Objective: Design a new way to power something you use every day.
Again the ACT objective had me stumped. I am no inventor. I spent a wh*** afternoon googling alternatively powered gadgets I could use to replace some gadget that I use a lot. There is much more out there than I realized, from hand cranked phone chargers to solar powered calculators. But to buy someone else's invention....this is not a personal innovation.
I read about solar panels. I remembered my friend in the UP who has solar panels at her bee farm. But I never really inquired about them, or how they work. I see there are solar panels in the works on a scale that could be used in apartments. This excites me, since I live in an apartment. But does not help at the moment.
Today I remembered that Walmart had some little yard lights that were solar powered for 3 bucks each. So I googled that. I found a website that explains, with diagrams, how solar yard lights work. I saw on the Walmart website that they also carry stronger solar yard lights priced between 20 and 50 dollars. I ended up going and buying one of the cheap ones, and a stronger two light set for 30 bucks.
As I mentioned, I live in an apartment so I have no yard. However I do have concrete patio, so I have a place to charge these puppies up....after the rain goes away.
So here's the plan. At the very least, the two stronger lights will serve as my porch light and I will no longer have to flip that switch when I head off to work at 3am. Ideally, I would like to be able to bring these strong lights inside to use at night instead of using my electric lights. The stronger yard lights profess to be 12X brighter than 'other' solar lights. We shall see. Even if I cannot use them for reading and counted cross stitch, most evenings I use low lighting anyways for TV watching or computer time.
Also, right next to these solar lights were AA batteries that professed to be chargable by these very solar yard lights. If this is the case, I can use these solar yard lights to charge batteries for my camera, at the very least. And if I cannot feasibly use the yard lights themselves indoors, I am sure I can find some lamps that run on AA batteries.
I will use the cheapy yard light to tear apart and see how it works.
This blog post will be edited when the results are in. All these products, including the batteries, are made by Westinghouse and were available at my local Walmart.
You need to be a member of Urgent Evoke to add comments!
Join Urgent Evoke