Here’s a brief overview of non-oil light-producing options from the authors of The Carbon-Free Home. In part: Increasing the natural daylight in your home is something to take into consideration if you find from your energy diary that you need to turn lights on during the daytime. We are fortunate that our house, designed in […]
Joe Hyneck wants to move your charger from the wall to your handbag. On cloudless days, he wanders his neighborhood to test whether the purse, which is plated in thin solar panels and contains a lightweight battery, is absorbing energy from the sun. After three hours of direct exposure, the purse generates enough electricity to […]
Here’s a great way to increase the sunlight you bring indoors: SunTrack The SunTrack system can reflect the sun in my house and keep the reflection all day. That way it is possible to have a lot of light in my living room witch is facing east. With a KlikAan remote control (433mhz) it is […]
Or car? Somewhere in between is this project from SJSU: (via Ecofriend) Here’s the homepage for Dr. Hsu, and here’s a presentation he gave on solar cells (pdf). At $4,000 and 30 mph with a 60-mile range, sounds like a good alternative to smaller gas-powered scooters!
Gary Gipson was inspired by the Magbot Pendulum project in Dave Hrynkiw’s wonderful Junkbots, Bugbots & Bots on Wheels. Greg made a few changes. He put the electronics package on a little swinging bot and made the permanent magnet stationary to the base. The bot’s LED eyes light up when he first starts out over […]
They’re not Make or Craft, but a few other magazines do have a healthy sprinkling of DIY projects among their archives. Here’s a good one from Homepower: Passive Solar Retrofit… In A Weekend (pdf). As I find sustainable projects, especially those that are lower-tech, I find it interesting to look at any disadvantages and think […]
At Maker Faire Austin, Evil Mad Scientist Labs was demonstrating some really simple and useful circuits powered by solar cells. Today, they’ve posted the details on their site. Interruption-resistant direct drive: The “direct drive” circuits work well for their design function, but are rather basic. They provide no energy storage, and so are quite vulnerable […]
