommer av øya.
