News from 4th Feb 2010
BETTER BICYCLE HEADLIGHT
The headlight battery on the Giant bicycle James rides had become
very old and its heavy lead battery had actually broken. After much
discussion we decided to get to know more about Lithium Ion batteries. Our
neighbour has been using them in a radio controlled model plane, but they
have been exploding occasionally...
So we got a 2.5 amp hour 16 volt unit and addapted it to the purpose.
The case looks suspiciously like a pipe bomb, but was goodto strap
alonside the steering bearings, adding beneficial front weight to the
mnountain bike.
To run the 6 volt bulbs a switching regulator was needed,
implemented with a FET running at 3 KHz and 16% duty cycle.
We were surprised to find the internal impedance of the litium cell is an
order of magnitude higher than the lead cell and a current levelling choke
might be advantageous in future designs.
Vale Mt Olympus
Well, not the mountain, but our long time customers house on it.
A much photographed work of masonry in the Gaudi style has been
demolished. Its main crime, apart from leaking, was to inhabit million
dollar real estate on Dorrigo plateau. Only just on the plateau; if you
rolled over in bed there was the horrible sensation that you were about to
fall 1000 metres into Thora!
The flowtrack connection was the major work of keeping the
micro-hydro system running in the face of extreme lightning attack. The
generator controller ended up with no electronics except for six oversized
rectifiers. Its heat dump was incorporated in the masonry of the building!
A removeable plug took the transmission line to a hook on the other side
of the front door, but a strike then went from pillar to pillar, leaving a
hole in the side of the controller box.
Now the electrical system is running on a much less valuable property
the other side of Dorrigo.
Meanwhile the dome Kali built thirty five years ago has just
been rescued from self destruction with a copious application of scraper
and zinc filled paint. It does not have to suffer the indignity of being
worth less than its site as it sits where nobody wants to build on land
that can't be sold.
Muswellbrook telemetry
Our fifteen year old train control system at
Junee at last fell to a Phoenix system after an exemplary record. But more
work was needed at Muswellbrook where the aging S2 telemetry had become
unmaintainable. The "Rabbit" based boards made by Kilgour Electronics (NKA
& Associates) were installed at thirteen stations to Werris Ck and their
data was transmitted to ARTC's NCCN (Newcastle Train Control) centre.
Enabling software was written by James. Features of this package included field
logs of train movements stored efficiently in the Rabbit modules.
We have hopes of finding other neglected S2 telemetry racks in other
corners of the globe.
Wind Transformer Repairs
The Venus Bay machine was not starting so Kali eventually mounted
a repair mission. Yes, the smoke had escaped from the 3 phase transformer,
but not just one phase, two! This was a problem as only one had been
lugged over the desert in poor old GKN700.
There were efforts to post one from Nimbin, but it was Easter and
there were various other holdups. So in between several PV system upgrades
Kali had a go at the Peter Freere kludge and got the machine running with
this circuit 
This got the machine running to 500 watts, enough to carry the
system along with the extra PV, and all the heavy bits were brought back
to Nimbin through the sandstorm,
At Newcastle a spring gave way and the price of steel has cleared the
wreckers yards:-( Thankfully Newcastle is a place where you can get
springs made for a reasonable price and quickly.
ELECTUS DISTRIBUTION TURBINE MG-4510
We had to try out this thing! Everybody criticises its design, but for
different reasons. They all focus on their own forte....
Well it eventally arrived with all the wires in the controller broken
off, and a joke of a stub tower, and no obvious way of stopping the wires
twisting up. BUT it seemed adequately solid and conventional in design so
Kali made a 10 metre tower out of square Duragal with a Barret truss in
the middle and John has taken it to Dingo Ridge to erect this weekend, yes
in the continuous rain.
Check out this turbine here.
(type wind into the Electus search engine)
And the circuit diagram they should supply of the controller ...
DATA AQUISITION
After all the wonderful performance of the Rabbit modules we went
through some other data taking options. Rainer has been sceptical of the
posted efficiency figures of several refrigerators (too high!) and we
need a test rig to leave running.
So we got out the Protek506 and the Digitech 1538 and the Australian
DSOA by Tronnort Technology and tried to make current computers and
operating systems talk to them. There were many nasty tricks.
We wrote a minimal program for running the Protek from Linux and found a
quite good one for running the Digitech.
Here they are:
source code Protek506
Digitech code
Archives: 1999 * 2002 * 2005
FLOWTRACK Pty Ltd
ABN 68 079 207 168
0266 891431 (a/h)
0266 890408 (b/h)
email
OFFICE: The Brown House, roads end,
Upper Tuntable Falls Road, NIMBIN
