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| >Projects |
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The Dynamo Mouse
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| Why not powering the mouse by the movements you make with it anyway? |
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| Ann De Keersmaecker, Ken Langenakens |
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Products now use batteries that haven’t used them before. Think about toys. Children were playing with mechanical cars, or puppets that can walk by winding them up. Now most children have toys with batteries or things powered by non human powered energy.
Another product dealing with this phenomenon is the computer mouse. Often they are used in combination with batteries. Hence our choice to make a human powered mouse!
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| Our assumption: |
While navigating on the screen and moving with your mouse, you can make a dynamo work. This dynamo gives the power for the mouse you normally get from the batteries. |
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| Prototype |
We hacked a wireless mouse and powered it by a dynamo. A circuit had to be made where the power goes straight to the optical unit and converts the alternate 6V current from the dynamo to the 3V equal current used by the mouse. We made the working model with the help of Kristof from the electronics lab. |
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| Watch the video (1 MB) |
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| Conclusions |
We got it working, but not ideal. If we had better and smaller technology, the mouse would be more ergonomic and just easier to use. But after this experiment we can imagine that the human powered mouse is possible.
If 10% of all PCs use a wireless, battery powered mouse, there would be 100.000.000 of them in the world. Each using 3V makes up 300.000.000V.
So if this would be working, the world would need less batteries for wireless mice!
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