Hydroponics System

Hydroponics is a method to grow plants without soil.As demand of food is increasing, we need to find ways to grow vegetables and fruits in whatever way possible.

Why do we need Hydroponics way of irrigation?

Limitation of land ,weather dependence and transportation cost are the factors because of which we should shift our focus from traditional methods to Hydroponic.Further more, we can grow more than one crop in same  bag has great economic benefits.Research done by University of Florida found that this way of irrigation has profitable too.

In the colder part of the world,it is difficult to grow plants in winter because of lack of sunlight and harsh weather conditions.This method can be used to mitigate these cumbersome problems.

Solar Powered bicycle

Solar bicycle consists of battery,DC-DC boost converter, Solar Panel, Motor and Motor controller.It will get its energy from three places brakes,  pedals of the bicycle, and by solar-cell.

GSM based Irrigation system

In recent years mobile has become household name. Its reach is wide and anyone can be contacted anywhere using mobile phones. In a last decade we have seen transformation in mobile technology and now it can be used for many purposes and not confined with only communication. Mobile Banking, Photography and Wireless Printing are some of the examples of its distinctive uses.Today, we will discuss that how farmers can use mobiles in agriculture.

Solar Powered Water Pumps

This month we discussed lot of projects about irrigation and how we can make it greener. This idea of solar powered pump is also a part of that series which includes drip irrigation using wind energy and mechanical sprayer.Solar pump is a useful device for irrigation. In my opinion at hot places solar energy is much better than traditional methods because it works during day time and consumes no electricity or any fuel.

Solar Turbine Generator

Solar turbine generators generate electricity in similar way as any other generator; the only difference is that they use sun light in the place of other sources such as coal, wood or petroleum gases.

We had discussed in solar powered steam engines that how we can use sun energy to power our engines. This project idea is extension of that talk.  If we can connect solar powered engine to spin turbine connected to magnets and coil, we can able to generate electricity.

Bio gas powered water heater

Hot water is essential part of human life. During winters, we all need it for our daily activities such as bathing and cleaning. To boil water we use various sources such as coal, petroleum fuel, wood, gas and electricity but most of our methods release greenhouse gases.

Nowadays, Gas geezers are very popular because of their efficiency.  Gas geezers or water heaters burn gas instead of electricity as their heat supplier. There are two types of gas water heaters: With water storage tank and Without water tanks. We can use any from them but I would suggest tank less heater because using it , we would get continuous supply of hot water and it is energy efficient too.

Wind Mill Water Pump

We have discussed Drip irrigation powered by wind mill. I told you to use wind powered pump at the place of traditional one. Today we will move one step forward and find out how? In the meanwhile, I would also share some related videos.  So, let’s begin our journey of windmill pump:

Advantages of using windmill pump?

• It powers itself from green energy.
• According to many estimates, it can recover its cost in 5 years.
• It can be used anywhere, even in areas where electricity has not reached yet.
• If used with drip irrigation, it works automatically without human intervention.

Mechanical Creeper for Disable Person

Working below the car is very common among the car mechanics and they do it with ease. Moreover, crawling under the car is very vital for their profession too. But, mechanics with disabilities due to old age or accident, found it difficult to work under it and in some cases, they might lose their jobs.

Generating Electricity from Waste water

Tons and tons of waste dumped upon our mother earth each day. This waste not only causes damage to our environment but has health risk too. To use this water again, our governments are using water treatment plants. Project Idea we are going to discuss today would use these plants to power our homes.

How?

We all know that, in nature different materials biodegrade at different rates. It is a chemical dissolution of materials by bacteria or other biological means. Bacteria in the presence of oxygen produce carbon dioxide and water, but when we stop the supply of oxygen they start to produce electrons and protons.  They were first found by Professor M.C. Potter in 1911. When we use them to generate electricity in a cell, this cell is called as Microbial fuel cell.

Solar powered Steam engine

Steam engine brought industrial revolution in 19th century. Moreover, we can say that they were the engine of growth. At present time too, they are widely used in nuclear and coal power plants.

We discussed steam engine briefly in our post steam engine powered bicycle. Today we will discuss how we can produce steam using solar power?

Why do we need to use solar power?

Traditional steam engines mainly use coal and nuclear fuel to power themselves. Each of these methods has their repercussion. Coal powered engine damage our environment and after Japan Tsunami we know that use of nuclear fuel can be dangerous. Moreover, there are other strong reasons too, one of the most important is that sun light is free and abundant while coal and uranium are not.

How this project works?

To understand it, first you should know about how steam engine works?

Steam engines produce steam by boiling water and later use that steam for pushing piston in to and fro motion.My idea is, if we can use energy from the sun, to boil our water and left remaining steam engine intact, it would work exactly like our traditional engine except that our engine is powered by green energy.

To boil water using solar energy, we need a large magnify glass focused on our Solar Evacuated tube.
Evacuated tubes absorb solar energy and convert it into heat for use in water heating.  There are several types of evacuated tubes used in solar thermal collectors.This type of tube is chosen for its reliability, performance and cost effectiveness. We connect this tube with our engine using pipe and pass steam through it.

Soccer Playing mini Robots

Football doesn’t needs any introduction, it is one of the most famous sport every played on earth. This game had taken giant leap when played by robot. I have seen that in any robotic engineering competition, game of robots football is inevitable.

 Robot Football requires smart movable robots that need to act as a team in real time and adjust in a very dynamic environment to accomplish definite objectives.It is very complex topic, but I would try to share basics of this project with you.

Fruit Picking Robots

Rough sketch of fruit picker robot using Microsoft Paint            

Have you seen large fruits garden with lots of fruits. For a fruit gardener, it is extremely important to harvest fruit in time. In a large garden there is need of many people to select which fruit is ripen enough to pick out and which doesn't?

Mechanical Sprayer

If you know about farming, pests cause more damages to crop in comparison to any other factor. One of the solutions for this problem is spraying pesticides. Pesticides have their advantages as well as disadvantages. Which type of pesticides is good for nature is altogether different topic and we would discuss about them later. All we know is spraying pesticides is one of the most pertinent things in farming.

I hope you have seen people spraying in the farms; they use electrical or fossil fuel sprayer to spray pesticides on the field. Today, we will talk about alternatives such as mechanical sprayer.

Wind Powered Drip Irrigation

Whenever, I visit any nearby farm land, one thing I notice mostly is its dependence on continuous water supply. Some areas have sufficient water but in most of the places, I found that they are heavily dependent on ground water and rain. Moreover, many people still use traditional methods of irrigation due to which large amount of water get wasted.

Nitro Powered mini RC Car

We have discussed RC Cars before with electric engine and stirling engine. Today we are going to talk about Nitro Car, which has more similarities with cars we use in our daily life.

So, what is Nitro Car?

In my own simple definition, it is a car which runs on fuel consist of methane, nitro methane and oil.It has small internal combustion engine which gets it spark from glow plug powered by batteries inside a car. For more detailed info you can anytime refer to Wikipedia.

What is Glow Plug?

It is similar to spark plug, a helical wire filament usually made up of platinum, but mostly used in small cars. It gets its spark from batteries, compression heat and catalyst effect of methane and platinum.

Stirling Engine mini RC Car

We had discussed both Stirling Engine and Remote control cars in two separate posts.  In this post we will combine these two technologies. Before we start our discussion, I would briefly describe both of them.

Stirling Engine

1.Piston 2. Displacer, Hot gases in the left side of Heat displacer, push it forward to move piston. 

It is an external combustion engine where combustion occurs outside the engine itself. An advantage with this engine is that, it can be used with any type of heating source both renewable and non renewable. Basic form of engine consists of one cylinder, hot at one end and cold at the other, loose fitting displacer, power piston and flywheel.

When we heat at one end, gas starts to expand and push loose displacer forward, which is connected with piston which eventually revolves the flywheel. With its revolution it pushes back the fitting displacer to its original position having cold gas at both ends again. This cycle continues till the heat is supplied from heat source.

RC Cars

These cars are usually powered by electric batteries can be controlled by remote control. It consists of three components, transmitter (our remote), receiver (which receives transmitter signal) and car itself. Transmitter role is not only limited to receiving signals but it also transforms these radio waves into electric signals and controls the components. Most of these cars use Amplitude modulation but some newer once also use Frequency modulation. If you have never heard about modulation, our fm and am radio works with same transmitter, receiver concept. By the way, frequency most often used in mini remote cars is 2.4 GHz.

RC Cars itself is a big concept and out of scope for this post, for this project idea, I would rather recommend you to buy an RC car from toy store and install our engine on it. If it works, then you can shift your focus to build one car by yourself.