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Camping Battery Charger

Since people like to twirl things, for no good reason.
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I can't really believe something like this doesn't exist, or has at least been proposed already, but my half-assed searching turned up nothing.

It's a battery charger, at the end of a rectifier, at the end of an alternator, at the end of a gearbox. Why hasn't anybody every done that?!

Really the odd part is this. Rather than hold one end and turn the other, as the hip and trendy campers do with their wind up radio/flashlights, why not have one end spin free?

The simplest form would have a loop extending circumfrentially from the shaft of the gearbox. You clip in something with a bit of weight and start twirling it while you walk.

As it starts up, there's only a small resistor and a transistor in the circuit. Once it spins up, the device can ramp up the load, then cut back when RPM starts to drop.

As there's already some moderately sophisticated power regulation going on (I hope; you do love your batteries don't you?) you might as well add a variable intensity LED flashlight.

And since you're going to have LEDs, why not a hemisphereical camp lantern as well as a spotlight? And then you might as well have it flash SOS, overdiving the LEDs, for emergencies.

And since we're preparing for emergencies, how about a bit of NiCrome wire for emergency firestarting? And and AM radio? A 406mHz PLB?

And in case that isn't enough, build it into the handle of a folding shovel. Then you could twirl the head of the shovel to charge it, or plant it on a hill for signaling.

Ok, I'm pretty done. Realistically, a flashlight and battery charger doesn't seem impractical. Even the heating element, and maybe the AM radio, could be done as a weekend garage project.

tiromancer, Dec 14 2004

Wind up cellphone charger http://members.shaw.ca/sidewindercharger/
Getting there [tiromancer, Dec 14 2004]

Planetary gear kit http://www.robotsto.../display.asp?pid=31
Getting closer... [tiromancer, Dec 14 2004]

LED flashlight with SOS, amoungst other things http://www.techass.com/el/el1.php
Amazing choice for a domain name [tiromancer, Dec 14 2004]

[link]






       [+] something to keep the hands busy. maybe needs a better name..."Twirler Charger"?
sophocles, Dec 15 2004
  

       Could you build it into a jump rope ?
normzone, Oct 06 2016
  

       Yes, but why ? Why not just use a forced quantum singularly to generate effectively infinite energy from zero mass ?   

       Apart, that is, from the admittedly non-zero risk of causing the entire Universe to implode instantaneously into an infinite point mass ... but then, who'd know ?
8th of 7, Oct 06 2016
  
      
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