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.

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.

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.