Powering Solar Projects

I had mentioned in my Solar Badge post that I had tried to replicate the sun to power a Solar Badge and could not. I improved my method (by placing the HID lamp in a driving light reflector) and achieved full voltage, but not full amperage. You can see in the pictures below, the Solar Badge will put out 5V at 40mA without question. In this quick video you will see an HID light powering a Solar Badge as well as my ATX power supply failing and quickly (and time lapsely) preparing another one. 🙂  Continue reading

Quiet your fan please, I’m working.

So I got a new power supply this last week, and thats a good thing right? It’s 0-30 volts, 0-5 amps, programmable, voltage and current limiting, and LOUD!!! The loud part had to be fixed, it was driving me batty! So the first thing I did was crack open the unit and get the size and voltage of the fan, went to my favorite computer parts website and found a ’15dB’ fan that looked pretty good, and it was only $11. And 5 days away. (It was the weekend and I’m to cheap to pay for speedy shipping on a fan.)

I then remembered I had about 12 different 80mm computer case fans under my other work bench. I fired up all of those and selected the quietest one. I went with the one I had to save 5 days of extra noise and 11 bucks. It was a quick swap out, no blinky, microcontrollers, or even passive circuit mods, but a welcomed simple mod to my ears. 🙂