This week, I worked with my partner Haonan on brainstorming ideas for our kinetic energy project. You can see his blog post below.

W2(Jan. 31)

Ideation

The kinetic project is to turn motion into light. Using some kind of generator like a DC gearmotor or a stepper motor, we can safely power some kind of LED or light display.

We had 4 concepts, two more complete and two were more focused on the creative output of the light.

Complete Concepts

1. Zoetrope: Hand crank connected to bevel gears to turn a motor, and then power a light in the interior of the zoetrope.

   

   Haonan’s sketch of the zoetrope concept.

   I like this concept because it’s a fun way to have a more creative output while still only lighting up a simple LED.

   Parts needed: maybe legos for a prototype, PVC for a more sturdy mount, 3D printed gears, some paper to print the frames of the animation

2. Radiometer: converting light into motion, and then maybe using that rotational motion to generate a mirrored version where we power a lightbulb. (fake perpetual motion?)

   

   Crookes radiometer from Wikipedia.

   I was really curious about these devices because the vanes spin when exposed to light, essentially making a small light-powered heat engine. However, it only works due to the vacuum in the glass bulb, so I’m not sure we would be able to harness the motion to generate another output the way we envisioned.

   Parts needed: would probably buy a cheap radiometer online to tinker with before deciding to pursue this idea.

Creative Output Concepts

1. Animated images using LED matrix.

   

   A short animation of a person running on 4 LED dot matrices.

   I like this idea to output an animation rather than a simple light, because we could use the animation to tell a story. For instance, it could create a game-like feel to the person generating the energy, so there’s a motivation for their muscle work to animate a tree growing, or a bee going to a hive, or bringing a bone to a dog… just for some examples!

   However, it’s important to consider that we need some kind of computation to determine which LEDs to light up in which sequence, so we would need some kind of storage (capacitor, battery, etc) to power an Arduino or small microcontroller.

   Parts needed: some LED matrix compatible with Arduino, capacitors

2. Acrylic laser cut different layers and light reveals when the motion differs.

   I don’t have an image or sketch of this, but I was thinking that we could light up a matrix or panel of LEDs all at once (with brightness dependent on the speed of the motor). Then, above this panel of light, we could place a sheet of opaque acrylic or thin wood. This material could be laser cut at different depths to tell some kind of story (like a poor man’s animation). For example, if I were to animate a tree growing, I would engrave the trunk at the deepest depth, and then gradually make the engraving shallower as I draw the main branches, smaller branches, and the leaves. That way as the brightness of the light increases, you see gradually more parts of the tree illuminated.

   I liked this idea because it was simple and easy to fabricate. However, it might be too simple? I guess we could expand on how the energy is generated more creatively if we went this route.

   Parts needed: acrylic or thin wood panel.