B.E.A.M.
Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics and Mechanics

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Frans Storms                   more pics   Dec. 24, 2001

 Copal-robo-lighthead

 From the beginning i thought a lighthead to be ideal for beam purposes, no battery, it just stands around.
 This project was a disaster technically. I never got it right. It locked up in to much sunlight among others.
 But i learned a lot about sensors...
 

  Copal-robo-lighthead2

The light head stands on an old amd dx-120 processor and looks so great that i'm not gonna tear him apart.
 I've got a lot of good working lighthead's now, pix are coming ...
Lego Cars

The lego cars were built to get the most out of 2733 solarcell in dutch sunlight(no sun!) and Andy's pager motor. The first time a got one working i startled, it moved about 1,5 cm! 

 With 4700uF it will move about 4 cm. I use the solarengine below, it fires at 2.2V (a 1381C, made for holland;-)), and stops at 1.2V thanks to D2. I figure they will run a meter in far less then 2 minutes in sunlight, but i never got enough sun to test it ...
The beam mouse
 This is a broken microsoft intellimouse converted to beam...
 He is the pet of the office, noone can see him without touching him. He is pretty strong with his extra lego gear. The motor is a pretty good one ripped from an old cd-rom drive, it uses less as 20ma.
 The big solarcell and a 1381C makes him even move at night with the light bulbs at 2 m distance in the ceiling...
Nov. 6, 2001
The clock lighthead
 This strange thing works with a 'hacked' alarm clock 'motor'. Steven Bolt came up with this, i used it for a light head, you can find it at:
 http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbolt/e-fotovoor.html

 It uses extreme little energy, so i used a 2422 solar cell.
 There is a big 'but', it can only turn one way!, but i had to try it...
The latest lighthead
 This one uses two solar cells to get it to work even at night, and then it finds the brightest light bulb. The stand is made of the remainders of a floppy drive.
 The LDR at the front is fake, the light head uses the 2 black thingies in the front, SFH205 wide angle(120 degrees) foto diodes. 
The trick is NOT to line them up in a straight line like
 you would with LED-like fotodiodes, who have mostly an angle of 30 degrees of looking at the world.
 Here the 2 SFH205's make an angle of 90 degrees with each other. Another trick is to have a MATCHED pair of diodes,
 the only solution to this is: buy more as you need and measure them!
The circuit is pretty tested by now, unfortunately i had to use a AC240, a HC(T)240, even stacked, couldn't drive the motor at 2 Volts, which uses only 25 mA.

Nov. 12, 2001
23 Nov., 2001
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