The last impossible thing
I've been working in the background on replacing the NiMH battery in the candle project with a supercapacitor. It's been quite the journey and at times I definitely did not believe that it would ever happen.
There is a great benefit when you are a mad pioneer in being ignorant of what is conventionally regarded as not possible, so I just assumed in my usual trial and error, and error, and error method of experimentation that the problem would eventually be solved.
Three impossible things needed to happen for this project to be completed:
1. A supercapacitor needed to be able to run a microcontroller (just ticking over anaemically at a very low clock rate) for a useful amount of time (e.g. overnight) - done
2. A microcontroller (e.g. the PADAUK PFS154) needed to be able to detect when it was night time just from the charge profile of a capacitor - done
3. A circuit designed to have at it's heart a NiMH battery would need to be fooled and use a collection of passives instead
The final result needs more polishing, but all three miracles have occurred and now the candle project will be re-imagined as a supercapacitor project. Done?
Magic!
No comments:
Post a Comment