Category Archives: supercapacitor

Supercapacitors In A Servo: The “Forever” Flashlight

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Fernando Gomes

The principle is well understood: use a motor in reverse and you get a generator. Using this bit of knowledge back in 2001 is what kick-started [Ted Yapo]’s Hackaday Prize entry. At the time, [Ted] was searching for a small flashlight for astronomy, but didn’t like dealing with dead batteries. He quickly cobbled together a makeshift solution out of some supercapacitors and a servo-as-a-generator, hacked for continuous rotation.

A testament to the supercapacitors, 17 years later it’s still going strong – leading [Ted] to document the project and also improve it. The original circuit was as simple as a servo, …read more

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Posted in led, led hacks, servo, supercapacitor, The Hackaday Prize | Leave a comment

This Coin Cell Can Move That Train!

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

[Mike Rigsby] has moved a train with a coin cell. A CR2477 cell to be exact, which is to say one of the slightly more chunky examples, and the train in question isn’t the full size variety but a model railroad surrounding a Christmas tree, but nevertheless, the train moved.

A coin cell on its own will not move a model locomotive designed to run on twelve volts. So [Mark] used a boost converter to turn three volts into twelve. The coin cell has a high internal resistance, though, so first the coin cell was discharged into a couple of …read more

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Posted in model railroad, railroad, supercapacitor, toy hacks | Leave a comment

Coin Cell Challenge: Jump Starting a Car

Posted on December 8, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Clearly a believer in the old adage, “Go Big or Go Home”, [Ted Yapo] has decided to do something that seems impossible at first glance: starting his car with a CR2477 battery. He’s done the math and it looks promising, though it’s yet to be seen if the real world will be as accommodating. At the very least, [Ted] found a video by [ElectroBOOM] claiming to have started a car with a super capacitor, so it isn’t completely without precedent.

Doing some research, [Ted] found it takes approximately 2,000 W to 3,000 W at 14 V to start the average …read more

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Energy Harvesting Wristwatch Uses a Versatile Photodiode

Posted on May 26, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

There’s some interesting technology bundled into this energy harvesting wristwatch. While energy harvesting timepieces (called automatic watches) have been around for nearly 240 years, [bobricius] has used parts and methods that are more easily transferable to other projects.

Unlike early mechanical systems, this design uses the versatile BPW34 PIN photodiode (PDF warning). PIN photodiodes differ from ordinary PN diodes in that there’s a layer of undoped ‘intrinsic’ silicon separating the P and N doped layers. This reduces the utility of the diode as a rectifier, while allowing for higher quantum efficiency and switching speed.

They are typically used in the …read more

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Posted in solar hacks, supercapacitor, wearable hacks | Leave a comment

Powering A Laptop With Supercapacitors

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

What do you do when you find a small horde of supercapacitors? The correct answer is a spectrum of dangerous devices ranging from gauss guns to quarter shrinkers. [Rinoa] had a less destructive idea: he’s replaced the battery in a laptop with a bank of supercapacitors.

The supercaps in question are 2.7 Volt, 500 Farad caps arranged in banks six for a total of about 3 watt-hours in each bank. The laptop used for this experiment is an IBM Thinkpad from around 1998. The stock battery in this laptop is sufficiently less advanced than today’s laptop batteries. Instead of using …read more

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Posted in IBM Thinkpad, laptops hacks, supercapacitor, thinkpad, ups | Leave a comment

Hand Cranked Generator Charges Supercaps, Starts Car

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Pity the lowly lead-acid battery. A century of use as the go-to method for storing enough electrons to spin the starter motor of a car engine has endeared it to few.  Will newer technology supplant that heavy, toxic, and corrosive black box under your hood? If this supercapacitor boost box is any indication, then we’d say lead-acid’s days are numbered.

To be fair, we’ll bet that number is still pretty big. It takes a lot to displace a tried and true technology, especially for something as optimized as the lead-acid battery. But [lasersaber]’s build shows just how far capacitive storage …read more

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Posted in jump start, misc hacks, supercap, supercapacitor | Leave a comment

The Comic Book World Of Capacitor Marketing

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Fernando Gomes

The Economist is an interesting publication, a British weekly newspaper that looks for all the world like a magazine, and contains pithy insights into world politics and economic movements. It’s one of those rare print news publications that manages to deliver fresh insights even to hardened web news junkies despite its weekly publication date.

It was typical then of their wide-ranging coverage of world industries to publish a piece recently on the world of supercapacitors, with particular focus on Estonia’s Skeleton Technologies. This is an exciting field in which the products are inching their way towards energy density parity with …read more

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Posted in Interest, language, supercapacitor, ultracapacitor | Leave a comment