WinterRoot

Vision Tech for Counter Tech

I went to the GLREA (Great Lakes Renewable Energy Association) solar heating seminar this past weekend. I picked up some interesting information at the event, though nothing too revolutionary. Still it was good to get some grounding in where the current mainstream of renewable energy in Michigan is coming at things. I wasn’t really too familiar with everything that’s possible using hot water solar panels, and covering how radiant floor heating and solar air work out definately expands my thinking. It’s pretty important, for instance, to realize that solar water heating is far more efficient that photovoltaic panels.

Since my interest currently is more gear towards DIY applications that can be done at a fraction of the cost of true professional installations, some of this information will take a bit for me to apply. I think one of the most valuable pieces is learning how important it is in water systems to have both a storage tank and a hot water heater tank, which allows for the temperature of the supplied water to be regulated for whatever application it’s being used for. Solar systems seem deceptively simplistic until you start needing to worry about year round site specific usage of excess heat (in the summer) or freezing (in the winter).

I’m prett glad I went. I don’t have the money at the moment to afford the GLREA solar photovoltaic installation apprenticeship ($1000) so I’ll probably just wait until the next introduction seminar and try to pick up the wind energy course if I don’t build a wind turbine before then. Below is an example of the type of system we discussed at length..

I contructed what should be a diy gasifying wood stove, following a paper written at The Biomass Energy Foundation in Goler, CO. The pictures below are from our first attempt at replicating their results. The paper only gives very cursory instructions on how to build and operate such a stove from 2lb coffee cans. The point of this is that if it burns correctly, the stove will be burning wood but have very low emissions, so low in fact that burning wood inside does not require ventilation. Obviously that also means it’s very efficient. Our first attempt worked fairly well. Though we didn’t get a totally blue flame, we did see the smoke disappear, which means the fire was burning cleanly. We did see some blue flames deep in the fire and additionally noted that the fire smelled different than normal.

Getting the fire started, without it’s top (gas wick) on yet.

The stove from above:

The full stove from the side:

Next time we will be experimenting with changing the size of the gas wick and allowing more airflow into the burner.

My first batch of kombucha is finally done. It took a while for it really get going because it’s been so cold in the space until recently. Even after we got the heat turned on, 60 degrees is still 15-20 degrees below what’s optimum for the kombucha mushroom to grow. That problem was solved however by building an incubator which reuses my refridgerators waste heat, an raises the temperature of the kombucha culture to around 75 degrees. Once that was set up, the culture really picked up and just about a week later I have my first batch. It’s taste is slightly acidic, but all around I think it turned out pretty well. The original scoby has a lot of yeast on the bottom, and the baby is forming nicely, though I think I probably disturbed them quite a bit getting the old tea out and the new tea in.

The solar panel workshop was a success.  We were able to construct a functioning array out of discarded fragments, generating the correct voltage to charge our battery.  Each fragment was wired separately, giving participants the opportunity for some hands on work with solar cells, and then after inserting the wires through holes in a board they were connected in series into two long circuits.  Measuring the wattage output of the panel is a little more difficult and we haven’t gotten a reliable measure yet, but the battery does collect charge and we hypothesize that the panel collects enough energy to at least run a small light.  The construction of this first effort is pretty experimental - we’ve identifier several issues that would be resolved differently on a next version.  Perf board is definately the way to go for wiring the panels through wood, not the drilled out ply used here.  Bits of broken panel also could be wired better by lining up the the large lines and connecting them in lines the same way commercial panels are - obviously since they are broken this will still yeild a jagged, oddly shaped strip, but it doesn’t necessitate as many holds in the board and is generally more manageable.  Of course, for a art/reuse look the random arrange we executed is quite beautiful.   We hope to do another workshop and continue to explode feasibility of this kind of  reuse.  Thanks to all who participated!

This weekend at our breakcore pancakes event on Sunday I’m hoping to try out the idea of a technology workshop. Basically we’ll be soldering together chipped pieces of solar cells (which can be bought on the cheap) to make a complete 20+ volt solar panel. Here are the pieces I bought (about $20 for the whole set, actually not the cheapest deal I could have found.

and the first step in getting them working

even under compact flourescent light, the panel is still generating .05 volts.

I’ve wanted to help out our community bikeshop in the Cass area for while, so I finally arranged a trade where they would fix up a bike in exchange for some website work. We’ve replace their site with a Joomla installation (also giving me some additional experience with wrangling Joomla) and it’s a definate improvement. Check it out at http://www.thehubofdetroit.org/. It’s still in need of some serious design work, but that is on the way complete with an improved logo. The main piece of work left for me is the implementation of a ‘bike registry’ system. Basically this will combine a way for the shop itself to keep track of serial numbers of bikes they sell and a way for people in the community to show off their bikes. This way it can help to verify ownership and deter theft, as well as fostering excitement and interest about what’s going on with bicycles in Detroit. I’ve got a basic version of the component to achieve this already done, so expect something very soon.

For a long time, I have used the Yamaha rs7000 to make a lot of my music and to play live. One big problem though, is that it doesn’t have enough storage capacity. You can purchase a hard drive, but it’s big and clunky and pain to carry around with you. A while ago I decided to simply put it inside the rs7000 case. A few years have passed and I’ve never had a problem. Read below for more pictures of various stages in the process of modding the gear. It should also be possible run the hard drive off of the internal power supply instead of putting another one inside the case, but I haven’t found the right adapters yet to do so.

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Another historical post of interest here, the 4dm-spect project was a spinnoff from the University of Michigan around 2002.  I worked the computer graphics programmer on the project for some time, implementing cutaway’s of the 3d hearts, some additional 3d color mapping, and helping out with placement of the coronary tree on the 3d models.  Invia, as the team became known when it spun off into a full fleged company, is still around and the 3d hearts are still going strong..