So, my ideal target is to build a water powered AC generator that when refined could possibly be fitted into drainpipes and create a household source of energy everytime somebody uses water. My first model is a bit crude relative to my final goal but it conveys the principal that when developed, should work as more or less as I have described.
A generator works by a magnetic field inducing a voltage into a coil of wire, which can be done by turning the magnet causing the coil to continuously pass throught a magnectic field. A water powered wheel can be used to turn the magnet and thus create an electrical current which can be stored in batteries.
I have made a generator with some flaws, it has not worked as I first expected it to and that is because of a few easily corrected factors.
In order to refine the model, I need a stronger and more concentrated magnetic field, this can be acheived by using an iron nail intead of the thin steal rod I which would concentrate the field and also a stronger magnet. I also would need a longer length of copper in order for my coil to have more turns and become a more powerful inductor.
Also, a better casing structure would improve it by holding the magnet as close as possible to the coil without  them touching.

Power Output

I have chosen to hook my device up to a 6 volt light bulb although my final device will be used to charge batterys. The reason I went with a light bulb instead of the battery charger is simply because it cost far to much to buy a battery charger and pull it apart. So I have reasearched into solar powered battery chargers and found that to charge an AA battery you only need a small amount of voltage. So if i can make my device run a 6V light it should easily be able to charge 1-2 batterys at one time.

first attempt at generator

This is my first attempt at making a generator.. It dosent have the copper wire on it yet as it is expensive to buy and I dont have enough to be wasting it on my first attempt. this model was just to see how it would go together. basically it has the magnet in the middle which is attached to the metal rod you can see sticking out the side, so when you twist the metal rod the magnet inside spins aswel. To complete this model I simply need to put the copper wire on and connect it to whatever it is I want to go. The final will look a bit more professional and will be attached to a piece of drain pipe with the turbine in the middle.

Revised device design

With this new design i have moved the turbine to the exterior of the pipe. This way the will only have to spin the turbine and have nothing else in its path. With the generator on the outside of the pipe it be able to be slightly bigger and produce more energy.

Device on illustartor

Paper prototype

200 word description

Similar devices

After searching through the internet for anything to do with hydro power generation for your home, the only things I i could find were small hydro power dams for your backyard that relyed on streams, I found that people who had these were usually completly off the grid and relyed souly on their hydro dam to power their house. For my device i want to go on a much smaller scale and only power a smaller amount of your house instead of being the soul provider.

Idea development after reasearch

energy storage and hydro plant reasearch

For my device im going to take the technology from the Hydro power plant and combine it with the energy storing technology from a solar power system. This way my device can produce the power and be able to store it for use around the house.

main idea

Ive chosen to go with this idea as i think it is the most innovative and im rather excited to explore it further. From here im going to reasearch into energy storage and how to make my idea actually work.. Im going to look into hydro power plants as my idea is essentially a mini hydro power plant for under your sink or shower

First ideas

Lecture reflections

I found both guest lectures to be very interesting.. The thing I found quite interesting from the first was when he was talking about solar power and how it doesnt actually add up or save you money inn the long run but people will still buy it for the feel good factor they get when they know they are making a difference and that spending more money to save the enviroment is justified. I found the lecture on Tring really cool just to see the development of their idea and how much they had to plan just to get to where they are now. I liked their idea of trying to make monitoring energy less boring and hard to understand, and instead making it easy to monitir in a kind of fun way.

Holiday power usage

My parents have a wireless meter that conects directly into your switch board and transmits how much  money your spending on power per hour. I monitored a few appliances and some bigger things that used a lot more power.. I found it quite hard to get an exact number of how much each thing was costing per hour as the numbers were constantly changing.

Dryer: 40 cents per hour
Washing machine: 10 cents per hour
TV: 10-20 cents per hour
Dishwasher: 45 cents per hour
Toaster: 35 cents per hour
Spa pool: $1.40 per hour
Oven: 50 cents per hour

I also tryed to look at an average number over a small amount of time and found that it usually stayed around $2 a per hour and when i went around and tryed to turn everything off that i could find I still could only get it to around 60 cents per hour. Also found that the device has an alarm on it  that you can set. and when you go over the amount of money per hour the device make s aloud beep noice to alert you that your power usage is very high.

instructions and user experienced

Limmer Ryan Concealed sound

The sense that I have chosen to represent in my project is sound. I have made an interactive application that challenges the audio senses by using concealed materials to create a feeling of unknown. I wanted to create something that was unpredictable and surprising. To do this I made a smooth wooden control board with a series of varying knobs and handles that when turned create different sounds. The sounds are harsh, plastic, metallic and stone clinking, crushing and grinding that contrast with the smooth and simple design of the models exterior. This contrast contradicts what the ear may expect to hear when turning a wooden handle through small hole and so it creates an uncertainty of sound which plays on the senses of the user. Once the user has experienced all the sounds the challenge is to then match the sounds to a picture of the material. Instruction In front of you are four pictures of various materials, Your challenge is to match the pictures to the sounds you are about to hear coming from the box in front of you. By spinning the knobs on top of the box You will find a completely different noise coming from each. All the noises are produced from completely different materials. Once you have listened to all the noises try and match the pictures to its respected handle. (Some of the handles are harder to spin so you may have to play with them a little to get them to spin better).

final 5 images

final application

This is my final application.. my final materials that make sound are pumas, broken glass, plastic buttons and small pieses of metal

sound material experiments

These are experiments looking at different things that i could use to make noises for my application

final model sketches

this is a sketch of roughly what my final model will look like.. Its got four spinners each which make a different noise and are different shapes so the noises they make can be contrasted to their shape

Hidden noise experiment

This is an experiment to test a spinner that makes noise underneath the object.. The idea was that the water would be spinning the spinner but after making this i found it quite hard to spin so i would need far to much water to get enough force.. For my final model i think i will make it more simple than my development ideas as it was getting to be quite complex. for example get rid of the water all together and just have the spinners that the user can spin themselves

idea experiments

these are photos of aspects i wanted to put in my application to make the noise.. i played with spinners that would rotate and make things spin or click together. The triangular shape thing was something that would click back and fowards as water ran over it. The bottom three are experiments to see if i could make different sounds by running water over different surfaces, which was a fail of an attempt.

idea development

these are pictures of my application developed further. The whole thing is powered by water which can be diverted by the user to change the sounds it makes. It stimulates your hearing as you cant see where the noise is comin from. i plan to make the spinners out of different matterials to make it more surprising.. for example a plastic spinner could make a metalic noise underneath. at the bottom the water gets diverted into different lanes to add to the un expected theme of my application

project one initial ideas

i have chosen the bottom idea to develop as it is more complex than my other ideas and i think that it has more oppertunity to develop further

StoryBoard

Written explanation

Interactive toy experiments

These three experiments were trying to see if i could alter the noices water made by changing the surfaces it ran over. After trying three different surfaces i didnt really have nuch success so i moved onto using water as the tool to make different objects make noise.

This experiment was to make a see saw like effect using water to rock this platform back and forth. After a wee bit of fidiling i got the platform to rock back and forth, if i use this in my final toy it will have a knocker at the bottom of the rod that hangs below the platform and it will bounce back and forth hitting some sort of bell to make a noice

This experiment was to make a water wheel that spun using the force of water.. These will used to make noices as the water spins the wheel. the rod that comes out the bottom will be used to hit things that makes different noices.