appliance without batteries

[david753]

There is a type of appliance that doesn't need to use batteries.
Such as mobil phone recharge system via pushing by fingers.
And I heard my colleague said, there is a kind of flashlight, which energy come from hand compressing repeatedly.
Does any body know this technology in details?

[Mike]

dynamo motor?<p>Kind of like a bike light. As the motor spins, it generates power and lights the light.<p>The flashlight probably has a mechanism to spin the motor as the lever is moved. That powers the light.

[Chris Smith]

There are many "Mule" powered devices on the market today, flashlights, radios, and flashlights.<p> They all require several things...<p>1] A mule to supply the power with their hands and fingers...
2] A storage device, usually a super cap...
3] A generator device designed for human mule hands and fingers...[crank or squeeze types]<p>Old stepper motors out of the old type large floppy drives can be used for the motor/generator portion, along with many stepper motors commonly found on the web, super caps also are common, and then comes the device,...radio, flash lights, etc. <p>There is even a article or two in Nuts and Volts on the subject last year. <p>Or you can just buy them.

[jollyrgr]

You are looking for human powered electronic devices? I find this subject interesting as well. As a kid I had a toy of this type. It was a flashlight called a Flash-Brite. It was a flashlight that you turned a crank on the side to produce light. No batteries; just a standard type flashlight with lightbulb, three color filters (Red, Yellow, and Green; or no filter for white light) and a holster for carrying it around. To power the thing required two hands and continuous cranking to produce light. Not very practical.<p>There is also a squeeze light like your colleague told you about. These have been around at least since the mid 70's and mabye before. There are various models but all work pretty much on the same principle. You sqeeze a handle and it turns a set of gears inside. A generator of some sort (many times a small electric motor like those found in toys) is spun to produce electricity to light a lightbulb. With these you had to keep squeezing the handle repeatedly to keep a flywheel turning to keep the light on. Not very bright but it would keep you from bumping into things while walking in the dark. Not very useful for changing a tire or working on a car in the dark.<p>Then there are a number of "survival" type lights with radios. In my humble opinion most of these are not that great. (If you were a good friend I'd tell you NOT to buy any of them. But a forum like this is not for that type of bashing.) They will produce light and sound. You turn a crank and it spins the motor turned generator to charge rechargable batteries (NiCads). There are all sorts of these devices. Radio Shack sells a Grundig named device (although it is not a "real" Grundig radio, they just licensed the name from what I understand). I personally do not like this radio.<p>There are a new breed of flashlights out there as well. They are all pretty much the same and I cannot for sure say which developed them first. All are "shake lights". Sears is selling one this "Holiday" season (I call it Christmas). These flashlights consist of one or more white LEDs, a capacitor (usually a 1 Farad "memory" capacitor), a coil of wire, and a movable magnet. Depending on the design there may be foam bumpers or magnet bumpers. Basically you shake these flashlights like you would a can of spray paint when you are mixing the paint up. A powerful magnet moves back and forth through the coil and charges the capacitor. These fall under brand names such as NightStar, Forever, and so on. They come in many sizes but the shape is normally a standard flashlight shape. My battery powered single LED keychain flashlight outshines any of these I've seen. While these devices work fair, I do not like the downside to them. There is a powerful UNSHIELDED magnet inside these things. Some of the better designs use three magnets; one that moves back and fort and one that acts as a "cushion" at each end of the light instead of a foam or rubber bumper. The better ones are constructed so that you can hang them from a string and they will point to magnetic north. Again, the better versions of these are completely sealed. You can drop them in a lake and they float.<p>Then there are the Baygen devices. I have several Baygen items and all are very good performers. The Baygen items are from the "Bayliss Clockwork Radio" developed for the third world. These radios were meant for the plains of Africa. The Baygen design does not use batteries or capacitors to store energy; they use a large spring. You wind the spring from one spool to another and it slowly unwinds through a transmission, turing an electric motor. The electric motor then powers the radio circuit. With slight modification the generator will also power a white LED or two. Look for FREEPLAY on eBay or on the Internet for more items like these. A company called C Crane specially modifies and sells Freeplay radios with LED lights. <p>Baygen teamed up with Motorola to produce another interesting item; the FREECHARGE. A FREECHARGE is a hand crank generator with a battery pack inside. The device can work with different types of cell phones and comes with a flashlight adapter. You buy different types of modules to work with your particular brand of phone. You turn the crank (much like reeling in a fishing line) and recharge the battery in the device and any cell phone connected to it. I only partly opened one of mine up to see inside. It appears to be a set of gears, a battery pack of NiMH batteries (or are they NiCads?), a stepper motor turned generator, and some steering diodes and related circuitry. These do work quite nicely and WILL power things other than cell phones. Good luck finding them in a cell phone store. I had to get mine off eBay as nobody sells them in a physical store that I've seen. They will order them for you but charge lots of $$$ ($80!!!). You can find them on eBay for under $20 with free shipping. If you are patient you can get them cheaper. (I paid less than $20 total for the two I have.) <p>Then there are the knock-offs to the Freecharge. I experimented with these and produced a neat little flashlight device. (Long before I got the Freecharge devices.) The item I played with was nothing but gears, an electric motor, a couple diodes, and a capacitor. I connected the output of this device to a 1 Farad memory capacitor. Turning the crank briskly for about one minute fully charges the capacitor. I can then power a single white LED at a high enough brightness that I can read by it. (I bounce the light off the ceiling and it lights up enough so you can see around the room.) The high brightness last maybe five minutes. The LED will remain lit for about 20 minutes total. Toward the end there is tot enough to see around the room but more than enough to make out the LED in a darkened room. Since developing my own many of the companies that makes the knock-offs have started including capacitors and white LEDs in their design. Crank the thing for 30 seconds get five minutes of useful light. Look on the Internet for a device called a SIDEWINDER CELL PHONE CHARGER. Here is a link of a reseller of the Sidewinder:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/sidewindercharger/<p>
There is another flashlight that I find quite interesting. It is built like the FREECHARGE device but only has an output of white LEDs. Push the button once and ONE LED lights push again for OFF, a third time and get THREE LEDs, again and it is off. I've played with these in Sharper Image (or one of the similar stores) and the device works fairly well. It is not a super powerful multi-cell MAG light but is quite bright for never needing batteries or light bulbs. These things will last close to the 30 minutes advertized. I cannot be 100% sure about these as I don't own one. Link to the device is provided below.<p>Now for some links:
A type of the flashlight your colleague mentioned:
http://www.gizmos-eu.com/Dynamo%20Torch.html<p>
The one LED/three LED crank flashlight:
http://ww w.uscav.com/productinfo.aspx?productid=8369&utm_source=TrafficLeader&utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=Dynamo+LED+Torch&utm_campaign=TrafficLeader&urlid=TrafficLeader<p>And here is the same light at Kohl's, if you have one near you:
http://www.kohls.com/products/product _page_vanilla0.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=141460023&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=168229975&bmUID=1101780174503<p>And there is always Baygen's info:
[/URL]CORRECTED LINK!
http://www.freeplayenergy.com<p>And, of course, C Crane Company:
[URL=http://www.ccrane.com]http://www.ccrane.com<p>[ November 30, 2004: Message edited by: Jolly Roger ]</p>

[Enzo]

Hand generator flashlights have been around for at least 60 years. My father had one he picked up during World War 2. It was Japanese, a war trophy I suppose. You squeezed the lever repeatedly and the generator lit the bulb. Had to keep squeezing, there was no battery or storage. The whirring sounds it made sounded a lot like cicadas or other insects of the forest.

[terri]

Pardon
my
ignorance,
but
how
come
the
word-wrap
on
this
topic
is
about
two
of
my
screens
wide?<p>Any
suggestions
to
cure
this?<p>A UBB or HTML tag to change the whole topic on my screen?<p>I don't want to sidetrack this interesting topic, but if someone can help in one post, it would be nice.

[david753]

I was so pleasant that there are so many people who are interested in this topic.
But, Does anyone know how to do it by myself?
It seems using a motor connecting to a cap, and diode, that all.
What kind of motor suitable for in terms of energy transfer efficient?

[jollyrgr]

There was an article in Nuts and Volts a few months back regarding this topic. I didn't want to bother with gearing and all that and picked up a knock off cell charger like Side Winder I linked to above. It was cheap and only had a "charging" LED. <p>I connected up a capacitor and switch arrangement to toggle the capacitor between the charger. Brief description:<p>The NEGATIVE of the capacitor, LED, and hand crank generator all go together. A single pole, double throw switch CENTER terminal goes to the capacitor PLUS terminal. One of the remaining switch terminals goes to the generator, the other to the LED. When the switch is thrown to the GENERATOR position you crank the handle and charge the capacitor. Throw the switch the other way and the LED uses the capacitor for power.<p>The hard part would be the gearing/transmission. Any DC motor should work fine. The N&V article described a circuit using a stepper motor. I've messed around with regular toy motors and they work fine. One of my Baygen radios uses a CD/DVD/Tape player drive motor. You can simply extract a motor out of some defunct device. Connect up a full wave bridge rectifier AC inputs to the motor. Pull your DC power off the PLUS and MINUS terminals. Throw a large value capacitor (I like the 1 Farad memory caps) on the output of the bridge rectifier. You might also consider using a zener diode or some sort of voltage regulator as most memory caps are rated at 5.5 volts and do not like over voltage. You can also use rechargable batteries.

[peter-f]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Enzo:
Hand generator flashlights have been around for at least 60 years. My father had one he picked up during World War 2. It was Japanese, a war trophy I suppose. You squeezed the lever repeatedly and the generator lit the bulb. Had to keep squeezing, there was no battery or storage. The whirring sounds it made sounded a lot like cicadas or other insects of the forest.<hr></blockquote><p>
My father served in the German army- 1943-45, and had SAME style device... made by Braun - bakelite case, white-metal lever (company still in business, no longer making this). Unfortunately his appears to be lost.<p>Renovation Hardware was carrying a "novel, new device" (exactly as described above) of Russian manufacture, about 3 years ago.. maybe still available (?) <p>... in any case the bulbs of both cited here were not bright... could be useful in pitch-black situations, not for emergency task lighting.