SolarChime

Basic description

the solar chime uses ~6000uF to store energy energy from the solar panel (top). Once the caps have built up enough of a charge the energy is dumped through an old walkman motor to drive a piece of circuit board that strikes the chimes. This chime uses a FLED solar engine and fits into the BEAM Art category.

recycle

other than the solar panel and chimes all of parts in the this project are recycled. the motor is from a walkman, the caps came from old electronics as did the transistors and resistors that make up the engine, the stand is made from coat hangers, i even cut up an old circuitboard for the motor to drive into the chimes.

Solar Engine

this image is located at http://www.solarbotics.net/

I used half of this circuit designed (or at least improved) by Ben Hitchcock to drive the walkman motor. The idea is that the solar panel charges up the capacitors until the voltagle level in the capacitor bank is high enough to turn on the FLED (flashing LED). The FLED pulls Q1 on which in turn pushes Q3 on allowing the energy stored in the capacitors to flow through the motor. In this case the motor turns the wheel which strikes the chimes.

Video

Forgive the horrid quality of the sound in this video. The chime really sounds quite lovely.

-- ChristopherPepe - 26 Aug 2006