Week One

Weekly Objectives:

Our main objectives for this week were to first find an idea that suited not only the requirements of the project, but also an idea that would take full advantage of the skills that each member has to offer. After this, our goal was to create a plan as to how we would progress with the project, and begin researching all of the projects' and our idea's specifications.

What we accomplished:

As a group, we talked over many different project topics, however in the end, we were able to reach a solid conclusion: that we would be designing and building an alternative-energy, portable phone charger. Once we reached this, we then had to discuss what kind of alternative energy we wanted to use. We decided to design something around harnessing wind to create electrical energy, as wind is one of the more abundant resources available for power generation that can be made in a small form factor.

After the main decisions were made, we reached the conclusion that we wanted to design and create a small, wind powered phone charger that could be easily used while commuting. So our solution has to be small, light, easy to maneuver with, and (of course) an efficient phone charger. Since we wanted our design solution to be as portable as possible, and have it usable on different forms of personal transportation, we decided on mounting our solution to a jacket. This way, a commuter could have their phone charge while they were on a bicycle, skateboard, or just running and walking.

During our period of discussion, we decided that this jacket would have a pack of four fans mounted on the back of it where the fans are mounted sideways so that the wind can be pulled in from either the top or the side, and still keep the device thin. We looked to the design of Pelton Wheel water turbines (Figure 1) to brainstorm on what the best solution would be. Since we are going to have the fans mounted sideways, this design for fans would allow for the air more easily rotate the fans. We are going to try to model and then 3D print fans that would resemble the Pelton Wheel turbines.
 Figure 1: An example of a Pelton Wheel [1]

Since we are going to mount the fans on the back of the jacket, we needed to think of a way to more the air so that when it passed by the wearer, some of it would be used to rotate the fans. To solve this, we looked to how air-intakes are placed on cars for their cooling systems. The example considered can be seen in figure 2. This seemed like the best idea to base our intakes on, because car intakes are made to not only look good, but also be functional. For our Jacket, we are going to sew fabric "intakes" onto a jacket, and have them move the air from the side of the jacket, to the back of the jacket, and then over the fans.

 Figure 2: example of a car's hood scoop [2]

 The fans that we will be using, will be brushless DC motors taken from computer fans. These motors are thin enough for us to use them in the fan system, and also can be wired to produce AC current. Even though they would not be the most efficient motors to use, their form factor and low cost makes them the best solution for us.

[1]   NPTEL, A Pelton Wheel. http://nptel.ac.in/courses/Webcourse-contents/IIT-KANPUR/machine/chapter_7/4.gif

[2]   kekse, Hoodscoop002. http://s79.photobucket.com/user/kecske/media/Hoodscoop002.jpg.html.

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