How to change the batteries on Spykee, the robot.

Spykee came back to life when attached to a 12V portable battery.

In the video below, we hack into Spykee to attach new leads which will later allow for the connection of an external battery pack.  We also connect a multimeter to monitor the battery volage.  We connect a 12V battery, charged with a solar panel, for testing.  Yes, Spykee works on 12V and could be off-the-grid!

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Next, we connected a new external battery pack that uses standard AA rechargeable batteries.  Nothing proprietary here.  We made the new battery pack and now Spykee is better than new. His new external AA battery pack has a higher charge capacity than the original pack that came from the manufacturer.  The original pack was rated at 1,800 mAh while my new home-made replacement battery is rated at 2,400 mAh.  The batteries I chose are Imedion Low-Discharge AA batteries made by Powerex.  See how it works in the video below.

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Testing the Original Battery Pack

I tried freezing the original batteries that came with Spykee.  That improved the battery voltage, but was not enough of an improvement to get Spykee moving.

Spykee's original 9.6V NiMH battery

The video below shows the freezing process and how freezing increased the voltage of the batteries.

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Disassembly of the original Spykee battery pack

When I took the pack apart, I found 2 bad cells and 6 good cells.  The good cells could be used for another project.

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I put the two bad cells into my battery charger.  One of them charged up.  That leaves me with one cell at 0 Volts.  I plan to surge it with my solar panel.  Spykee’s original batteries will live on in another application.

Updated Jul-13-2010

Surging Batteries

I save my defective batteries in a box.  These batteries will not charge any more and have a voltage of 0 Volts.  A 12V solar panel, which  provides a relatively safe voltage, brought these batteries back up to a normal AA voltage with just a few seconds of surging!

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After surging the batteries, as shown in the video above, I looked for an application where I could use just a single battery to provide power.  In order to test the capacity of the reclaimed batteries, it seems best to test each one on its own and not mixed with other batteries.  There aren’t many electronics that use just one AA battery, but here are some:

• Flasher LED’s

• Newer LED flashlights  (I don’t have one of these, though)

• Clocks

This clock uses a single AA battery for power.

I have a couple clocks that each use a single AA battery.  So I popped reconditioned batteries into them and they are working!

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The clock above has been running on a reconditioned battery since Jul-8.  The interesting point here is that the batteries used to be at 0 Volts and would not charge up, so were destined for the trash or recycle bin.  But after zapping them for a few seconds with a solar panel, the batteries are again back to work doing something useful.

Battery Charging after Surging

The results are not perfect.  I waited a couple days after surging before doing anything with these batteries.  The result is that more than half the batteries went back to 0 Volts.  I believe if I had tried using the batteries or charging them right after surging, that the results would be better.

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As shown in the video above, since I waited a couple days before doing anything with the batteries, many of them returned to 0 Volts.  I performed the surging experiment one more time and had much better luck with the batteries, as shown in the video below.

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The good results continued.  After most of the batteries charged up, many of the batteries became useful.  I am using some of the reclaimed batteries in:

• Wireless headphones

• LED flashlight

• Clocks

• Cordless laser mouse

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Conclusion

Surging the dead batteries brought many of them back to life and gave them new purpose.  However, they are not good as new and probably have some issues with charge capacity.  But for me, I’m glad to have many of these batteries back to work instead of sitting in a box as scrap.

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Freezing Batteries

I froze a battery pack and saw the voltage of the pack climb from 6.9V before freezing to 8.4 V after freezing.  I did not surge the pack.  Freezing by itself improved the voltage.  The battery pack came from a Spykee robot.

Related post:  Repairing and Replacing Batteries on a Spykee Robot

It’s OK to freeze NiCd, NiMH, and Lithium batteries. I think freezing disrupts the crystals that are causing the plates to short together. After freezing, hit end of battery with soft hammer to break crystals?  [ Source:  ysuusy.com ]

It might not work with Lithium batteries [ source ], although Lithium batteries should be safe from damage even as low as -40C [ source ].

Lithium batteries will not be damaged in freezer as long as they are allowed to warm again before use [source].

A well-written procedure:  Hackaday.

Give a Lithium Battery a New Function

My notebook computer uses a Lithium-ion battery.   This kind of battery typically lasts between 2-3 years.  I have one in storage now after it got too weak to keep the notebook powered for long.  Why do Lithium batteries stop working?  Oxidation inside the battery increases the internal resistance. The oxidation builds up over time and eventually, the cell resistance reaches a point where the pack can no longer deliver the stored energy  But the battery may still have ample charge!  For this reason, an aged battery can be kept longer in applications that draw low current.  [ source ]  So, while my old battery pack might not be suitable for the notebook computer any more, maybe I could use it to light up a few LEDs, power a portable radio, a portable media player, or a micro-controller (like an Arduino).  I’m glad I didn’t throw the battery pack away.  I’ll have to try using that battery pack again for a small application.  First, I have to figure out how to tap into the power connector of a Lithium-ion battery.

Store Batteries at Low Temperatures

Lithium batteries keep their storage capacity better if stored at 0°C and at a 40% charge level.  Some reserve charge is needed to keep the battery and its protection circuit operational during prolonged storage.  [ source ]  This means we could store Lithium batteries in the freezer for improved longevity.

NiMH and Lithium Are Different

Lithium batteries do not like to be fully discharged and full recharged.  They prefer partial discharges with frequent recharges.

Exercising Batteries – My Personal Notes… Work-in-progress

Using an Arduino microcontroller, I exercised some batteries by having them turn LED’s on and off until their voltage dipped below a threshold voltage.

Used this transistor:  ON Semiconductor BC547B.  Data sheet:  http://www.chipcatalog.com/ONSemi/BC547B.htm

The BC547B transistor can handle a maximum of 100mA.  The LED’s I’m using fall below this limit, so this transistor is OK for this application.

My red LED consumes 15mA.

Blinking LED takes up to 13 mA

Blue LED:   up to 65 mA

This is an heirloom pepper.  They are sweet, similar to a bell pepper.  I bought the plants online.  Read on for the source and for a video.

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Source of plants:

SeedSavers.org – They shipped the plants in a box to my house.  As you can see, the plants survived and thrived in the garden.  No chemicals needed.  These plants were grown organically.  I have not had any problems with disease or pests.  I’m seeing an average pepper weight of 0.7 ounces each.

Seed savers says about this pepper:  “The seeds for this variety were given to SSE by Jimmy Nardello who lived in Naugatuck, Connecticut until his death in 1983. His family had been growing these peppers in that region ever since coming to the U.S. Mr. Nardello’s mother originally brought the seeds with her when she immigrated to the U.S. in 1887 with her husband Guiseppe. One of the very best for frying. Productive 24” plants are loaded with 10-12” long peppers. 80-90 days from transplant.  Heat •0•”

The peppers were originally grown in the Basilicata region of Italy.  I chose this pepper because of that reason, thinking that if the plant adapted to the climate of Italy, it might be well-suited for my climate in Arkansas, since we are at about the same latitude on Earth.  However, this plant must also grow well in cooler areas if the immigrants took it to Connecticut, so this plant will probably grow well in cooler climates, too.

I am happy with Seed Savers and am a repeat customer.  I especially enjoy growing and eating heirloom foods, which are not readily available in stores.  It feels like a treat to get something out of the garden that I can’t buy at the store.  These peppers are good raw or in a stir fry.

peaches, okra, and black cumin (Nigella Sativa).

Black cumin still in the dried pods

Black cumin on english muffins

The black cumin added just a hint of flavor to the muffins.  Black cumin would also be good on toast.  The flavor reminded me of pizza… maybe the oregano.  It’s a light flavor.

Horticultural vinegar

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How to Spray

To spray the vinegar, I used a sprayer originally sold to apply cleaners, preservatives, and sealers on wood decks and siding.

Where to Buy

I placed an order through eBay for a 4-pack of 20% vinegar.  That 20% concentration is hard to find!  With UPS Ground shipping included, I paid a total of $71.71.  Seems expensive to me.  I see that the seller also has a store outside of eBay but I have not yet ordered from their website.  The direct link to their website and vinegar:  marshallgrain.com

20% vinegar is expensive and hard-to-find. This brand is "Nature's Guide".

Other Ideas

Because this stuff is expensive, it might be worth the effort to make your own vinegar.

Garlic, German Extra Hardy

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One thing that amazed me about garlic is that it comes out of the ground, surrounded by dirt, but when it dries and you peel back the outer skin, you are left with a clean globe covered with its own natural, white paper.

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I think the garlic were smaller than they should be.  I planted the cloves Dec-03-2009.  This fall I’ll try to plant them earlier, like maybe around mid-November.

Huge Hungarian Heart tomato... 33 ounces!

Any garden tomato, big or small, is gratifying compared to the ones at the store. This one was fun to cut up though, because I never had one this big. I think normally I see 8-ounce tomatoes, but this one was 33 ounces.  That’s over 2 pounds!

Over 2 pounds

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I bought a couple of these plants when they were just babies, from Seed Savers Exchange.  The seedlings came in a box and I transplanted them to the garden.  These plants have grown faster, taller, and produced bigger tomatoes than any other variety I have grown.

Radica U-Create, by Mattel

The machine by itself is harmless, but when I installed the optional software that came with it, I had trouble.

First of all, the program was worthless to me and I wanted to uninstall it after I realized it was nothing we wanted on our computer.

My anti-virus program, Comodo, has been telling me that ucreate.exe was doing suspicious things on my computer.

Comodo shows activity on my computer even AFTER I uninstalled the program. (Click for bigger view.)

I tried to manually delete the files but they wouldn’t go away.  I got an “access denied” and “permission required” error.

I tried many tricks, using CMD, the command line tool, etc.  Here is what finally worked on my Vista machine:

Reboot into safe mode.  To do that:  Restart computer.  After you see the motherboard’s BIOS messages, press and hold F8 on the keyboard.  Windows asks what kind of safe mode you want.  I selected safe mode with command line.

Navigated to the folder using this command:

cd  C:\Program Files (x86)\Radica\UCreate\Music\

Delete UCreate.exe: 

del UCreate.exe

I still could not delete the folders, though, even in safe mode.  Rebooted the computer again, this time into regular mode.  Once in normal Vista running mode, I again tried deleting the folders using Explorer and that finally worked, too.  No more files or Radica folder on my computer.  It’s gone!

We can still play music on the machine, but I will not connect it to my computer again.  I thought I should put some notes online in case you have this problem as well.

I chose to use aluminum angle to construct my solar panel frame. Video below…

I cut through the aluminum angle using a hacksaw.

I drilled the holes into the aluminum using a drill press and a hand drill.

To protect the steel pipe from the elements, rust, and corrosion, I sprayed it with a cheap, $1 can of black spray paint.

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Conduit connects to the solar panel and how the pole is concreted into the ground with rebar.  Video below…

How do you get conduit out of the boxes anyway?  I think I spent way too much time trying to figure it out, trying to find the end of the conduit so I could pull it through the box.  It may be easier to cut the box all the way open and remove the entire coil of conduit from its box.  If you plan on using all the conduit for one job, why try so hard to preserve the box?

Solar panel is mounted to top of pole and locked with a chain. Solar panel can rotate on pole and aim at the sun. To demonstrate that the panel is producing power, it is used to charge a portable 12V battery and air compressor. The air compressor then inflates the tires on a bicycle.  Video below…

I am documenting the construction of my first wind turbine. I am not an expert, just learning as I go. I am not building a turbine from scratch, but instead trying to first succeed in mounting one to a tower and wiring it up to power small devices inside my house.

The Power of Wind

I want to document the process so that it would be easier for me to duplicate this a second time, as I would like to build more than one turbine. Also, if the instructions are of any benefit to others doing a similar construction, I would be happy to know that. Let me know if you have tips to share or would like to show off your own DIY wind turbine.

Buy Wind Turbine

After I raise my first turbine, I would like to attempt building the turbine itself from scratch. But for my introduction and education, I decided to buy a pre-made wind turbine I found on eBay. I found a small turbine from eBay seller blairusa. Butch (the eBay seller) builds turbines and sells them on eBay. The particular turbine I bought is small and according to Butch has the following spec’s:

• 12V
• 140 Watts
• Starts spinning in winds of around 4 MPH
• Can withstand winds over 40 MPH but not recommended
• weighs about 22lbs
• Made of aluminum and steel
• Propeller diameter: 36 inches
  
• Length of generator: 42inches

I paid $305 total (including shipping).

Dig hole

I don’t have the windiest location but want to give this a try anyhow.

I picked a location in my backyard. My primary consideration for picking this spot was that it will be out of view for most of my neighbors. I don’t want to make enemies. The turbine will make a little noise when spinning which might bother my neighbors if I put it right on the property line. Some people, for whatever reason, do not like the way wind turbines look. I haven’t talked with all of my neighbors about it, so to be safe, I’m keeping this one tucked away to eliminate any trouble with the neighbors. Also, the location I chose is fairly close to the house, meaning the wiring will be fairly short, making it easier for me to run wiring to get the power into the house.

The turbine will be mounted to a steel pipe. The pipe will be secured in the ground with concrete and guy wires.

At the target site, I dug a hole 1 ft wide and 2 ft deep.

I used a pick and mattock with a shovel to dig the hole.

I had to get on my hands and knees to dig the last several inches using trowels and the shovel.

Assemble Pole

Now we need a pole to mount the wind turbine onto.  I did some reading online and found a helpful site:  mdpub.com.  That site got me started making a pole out of  steel pipes commonly found at home improvement stores.  Below I’ll show you how I assmembled the pieces.

Above you can see a hinge joint so that the wind turbine can be lowered and raised from the ground whenever maintenance is needed. Most of the pieces for my tower came from my local Sutherlands store.

Note that the tee above is a bigger diameter than the rest of the pieces, so that the threads are unused on the tee, allowing the tee to function as a hinge joint. Most of the pipe pieces have a diameter of 1 ¼”. The tee above is bigger, though, with a diameter of 1 ½”.

A tee was chosen above to allow the electrical cables to exit from the pipe. Later, you will see how the wires come out of this hole.

Concrete

Insert the pipe into the hole.

Mix concrete and pour into the hole. Used about (4) 60-pound bags of mix. The mix itself then was about 240 pounds but water was added as well, adding to the weight of the base of this mount.

Dig a second hole and place a stationary pipe in it. The second pipe has an arm that latches onto the first pipe. The arm can be detached at any time. I’m surprised how sturdy this connection is.  The arm can hold the pole up with wind turbine mounted to the top without any guy wires.  However, for safety and extra stability, guy wires are a must.  The guy wire installation is detailed lower down on this page.

Apply Plumber’s Grease

I want to be able to detach the steel pipes at any time for maintenance, re-wiring, or other future modifications. Since the steel pipes are outside and exposed to rain, condensation, and humidity, the pipe threads will rust and fuse the pipes together. Already in the short time I have had them outside, they have already developed rust. I picked up some Plumber’s Grease from Sutherlands.

I used an old toothbrush to apply the grease to all the pipe threads.

I put most of the pieces together, minus the turbine itself, to see how it fit together.

With the setup above, the wind turbine blades will be 16 feet above the ground.

Attach guy wires

When the turbine is up on the pole and the wind starts blowing, we need a way to keep the pole from falling down.  I attached (4) guy wires to secure the pole and prevent it from falling down in high winds.

But how should the guy wires connect to the metal pole?  One site showed how eye bolts could be attached to a pole.  [jerryriverguy.com]  That encouraged me to try the same.

Another site showed how a hole was drilled into steel to make a tripod.  That gave me an idea of how to go about drilling holes into the wind turbine pole.

The video above shows how to drill and tap a steel pipe coupling. Eye bolts are attached to the coupling. The guy wires will connect to the eye bolts.

Attach guy wires to pole.

Video above shows how to assemble guy wires for a wind turbine.  I learned most of the details from a PDF:   windenergy.com and from a web page at otherpower.com.

Raise pole

One thing I like about this setup is that the pole is raised and lowered by one person and requires no fancy equipment.

The next video below shows the typical power output of this little turbine on a windy day. It’s not as nearly impressive as I had hoped, but I was still very excited to see “free” power going into my battery.

Typical Power Output on Windy Day

The wind turbine was advertised to produce up to 140 W. So far I have witnessed a more typical output of around 33 W (about 2.5 A at 13.1 V).  I now see that it is common for wind turbine sellers to overstate the power output of the units they sell.

Add Anemometer to Measure Wind Speed

I wanted to measure the wind speed required to spin the blades and begin producing enough power to push current into my 12V battery. I added an anemometer to the wind turbine pole.

The anemometer is part of a weather station kit, the La Crosse WS-2316U Wireless Weather Station.

Before you consider buying this, you might want to read my unbiased review of the La Crosse WS-2316U Wireless Weather Station.

Hoping for Wind

Will be continued…Next steps:

Add fuse and blocking diodes for electrical safety.
Install a bearing system to allow the turbine to turn into the wind more easily with less friction than the current steel pipe on steel pipe setup.
Install heavier gauge wire to see if that allows more current to freely move from the turbine to the battery.
Put wraps around guy wires for safety to make them more visible so people (like my kids) don’t walk into the wires.
Use deeper stakes in the ground to keep guy wires safely anchored.
Install new blades for better performance.
Install another turbine in series or parallel with this one for greater volts or amps.