Jason's notes

Kinetic Project Update

Circuit Building

Since I need the generated power to be strong enough to move a motor, I picked a fairly big hand crank generator. It’s a 12V motor and can generate up to 20W of power. If you crank really fast, it can even reach 40V, so some protection is needed.

Motor with a metal crank

The following is what I’m planing to build. After the generated voltage been rectified, it charged some big capacitors, therefore, store the energy. A 12V zener diode is also added to the circuit since I want to set a limit speed of the output motor.

Circuit

The test went pretty good. At a general crank speed, the capacitor can reach around 16V. I am using 2 16V/10000uF capacitors in serial and link to another pair parallelly which is equivalent to a 32V/10000uF capacitor. It offeres about 4~5 second before it slow down and stop. I also have ordered some bigger capacitor and see if they works better.

Circuit on breadboard