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Congratulations to shabaz for Measuring Electromagnets - the Magneto Mutant Magnetic Measurement Meter (MMMMM-1000), abg123 for Flipping Core Memory Bits Directly With a Magnetic Stylus, and dougw for The KLINGMAGON Subspace Probe! You are the Winners of Electromagnetism competition from Project14! You win a $100 Shopping Cart!
"There is nothing in the world except empty curved space. Matter, charge, electromagnetism, and other fields are only manifestations of the curvature of space." - John Wheeler, American theoretical physicist, largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II.
"We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena." - James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics, most notable achievement was to formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon.
"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration." - Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system.
The Electromagnetism competition challenged you to build projects that uses the force of electromagnetism, including anything from motors to solenoids to wireless transfer. This was a really fun competition and from the get go, it offered many exciting possibilities. One of my favorite projects was, the One String Electric Guitar #6 : Final Assembly and Working Guitar by dubbie , who has a knack for creating original projects, entertaining videos, and does a really great job of walking you through the process. He's also done some really awesome robot projects which makes him a favorite of the Project14 program! There were so many awesome projects with this competition, not just the winners, so check out all the runners up as well. For instance, there was the Easy Peasy Non-Contact Electricity Detector (Not a Metal Detector) by mahmood.hassan. Also, aptbartmess , a first time Project14 participant created a really cool video in support of the electromagnetism competition, An Attempt at Building a DIY Spring Reverb Tank Using Electromagentism. He even picked up a vote from one of our judges. There were some technical issues with posting videos in blogs but we're grateful he shared this video with us, and we're looking forward to more projects from him in the future! You could make the argument that any of the contestants could have been a first place winner. The judges were largely divided when it came to picking the winners. Hopefully, you enjoyed this competition as much as we did. The creativity of our members is second to none!
The three first place winners were all deserving as we've come to expect from these competitions! shabaz is no stranger to diy test equipment and he's created some really cool test instrumentation projects as part of this program (he loves Project14 because it gives him a good excuse to try his hand at shorter, experimental projects). For this project, he set out to build a low-cost gaussmeter and the result was Measuring Electromagnets - the Magneto Mutant Magnetic Measurement Meter (MMMMM-1000) . He also comes up with really great titles for his projects! abg123 , a first time Project14 participant, was captivated by magnetism for a long time so he decided to do something about it by Flipping Core Memory Bits Directly With a Magnetic Stylus. Finally, dougw who came up with this theme, built a probe that can scavenge power with The KLINGMAGON Subspace Probe . The projects for this competition were electrifying, as you would expect from electromagnetism, and demonstrated the power of the force like this guy:
Without further adieu here are your winners.....
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| The Winners | The Winners
Measuring Electromagnets - the Magneto Mutant Magnetic Measurement Meter (MMMMM-1000) by shabaz
When making electromagnets, it is difficult to know for sure what kind of magnetic flux density has been achieved. This is because it depends a lot on practical construction factors, where on the electromagnet it is measured, and the core material permittivity. There are commercial measurement devices, known as gaussmeters, but the good ones usually cost upward of $150. Furthermore, those $150 units are basic – they have a response up to 300Hz (for changing magnetic fields) and do not report the actual frequency either. For this project, shabaz wanted to build a low-cost gaussmeter, and hopefully try to add those missing features, and also aim beyond 300Hz to a few kilohertz. For sure I expected it to be more inaccurate compared to a commercial device, but he thought it might be good enough, and it was worth an attempt (shabaz loves Project14 for this reason - it gives us a good excuse to build shorter, experimental projects if we want to).
Flipping Core Memory Bits Directly With a Magnetic Stylus by abg123 :
abg123 has been captivated by magnetism, as he suspects many are, for a long time. His discovery of core memory at the Computer History museum in Mountain View, CA triggered the idea to create a core memory module that is interactive. He discovered Jussi Kilpelainen’s Arduino Core Memory Shield on Tindie and that was the kick he needed. He added an LED array behind the cores to illuminate each core in real time and so he could selectively flip a bit one direction with a stylus (a small screwdriver with a magnet attached). he suspects the presence of the permanent magnet is inhibiting the “destructive read” and/or the follow-up write. The result is only being able to clear the bits at this time. The next step is to create an active stylus to allow me to choose whether I want to set or clear a bit. This will effectively enable drawing AND erasing, to make the project more interactive. Pursuing this next step is going to bring along more learning about magnets and core memory, which is the real goal behind this project. He’ll move on to the electromagnet experiments. One challenge he’ll likely face is the fact the cores are not all arranged in the same orientation. They are placed in an alternating pattern to make the wiring & drive circuitry layout more efficient. If his solution ends up relying on orientation of the stylus relative to the core, He'll have to get extra-clever.
The KLINGMAGON Subspace Probe by dougw:
No wires, no batteries, no solar panels, no screws, no glue and no suction cups, but a The KLINGMAGON Subspace Probe can scavenge power to operate and cling to a vertical window without supports. For a long time, dougw had been planning on building an outdoor digital thermometer that uses a temperature sensor and digital display without requiring periodic battery replacement. His original plan was to use solar power and super capacitors, but he hadn't gotten around to figuring out what would actually be required to make it work. Problems like keeping the solar panels clean were looking like they were as much work as replacing batteries. His work with Qi chargers suggested maybe he could use wireless power transfer to eliminate wires going through the walls. He had most of the needed parts already collected and had it all worked out in his head, so he figured he could whip a system together in a few hours..... wow was he was wrong...
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| Runners Up | The Runners Up
One String Electric Guitar by dubbie:
dubbie thought he would start the building of the guitar body with the pickup itself. As he has a magnet which he thinks is suitable he decided to 3D print a bobbin that fitted it to hold the winding coil. The magnet is 8 mm in diameter and 15 mm in length so he looked at making a bobbin with these dimensions. All he has to do now is wind the bobbin to complete the pickup and the prototype guitar is finished. As he completed the prototype body for the one string electric guitar, the next step was to make the pickup coil. He previously made a 3D printed bobbin to wind the coil on so all he needed now was to select the wire to be used and wind it. He selected the thinnest wire he had, which is 'pretty thin' (that's a technical term for non-mechanical engineers) possibly 32 SWG or 38 SWG. It is so thin you could barely see it, even with his glasses on. It is enameled so that the coils do not short out. He thought about making a coil winding mechanism with perhaps a continuous rotation servo motor but then decided winding it by hand. He doesn’t think he’ll do that again as it took a long time and the coils are not especially neat but eventually he had something made Having created the prototype one string electric guitar body and pickup he wanted to be able to hear the sounds it makes.
Because he didn't have a guitar amplifier he decided to use an ordinary music amplifier instead but this needs a pre-amp to make it work. There didn't seem to be any such thing as a guitar pre-amplifier, all he could find were expensive foot pedal pre-amplifiers which were not for me. Then he stumbled across electric guitar headphone amplifiers, which do exactly what he wanted, so he purchased a low cost one. This seems to do everything he needs and is rechargeable. He followed a painting strategy of undercoat then top coat of spray paint. The undercoat was just a wood primer and undercoat combined, which he sanded down after the first coat and then undercoated it again and sanded it again to try and get as smooth a finish as reasonable. The undercoat did show up many imperfections which he thought he had eliminated by using the wood filler. He must have been looking the other way as there are several quite obvious dips and imperfections. Still, he was in the painting phase and he didn't want to delay any more. As you can see and hear from the video it looks pretty much like an electric guitar and makes a gratifying electric guitar like sound. It has tone, volume and overdrive controls. Dubbie plays a tune of sorts in the video, anyone know what it is? Not a normal electric guitar song but he’s not a musician so this is about the best he can manage. The tune deteriorates after a bit as he doesn’t know where the next notes are.
3000A current clamp table and amplifier by three-phase:
For his entry in the electromagnetism contest, three-phase decided to look at building some current clamp table adapters. The intention of these was to allow me to test the full-scale range of current clamps utilizing his single phase injection test set. He also intended to look at trying to test the frequency range of these current clamps using a current amplifier. The concept of this has come about due to some monitoring work that was carried out whilst energizing a 132kV supply at a substation and the need to carryout transient analysis of the voltages and currents during the energization. He concedes that this hasn’t gone to plan at all, so this is more of a blog on the journey rather than a finished project.
An Attempt at Building a DIY Spring Reverb Tank Using Electromagentism by aptbartmess
Easy Peasy Non-Contact Electricity Detector (Not a Metal Detector) by mahmood.hassan :
Before building this device mahmood.hassan tried lots of different designs but every circuit had some issues, either with a metal detector or human contact detention (humans are detected as an AC voltage source). He built a separate device for instrumentation amplifier, 2nd order band pass filter and ARM mcu, to do all the math (FFT), so he could only detect AC voltage and not metal detection or human contact detection. After lot of trouble he was able to achieve this by using the following very simple circuit.
Before beginning his easy peasy electricity detector, he gives a good explanation on the basic functionality of non contact AC voltage detector Whenever there is current flowing through a conductor there is always a magnetic field around it. If the current flowing through the conductor is an AC current then the magnetic field varies periodically according to AC frequency. If we bring another conductor near it, a very small voltage will be induced in it due to electromagnetic induction, which the easy peasy non contact electricity detector will use to detect AC voltage.
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What's Happening Now
There's always stuff going on in the community and the best ideas always come from you. Suggest your idea in the Monthly Poll! and vote on the themes you want to do projects on. You can make use of wireless technology and a cloud provider with the IoT: In the Cloud competition. Or, you can use radio waves to communicate through NFC or RFID in the NFC/RFID project competition!
Project14 is currently celebrating its second birthday with Month of Robots . The Grand Prize is an Arduino Engineering Kit, a Marty the Robot STEM Kit, and a $200 shopping Cart. 3 First Place winners will win an R2D2 App Enabled Droid along with a $200 Shopping Cart. The competition will run until May 14th with a winners announcement on May 25th, the anniversary of the original release of Star Wars in 1977. This robotics competition is dedicated to Gordon McComb and the Robot Builder's Bonanza 5th Edition!
Thank you for continued support of Project14 !
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