1860 Off-grid Light And Power From The Pull Of A Cord
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
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I wish your intellect would be as contagious as your laughter and positive attitude. You're an inspiring teacher Mr Robert!
thank you mate - and to a degree it is - mostly intellect is abut thinking and I have been told the videos make folks think - which is super cool
I enjoy all of your videos. You present everything in a welcoming and lighthearted way that makes the videos fun to watch.
Sir that is it. Our lives have improved, because you used your time to teach us. Rural lighting has changed. Your inventions help us help ourselves. Thank you greatly
I love how he really enjoys his work. His laugh at the beginning is infectious!
It is also, at times, idiotic too.
I believe his laugh has a deep meaning. Just think about it.
Robert, I enjoy your videos and inventive enthusiasm. I just wanted to share with you an idea that I keep thinking about that could adapt to the pull cord flywheel generator you constructed recently. This would be a generator on a long axle which would also have on it several sprockets. The sprockets all on the same axle would have one-way cogs which freewheel in one direction and engage in the other. The device is mounted up high on a platform (or in a tree or the side of a house or on a balcony) with long chains over each sprocket and draped to the ground with a weight at the end (any weight like bucket of water, concrete brick etc.). The idea is to hoist all the weights to the top and let the first weight pull the sprocket, axle and geared (geared to maintain constant speed) generator into rotation. When the weight reaches the ground after several minutes it then triggers a catch mechanism which releases the next weight to pull the next sprocket. Several weights and sprockets could be added to allow an hour or more of generator time before each weight would need to be cranked back up to the top. It would be very much like the mechanism of powering a cuckoo clock. I don't have the capability to 3D print or manufacture such things but others do. I wish I could make it and test it. It seems like it could work and actually be practical. What do you think?
You are amazing. Loving it. Amazing energy to you and to flow. Unconditional love respect and gratitude 🙏 pushing forward. Gods speed. Time is now. No fear. In the light 💡
I often came back to the idea of old coo coo clocks with the chains and weights. Instead of a clock, a simple LED light bulb. Pull a chain down, which pulls up a weight, which will turn light on. Idea came up again during Power outage few days ago due to snowstorm and a simple pull of chain would provide at least a basic light. Perfect for camping or grid down
@Kris Pea patents are ridiculously expensive and nearly unobtainable for people unfortunately
it's a gravity battery mate - I have done videos on this
Deciwatt did this, called the GravityLight
I have very limited internet here... I know what rabbit hole I'm about to travel down next. Thank you all for the direction
Damn it. Almost exactly the same idea occurred to me, so I just mentioned it....... And then saw that you'd beaten me to the punch by 10 whole hours. 🙄
One of your best inventions Rob, great job.. you have created something that is actually usable and produces real results.
Tbh if you put everything rob's made from free scrap material together you could probably light the neighborhood, and he's not even trying
He knows how to make super efficient generators but he's always been pretty honest about the fact that's not his goal, he's more an ideas guy
cheers mate
lovely stuff! I would like to also see a version to mount in the ceiling with a round chain and a bucket of sand. just hook the bucket to the top of the chain at the start of the evening. as it reaches the floor you'll be ready to sleep.
So what immediately comes to mind is the pull cord assembly from any small engine. Dead string trimmers or chainsaws or blowers or whatever are free-to-cheap and easy to find, so it seems like it would be a good option to scavenge that (with the added bonus of them being self retracting), and the related clutch bearing. Don't know how tricky they would be to adapt, but it seems like a good option to explore for people who lack a 3d printer and wanted to build one of these.
Would be super easy to adapt. Use a couple of discarded 20kg weight plates and you could set it up like a rowing machine. Would be a fun build
Adrian is right mate - that would be an easy build and fun
I do not understand alot of what he has to say but I really like to watch what he makes
you're the grandad that nobody had, but every body needed
lol - cheers mate
What would be cool is to the see the pulley, recoil after release, ready for another pull 👌🏾
easy peasy
Grab one off the neighbors push mower, located in his backyard shed 🤔🤣
Rob,
When you pulled the cord I remembered my dad starting up the lawn mower when I was a wee lad.
That in turn reminded me of the time he had a lawn mower that had a crank starter on it.
The crank of the starter was mounted on top of the motor and was normally in it's closed position.
To start the mower, dad would open the crank handle and turn it 3 or 4 times then close the crank handle.
Then dad would walk over to the handle of the mower and pull a lever which would in turn, release the ratchet in the the mechanism; spin the engine and cause it to fire.
Eventually the crank starter broke and I think he pulled it apart and swapped the crank starter with a pulley that he wrapped a pull cord around to start the mower.
This little generator obviously does not need something like the crank starter, but a larger, heavier generator would benefit from one.
You could gear it so that it was easy to wind up but delivered a lot of pulling torque to spin a heavier flywheel or even cause a small one like this to spin much longer.
As far as the noise is concerned, you have a couple of options.
1) Put the generator inside a sound proof box. Easiest method.
2) Design the ratchet gear so that the outer part of the ratchet is spinning. Then add sufficient weight that will enable the weight plus the centrifugal force, to pull the arms away from the internal cog thereby eliminating the noise.
nice story mate and thanks for the tips - cheers
@@ThinkingandTinkering
You're welcome Rob.
the rectifier diodes, capacitors, and 3 pin regulator can easily be found in old CRT TVs from 70s 80s 90s and Japanese TVs you can find quality brand capacitors, Nichicon ect
So great to see the complete system. It works quite well! You said that the one way bearing is a bit loud but that could be an advantage in some situations. If it was adapted to be human powered by hand crank, treadle or bike pedal, then that bearing noise would be a simple alert that you need to pick up the pace.
indeed especially if you used small children lol
I don''t understand the need for a one way bearing.A normal bearing would be fine.
@@ravenmad9225 the one way bearing is the drive mechanism. The pull start disengages after the pull so you can rewind the pull cord. Otherwise you would have to wait till the whole thing stops to add more spin.
Every old citybike has a one way bearing that could be used
Hi, really enjoy your enthusiasm. Years ago on tomorrow’s world they covered an idea of linking together several trees with a pulley system and using your flywheel and clutch proceeded to power a generator.
All the best
that is interesting - I will try and look that up - cheers mate
Cool beans. Thanks for the upload
cheers mate
So now you just got to employ a latter-day punkhawallah (think, It ain't half hot mum) to sit on the veranda pulling the cord, which I guess could have some kinda spring-loaded return, so he could just sit there merrily passing the time before he needed to 'pull the string' again. Brilliant.
I have a Solar Powered Hand Crank Flashlight- Rechargeable LED Cranking Light With Clip By Stalwart (For Emergency Hiking Camping and Survival Gear) I got at Walmart. It's a mini one wothout the flywheel. It's my most favorite flashlight living off grid. Great video mate!!!
nice mate
What a great machine Rob. Loud little sob.
cheers mate
If you can start a lawnmower, you can start a lightbulb!
yep
Wouldn't it be cool if you could hook up one of those dog treat dispensers to this. So when your dog wants a treat, he pulls on a lever and a treat comes out, but that lever also gives the flywheel a spin and sends a bit of charge into the batteries.
Nice work Rob! 👍 Thanks for sharing!
cheers mate
Hmm🤔 I’m old enough to remember the ‘pedal wireless’ generators used by the Coast Watchers in New Guinea in WW2 and then later as part of our School of the Air for remote education. Add a foot crank to this one and hey, we’ve reinvented it! 🤣🤣🤣👏👏👏
yep lol
I really do like this build, nice one Rob.
cheers mate
Dr. Smith, I'd never have thought when I started watching you to learn batteries, I'd see you get into 3D printing. I love it. Hey, rather then a pull cord, how about a foot pedal like the old spinning wheels. You could just walk up and give it a few foot pumps.
nice one mate a foot pedal would work well
This is my absolute favorite - Awesome invention
cheers mate
Okay; it is AC. This is great!!!
I'd love to place my order for an assemble-yourself flywheel+super capacitor from Robert ! I'd have it set up on a bicycle to run my laptop all day long. It'd be my training and would give me even more energy !
I'm thinking of a device that could be plugged into any indoor training bike.
I have a solar lamp post and a tree in very close proximity. When the wind blows this device would be perfect to maintain the built in battery of this lamp.
Small petrol/diesel engines have pull-starters on them for safety and convenience ~ you can buy them as spare parts, and readapt your thing to have one
nice
YAY!!!!! You took my thought of a Fly Wheel for this idea!! 🥰🥰
cool
Change up the gear ratio put it on a wall, add a big sandbag, and you got yourself a gravity light, beautifully done
Another fantastic video thank you 👍
thank you mate
Really interesting, thanks! 👏
cheers mate
Nice! Thanks for these videos. You're on by default in my hackerspace's engineering room.
That's awesome!
Love how you are building upon the last video/build!
Will you be continuing this 'build' per-se into a 'home made windmill' with supporting 'storage'?
Thank you for your time in creating these videos; they are great!
That's the plan!
@@ThinkingandTinkering It's a lovely plan. This would really smooth out intermittent wind.
@@ThinkingandTinkering - Thank you for taking time to reply! And your efforts in educating us in this field! Looking forward to every future vid!
If you wanted to recycle to make it, look at your neighbors for chain saws and lawn mowers. There will be a lot of metals to go to recycling and hopefully the coil spring and covers to go with the pull chord. The ' next step ' one of my brothers thought up was connecting a car alternator ( as generator ) to the chainsaw to assist in jump starting vehicles. It was very dangerous until he added a bicycle chain guard over the chain that attached the two. Edited to add that particular alternator still had the car regulator in it's circuit so it only had a ground and V+ cable with large alligator clips.
That's novel! Yes, pretty dangerous, but the appropriate safeguards applied circumvent all that.
nice way to go if you want a recycle build mate - a very good suggestion - cheers
i like it for sure but i feel a higher gear with a 15kg weight that can come down from your highest reach point or even the top of your stairs would be a great use of our own bio mechanical advantage and what a great reason to go upstairs!
and for those without legs, just need a basketball hoop net closed at the bottom. Shoot hoops to light the barnyard 🤣
put the weight on a line around a pulley at the top, and you can haul the weight back up to the top, though I see you will need to rewind it on the generator pulley, what if the generator pulley was the top pully and you did a single loop around the pulley, coming back down to a smaller weight to keep the tension, then once you had released the weight it would drop, then pull the smaller weight down, (the ratchet would allow this) to reset the pulley ready for the next drop.
Actually this start an interesting conversation about efficient resetting of the rewinding ideas and the use of our human ability and what ideas can be created .
@@grendel1960a i really like that idea. maybe would need some rubber on the pulley to get the string to grip
@@Buzzhumma a pull start mechanism from a small engine has line retrieval via a spring, that should work. Otherwise, just make it a looped chain which you could hoist weight by winching in one direction and release the weight to generate power once the weight was at it's pinnacle. Hoisting a flag could be a parallel to describe this action visually.
Thank you, enjoyed it a lot. 👍🐝🌞
cheers mate
So when I mentioned a Treadle or spring pole design this is more or less exactly what I saw. LUL Love it Robert. The Time sync of the audio & video in the Cad blow up segment seems quite a bit off. May need to repost after a bit of editing?
cheers mate
Another masterpiece!
cheers mate
Thanks
You could print a gear system to convert torque into speed, this would make pulling the rope much heavier, but then you could just let the rope hang and put a weight on the end of it, and then gravity would pull that weight and so on you would have an interesting generation of energy. I keep thinking something like "if this gearing system were long enough to the point that this weight takes a long time to fall, it would reach an absurd level of efficiency" because as long as the weight is able to overcome the friction of the parts, it doesn't have limit for the size of the gear system, being able to connect several in series.
From one pull?! Astonishing. And a serpentine winding?! I am aghast.
cheers mate
Great build rob. I'm trying to figure out how adapt this idea into other ways to spin to generate and basically it's the flywheel and freewheel that is the key, the bigger an heavier the better. A hand crank with 50/1 gear ratio or more attached to a large flywheel and freewheel or the old bicycle on a stand connected to a DC motor but if the bike powered a large flywheel which then powered the motor/generator it would be vastly improved.
I remember seeing someone make a gravity battery light this way with crazy ratio gearbox and a 10L water bottle as weight on string
Thanks for this.
I feel like this sort of demonstration is very useful to the layman.Whilst I appreciate your only playing with POCs Its more useful than talking miliwatts and leds because it gives a more concrete understanding of how much power is generated by the apparatus, and therfore motivation to go pursue the thing.
Have you considered lost PLA casting for ridgid geometry that's easier created as 3d print but not strong enough in plastic. I've seen gears made this way but didn't think the result was great.
Thanks!!
cheers mate
A self reciprocating draw cord like on a petrol lawn mower would be a great addition to this already excellent device.👍 !
Absolutely
Good morning!
Morning to you too mate lol
Thank you Sir :)
cheers mate
My current "wind turbine" has a cheapo emergency radio as the generating part. Just slapped some wings on the crank handle. And yep it works, and pretty sure a toddler could do it. Produces some 2 watts of power at maximum. But yea charges a phone just nicely.
By the way the wings are cardboard. Not rainproof but i do plan on painting them with waterproof paint. Or replacing them with plastic spoon thingy i think i learned from you. The project has as a parameter that it should be completeable by really inexperienced people and the journey should be fun and easy. Goes to an arts and crafts group.
2:22 You need a spring on your pull cord so it'll retract. :D Then you can do repeated pulls to get the speed to where you want it... additionally, you could potentially make the cord shorter if you did that.
3:51 Ehh... you're saying you're moving things away, but nothing is actually moving... lol.
Edit: Ahhh, I see. The timing is off between the video and narration.
a return spring would be nice but seriously how much trouble is it to wind a string lol
@@ThinkingandTinkering I understand your view. And for what this is supposed to do, I understand that it's definitely overkill... but... if you wanted to quickly get your flywheel to top speed, quick, repeatable pulls would be much easier than a long pull, followed by 2 minutes of rewinding and another long pull. Plus, if you need this in an emergency and there's no power, no lights, and it wasn't rewound after the last use, can you wind it well enough in the dark?
Plus, if you wanted to dampen the sound, you'd want to enclose it all and apply some sort of noise barrier to the inside. How easy/difficult would it be then to rewind it manually?
@@ThinkingandTinkering if you wind the centre of the cord several times around the pulley, then you will have a return cord to automatically rewind (as the freewheel will operate during the rewind process) a slight amount of back weight on the loose end of the cord will keep it wrapped tight (in fact you could use the back weight as the return mechanism
Thx for the vid
cheers mate
I noticed your gears are a bit noisy. And this is not a criticism in any way shape or form, but I thought I would relate a bit of old tech. I had a cousin that was a tuner for Harley-Davidson in the 60s for flat-track racing. At that time, H-D was still running flat-heads against the oncoming onslaught of the Japanese OHV and OHC motors. So H-D was looking for any edge. My Brother's 1st job was to break in gearboxes. He would run the gearbox for 24 hours on an electric motor with valve grinding compound in the oil under a moderate load. This lapped the gears perfectly. Then disassemble the gearbox, replace the bearings, steam clean the gears, and reassemble. The result was that 60-hp motors were able to compete with 70-hp motors......
Of course, it is all different now. With machining down to a millionth of an inch... But a simple old-school trick that worked. I wonder if a bit of graphite on a PLA gear would not be similar?
Love your channel and your delight when something works....
Blessings to you and yours.
Rei
that is an awesome tip - thank you for sharing - love it!
Another 1 way bearing on the pull cord pully and a spring rewinder so you can pull several times to accomplish higher rotational speeds.
nice one mate - cheers
Magnetic clutch using magnets and a copper plate for resistance. Inductance creates the friction. The faster you turn, the greater the resistance...
Bravo!
cheers mate
This is great! I would first put out the two leads alone so I could cross them with my finger 😮😆
awesome
Begs the question, how long did bulbs stay alight after one pull?
a while - it's a flywheel
@@ThinkingandTinkering A mile- 1760 yards, a while- ????
@@ThinkingandTinkering A quantitative while or a qualitative while?
A wheely long time.
@@ThinkingandTinkering Is that an imperial while, or one of them new fangled metric ones? 😏
My respect on the use of your 3D printer via Tinker Cad. 👍
The noise can be alleviated with the use of a spring clutch.
What a wonderful demonstration of the use of a flywheel this small and the Super capacitors. If only they would not be so expensive.
Does anybody know of something cheap that contains super capacitors as part of its circuit ?
cheers mate
Hi Rob, have you ever demonstrated a fluorescent bulb or tube, Earthed at one terminal or end and the other terminal or end close to an over head power line.?
LOL.. That sounds like I'm trying to dare you into an accidental demise..
Obviously I'm not if any readers are now looking at me in a suspicious manner.
Thought it might be a good Tesla free lighting energy subject for mobile home users.?
Especially if overhead wires are fairly close by..
I'm aware that being within the Faraday shield of a metal caravan wouldn't allow for this but maybe a "Wireless Pickup / a Short Antenna" positioned outside.?
Be extra extra careful if you're going to feature this..
As mentioned, many many suspicious eyes are now upon me.
LOL. All the best & keep 'em coming. :)
Awesome stuff as usual, only issue I had was following the tinker cad audio / vid section, slightly out of sync.
cheers mate and thanks for letting me know
I had a problem printing out the magnet holder and the big gear. It is hard to notice but both parts are slightly tilted to one side. You need to make sure that these parts are flat on the surface before you slice them or they won't print correctly!!!
Your work is amazing and I appreciate your efforts -- I have a little trouble following sometimes, am I not understanding or is the voice overlay out of sync with the cursor movements when discussing the CAD diagram breakdown?
I think the audio was desync'd in the cad footage but it looks cool, i want to build one myself
yes it was a little - ah well - go for it mate
I'm watching this, and wondering about the viability of using a larger gear reduction, and driving the generator from a susspended weight (Like a grandfather clock type arrangement). Run the power to supercapacitors, then to a low power led lightbulb for a simple off grid light source. When the capacitors get close to flat, just go pull the cord again to raise the weight back up........ It would give the kids something to do during a power cut. :D
With a mains powered solenoid lockng the gears it could even be a funky electro mechanical emergency light that automatically starts working when mains power dies.
you are ahead of me lol
Use rubber weights instead of metal to minimise noise and vibration. Rubber is an effective shock absorber and cheap
cheers
Now go the next step. Build a recoil for the cord so you can pull it three or four times whenever it slows down.
a return spring would be nice but seriously how much trouble is it to wind a string lol
Maybe, you should take apart an old lawn mower and use it's pull starter to charge super capacitors for a light. I don't even know why you can't buy such lanterns when you can just use off-the-shelf parts. Just give it a pull every now and then. It's not like you have much else to do during a power failure.
Using this pull cord method and your magnet flywheel it would spin forever
old printers have freewheels (and electric clutches) as part of their mechanisms for those that wish to make similar machines without access to a 3d printer, just ask round your family and you will be inundated with old printers that provide a wealth of axles, gears and other parts (including motors)
I didn't know that thank you for sharing mate - I will.look out - but we already did this with a bicycle you know
That's awesome. How about a pull cord from a push mower?
I'm excited about solutions like this that can be easily implemented by anyone. The only somewhat complicated step and thus a kind of hurdle for me would be creating the coil. Could the flywheel instead directly be connected to a nema stepper motor as a generator? Could that also be an efficient solution?
I wonder if you could put some type of felt on a wind turbine to build up static and then somehow capture it
Hi Ya Rob, I really like how you presented this! But I'm not into (manual labor), perhaps you can continue with this one and ad a "prime mover" of some sorts 4 completion.
I am mulling it over mate
Neat!
cheers mate
1:26 tinker cad
So , in the circuit diagram , the 2200uF IS the 'reserve power' capacitor so to speak , or is that placed after the regulator and not shown on the diagram? Couldn't quite understand.
👍 awesome
cheers
Robert have you seen the lontra compressor? Simple but efficient beautiful design. I reckon it could be 3d printed and would make great energy storage or a flywheel compressor for spraying or as a pump.
Have you seen the hairpin motor? Simpler more efficient coils, used by a couple of ecar manufacturers.
I have seen both of these you mentioned. The lontra would be a good challenge to build!! The hairpin motor would be a little easier if you can find square copper wire. Both cool technology but I think it would be a bit of a challenge for what he likes which is simple easy to build things. I would love to see a 3d printer Lontra compressor though. Would like to see if it could be a supercharger also.
I have seen it mate and the hairpin motor
@@newmonengineering I have also considered automotive applications. Air-ride could be improved but as an owner of modified turbo vehicles, my first consideration was as a supercharger. I can see them replacing chargers of all types. I don't think much modification would be needed to pump liquids and shouldn't require priming.
@@ThinkingandTinkering putting some 2-3mm copper wire through a roller could give it enough shape to improve efficiency at least. I'll try and build a lontra in 3d but I'm not promising it'll be any good as I've only printed the test boat so far. But I really need to know if it will be any good as a supercharger.
Thought you were dressed as the pope or something for the first half a second there 🤣
Also, I'm tempted to make one of these just for personal use!!!
I love (and prefer) the supercapacitor solution here, but I wonder, with pendulums involved in a less noisy generator (e.g. a gravity battery, I wonder, if the pendulum's movement could allow/disallow access of a flywheel to power the generator, based on a hard limit, with additional energy diverting to lifting a weight, instead, which also goes down, instead, if the hard limit isn't reached. You go so fast Rob, I'm still working on the gearbox for my leaf generator, but I'm tempted to give something a go with pendulums and flywheels soon if you think it'd be worth the experiment. Though I should probably look into the workings of a grandfather clock first.. right?
you are ahead of me mate - guess what is coming up next lol
@@ThinkingandTinkering You've been my teacher for years mate. I've still got a lot to learn lol. No idea what you're doing next though but can't wait to see it whatever it is! Nothing boring happens on this channel.
How about a simple gravity powered light that could be powered from the weight of a bottle of water and power a light for 30 minutes or so? Would love to see an easy project to make one.
2:10 Suddenly Transfomed in Emperor Palpatine for a Second..
"The Force of Energy is Strong in this Lights Bulbs...
They will not pass to the Dark Side.."
lol
Great video. Could you attach the generator to the front wheel of bike to generate electricity to battery or series of capacitors to store energy? And then with a flip of a switch reverse the current and make a motor out of generator to propel the bike?
yes
At 1:55 the wires you clip on don't seem to be connected to anything, then get pulled into the mechanism when you spin it up.
Hey Murray,, could you power it from itself? And still produce enough power for lights?
Using the capacitors is a great idea how long do they keep the lights on
a while - you can actually calculate it if you want
"There are FOUR lights" Captain Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek oh Sory wrong Sci-fi
lol
Wow! That is impressive! So Earth is a giant physical flywheel and everything physical in the universe is creating either light/gravity or electromagnetic force. Electrons are attracted to centripetal momentum. I am imagining a heavy neodymium socketed flywheel in the mid drive of my e-bike that serves as a generator and possibly gyroscopic balance. Also have you seen the documentation on gyroscopic levitation? It allows objects with a lot of weight to act as if they are very lightweight!
I haven't seen it - I must look it up - cheers mate
The noise can be minimised with the use of different materials
Well, if someone added a buoy above an anchor connected to a shielded sealed cable with a return spring as a recoil, wah-lah you just created a wave Shoreline generator.
nice
Wow! What is the power output on this?
The desired output is well the light and not the sound ? 🙂
Attach this to a tall tree with a Coil spring to recoil the cable.
cheers mate
I think this setup would improve a weight battery
I am kind of medium weak on electronics I mean I can do Arduino projects I've done even a complex one and it turned out pretty good but what happens if you pull it in those capacitors already fully charged can you destroy capacitors by overcharging them? Forgive my naivete
Out of curiosity could you hook a motor up to the pull card section and feed the motor with the output to attempt a self loop system.
you could if you wanted and maybe on the first of April I will do it to show a magic free energy device use for the fun of it