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Hardware Hacking

Hamster-Powered Night Light 248

Posted by CowboyNeal from the electric-animals dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Though Skippy the Hamster powers this night light by running on his excercise wheel, the same concepts and low-rpm alternator design could be applied to a school science project using different energy sources! A small wind or hydro turbine could easily power this alternator. The Otherpower.com staff thought of building a hamster-powered nightlight a couple years ago at a rather, uh, soused company Christmas party. Then recently Analise, an 8th grader from Albuquerque, NM, contacted DanF through the AllExperts.com Science For Kids forum, asking 'Can a rodent generate enough electricity to power a light by running on it's wheel?'"
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Hamster-Powered Night Light More

Hamster-Powered Night Light

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  • 1 Watt (Score:5, Informative)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 ) * on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:09AM (#10086468) Homepage Journal
    I got about 1 Watt from my electric hamster [man.ac.uk] but I think you could get much better from the real thing.
    1 watt is enough to power a few LEDs. (Or an asynchronous microprocessor)

  • Heh. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by London Bus ( 803556 )
    I guess this article should really be under "It's funny. Laugh.". Using animals' movement to power a nightlight (which presumably has to be on for upwards of 10 hours a day) is about as good an idea as teens4christ. Still, it's a neat way to teach kids about dynamos and the like, I'll grant them that! Anything that gets kids interested in science can only be a good thing.

    • Re:Heh. (Score:5, Funny)

      by FrYGuY101 ( 770432 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:13AM (#10086483) Journal
      Anything that gets kids interested in science can only be a good thing.
      And this will be my defence for my next book: "Creating Meth labs for fun and profit!"

      (Cue the 'Step 3: Profit' jokes now... we all know they're coming)
    • You obviously don't know kids, what is needed is a light when they are going to sleep and if they wake up crying the rat needs to be trained to jump on the wheel and run.

      So much less than 10+ hours of running is needed, but I am sure one of those super marathon rodents from yesterday couldn't hurt.

  • There's not enough hamsters in the world to... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scythr0x0rs ( 801943 ) * on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:11AM (#10086473)
    power your website while it's being slashdotted.

  • Devo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by vuvewux ( 792756 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:12AM (#10086479)
    Man has finally harnessed the power of animals. Soon we will be able to bring animals to other fields, replacing farm equipment and automobiles.

    • Re:Devo! (Score:3, Funny)

      by nih ( 411096 )
      did the hamster that was powering the web server die?

    • Re:Devo! (Score:3, Funny)

      by 5m477m4n ( 787430 )
      I'm sure within a week the hamsters will form a union. They'll become so expensive, that we'll start outsourcing our hamster needs to India.

  • Build one of these for Oprah... (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilCabbage ( 589836 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:12AM (#10086480) Homepage
    String a baked ham to the thing and see if she can light up Chicago.

    Thankyou, I'll be here all week. Try the fish.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by uodeltasig ( 759920 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:12AM (#10086481) Homepage
    Skippy dies due to slashdotting a site with 14 pictures of him... Now who is going to power the annoyingly loud little nightlight?

  • Power (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Outsider_99 ( 761534 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:16AM (#10086492)
    I heard a theory once about getting a gym to power their lights from the people in the gym. The idea was to hook up all the bikes to a generator. I think its a good idea.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Power (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Skater ( 41976 )
        There was one at a nuclear power plant in Berwick, PA (in the visitor's center). I wasn't able to power it for more than a few minutes despite riding a bike daily...

        In that case, the TV was hooked to a video camera pointed at the cyclist. The electricity the cyclist generated went to running the lights so the camera had enough light to show a picture.

        --RJ

        • Re:Power (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Aguila ( 235963 )
          I've also ridden one at a nuclear power plant, and had difficulty maintaining power output. However, if I recall, the difficulty was due to lack of optimisation of the bicycle. First, the riding position (seat height, frame size) was not very adjustable, forcing me to ride in an awkward position. More importantly, however, the bike was the equivalent of a single speed bicycle... no ability to switch gears. Therefore, to obtain a high power output, it was necessary to have a very high cadence (peddle very qu
    • I laughed at first, but you may be onto something. There's a lot of wasted energy coming out of a gym. People are, essentially, expending energy so that their muscles can do work, but that energy is only going to move weights against gravity, so essentially to waste. Huh.

      --trb
      • It's not lifting the weight against gravity which "wastes" energy -- a lifted weight can be used to turn a generator as it falls back down, if you want. It's the heat produced in the muscles during exercise that wastes energy.

        A lot of the energy expended when you exercise just turns to heat, not useful movement.

    • Re:Power (Score:4, Informative)

      by syphax ( 189065 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @09:24AM (#10087448) Journal
      I'm all for this, but you have to realize that the economics don't work.

      A pretty good cyclist pedaling pretty hard (200-250W) would take 4-5 hours to generate 1 kWh (worth around 10 cents).

      If you were paying the cyclist (in the case of a gym, fortunately they are paying you), you're looking at $25+ per kWh. That makes solar look damn cheap!

      • Re:Power (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pclminion ( 145572 )
        Yeah, but the original poster was talking about lighting up the gym, not selling power. If you assume an average of 100 watts per exerciser (many people can't sustain 200 watts let alone 250), that's more than enough power to light the gym up. Especially with modern high-efficiency fluorescent lights.
  • From ALBUQUERQUE, you say?

    ALBUQUERQUE (n.)

    A shapeless squiggle which is utterly unlike your normal signature, but which is, nevertheless, all you are able to produce when asked formally to identify yourself. Muslims, whose religion forbids the making of graven images, use albuquerques to decorate their towels, menu cards and pyjamas.

  • 25+ years ago, (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:21AM (#10086508) Journal
    I did something similar for a wind generator for a futuristic class (in 1977, no less). One of the designs had an inner and an outer counter-rotating blades which later struck me as too complex. But I was thinking that a design with the magnets at the outer edges made a lot of sense.

    • Re:25+ years ago, (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @08:32AM (#10086990) Homepage
      I helped design a extremely simple wind generatior system for 3rd world countries that uses discarded 55 gallon drums and car parts as the rotor to drive a pully and modified car alternator. (we designed it so the locals can get over 80% of the parts from abandoned cars that they come across)

      we have a few that have survived hurricanes easily and only threw the belt off.

      most wind generators can be extremely simple with no moving parts except for the rotor (Yes, it does NOT track with the wind, as it is vertical.)

      Animal power generation is certianly possible.

      the key is to modify your alternator/generator to use the surplus extreme power magnets and rewind the coils so it will generate decent amperage at low rpm's by adding more coils. (making your own alternator is easy with a car strut+wheelbearing+ break rotor)

      I have seen a generator that would produce almost 15 watts at 12 volts from a horse exercize merry-go-round. 2 horses generated an average of 5 watts from less than 12 dollars of parts while they mose-yed around in a circle for a couple of hours, and 99% of that cost was the magnets. certianly cheaper than any solar panels and every watt you pump into that battery is precious... It generated enough power in a small battery bank to light a workroom very well and for a few hours with a 4 watt CF flouresent lamp that makes most 40 watt bulbs look dim.

  • I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by halivar ( 535827 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `reglefb'> on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:25AM (#10086521)
    A desert covered in hordes hamster wheels, all providing power to the Western U.S.

    We can hire Mexican immigrants to change the wood shavings!
    • A desert covered in hordes hamster wheels, all providing power to the Western U.S.


      Why does this sound like a pre-cursor to the matrix or something?

      =)

      • Why does this sound like a pre-cursor to the matrix or something?

        I'd pay good money to see that (well, more than I'd pay for Revolutions); but then, I have a fetish for hamsters wearing overcoats and black latex.

        In all honesty, I have to wonder how a hamster/gerbil/whatever perceives the situation (a la Matrix) when they are in a cage with a wheel. Does it seem weird to them at all? Or are they so instinct driven that they don't consider it?
    • Woah, and Keanu Reeves wakes up from the Matrix and discovers that he's a hamster! I knew it, and it explains so many things about him!

      • Re:Take the what pill? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Hamsters generally have a greater range of facial expressions than Keanu Reeves.

  • Yes. (Score:5, Funny)

    by suss ( 158993 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:27AM (#10086525)
    'Can a rodent generate enough electricity to power a light by running on it's wheel?'

    If it thinks it's being chased by Richard Gere, then yes, it probably can.
  • does Richard Gere know about this?

    suchetha

  • Our last hope... gone... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tacarat ( 696339 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @06:47AM (#10086576) Journal
    Now that we can be replaced with hamsters, why are the machines going to keep us around? I imagine they'll get a great ROI by ditching the human based Matrix in favor of a less complex one designed to simulate a glass cage with tubing in some 5th grader's bedroom.

    Google cache here [216.239.57.104]

  • childpower (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dresseduptoday ( 621090 )
    Hah. This reminds me of my favourite power source, children. Everybody knows that kids have an infinite supply of energy. Now, if kindergartens had toys that absorbs this energy from the children in their games, the kindergartens can actually become very lucrative power plants, paying the parents to have their kids there. Hyperactive kids are of course the ideal ;-) _ /Bjorn.
  • Check out google's use of pigeon power, it's The technology behind Google's great results [google.com]

  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Don't forget to add this tune [oceanbluepools.com] for your hamster's workout.

    Here's the original site [oceanblueepools.com]

  • Come Pinky! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gijoel ( 628142 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @07:06AM (#10086643)
    Come Pinky! We must prepare for tomorrow night! Why? What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? The same thing we do every night, Pinky... Try to power the norhteastern seaboard!!!
  • Quote: "To save energy, it would make sense to utilise the senselessly relentless pedestrian marathon tendencies of the domestic hamster (fatface domesticus). ..."

    loc. cit. [halfbakery.com]

    CC.

  • Slightly OT - Human Hamster Wheels & Energy Ge (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Afty0r ( 263037 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @07:25AM (#10086704) Homepage
    So I'm curious. I run/jog a bit, and if I use the gym they have machines that waste electricity just to make me run on the spot.

    If we were to get a human-sized hamster wheel, how much energy could I *generate* on it doing a, say, 30 min hard run every morning?
    If everyone did this, would it have an impact on our electricity usage in the homes - and provide an incentive for overweight people to jog (not only lose weight, but save money on electricity bills). Not only this, but it's good to jog on a surface which has your footfall a little higher than the point your foot leaves the ground (as a wheel would) because it lessens impact fatigue on your ankles and particularly knees.
    • On a treadmill, an adult male can probably sustain a power output of about 100W. For humans, bicycles are more efficient than treadmills. I've generated an average power of 200W for 2 hours on a stationary bike and I'm a middle-aged geek, not an athlete.

      People are usually interested in this to figure out their calorie burn rate. Here are the conversions:

      1 dietary calorie = 1000 calories = 4186.8 joules = 4186.8 watt-seconds = 0.001163 kWh

      Human efficiency is 20-25%, so you can calculate that you actual

    • Re:Slightly OT - Human Hamster Wheels & Energy (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I was at the Glastonbury Festival this summer, one of the UK's biggest summer festivals which gets crammed with 150,000 hippies every year.

      In one of the tents, a exercise bike was rigged up to a sound system (I assume with a resevoir to hold the power gained.) The idea being that the dance tent could be self sustained, green and economical enough to provide it's own electricity for the music, lights and bar equipment.

      It worked! However not many people want to beast themselves on a bike/treadmill for 45 mi
    • Ball park figure, if you're in really good shape and put a serious workout into it you may be able to run a bicycle-generator at 150 watts for a half hour.

      That's 0.075 kilowatt-hours of power from your half-hour workout. Probably less than one cent worth of electricity (depending on your local electric prices).

      Even if you had an entire gym full of people running them continuously the value of electricity produced is neglegible, and the extra hardware and maintanence costs to add generators and wiring to t
    • yeah, but what about the humiliation of running every morning in a man-sized hamster wheel?
  • ...than Science.

    'Can a rodent generate enough electricity to power a light by running on it's wheel?'"

    Or maybe CowboyNeal does. "Editing"? Whatever for?

  • Crystal Set Radio Powered Quartz Clock (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @07:41AM (#10086751) Journal
    I used to have a 1.5V analogue quartz wall clock that was powered by a Crystal Set. With a 10m antenna, I could pull in enough power to run the thing 24/7.

    Other things, such as LEDs and small motors, used to get hooked up to the set too.

    I also found a 1930s radio speaker in a junk shop - it was in a walnut case and included a multi-tapped transformer to give the speaker numerous effective impedances from 3.4 Ohms all the way up to 2K Ohms. Set on 2K Ohms, the crystal set was easily as loud as a small battery-powered AM radio.
  • ...playing The Incredible Machine :P

  • Scaling Up (Score:5, Informative)

    by Artifakt ( 700173 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @07:56AM (#10086813)
    This is basically an IIRC (if I recall correctly), but for those of you wanting to know what humans can do along these lines...

    1. With a stationary bicycle hooked up to a small generator, a human who is classified as in moderate shape can power a 13 inch black and white television at about an even rate - pedal for half an hour, watch for half an hour.

    2. it takes a near olympic grade athelete to power a 19 inch color set continuously and even then, it's a for a single half hour program or less. Mere mortal cyclists can charge a battery and get about a half hour of TV for over an hour's pedalling.

    3. Those first two examples are based on 1980's era designs. These days, half an hour of cycling should be able to charge a laptop battery for about 4 hours use, or load up all the rechargeable batteries for several portable music players and portable game systems, and a bit extra for your flashlights.

    I'd document these claims in detail and with rigor, but really, the frackin article started off with frackin hamsters and I just thought of a really dumb joke - see my next post.
    • 1. With a stationary bicycle hooked up to a small generator, a human who is classified as in moderate shape can power a 13 inch black and white television at about an even rate - pedal for half an hour, watch for half an hour.

      Wow, where can I sign up to get my house converted to this type of power. If I had to ride a stationary bike for a half hour just to watch a half hour of TV, or use the computer for 4 hours, I'd be in the best shape of my life! Seriously though, I should just get some willpower and
      • I always figured 1 person would end up in the best shape of their life and a bunch of others would turn into couch potatos who yell "pedal faster!" a lot. But it would lend new meaning to phrases such as "Sci Fi channel's the Prisoner Marathon".

  • Can someone help me here? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Artifakt ( 700173 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @08:00AM (#10086825)

    Can I get these fricken hamsters with self powered fricken laser beams on their fricken heads?

  • How much electricity? (Score:3, Informative)

    by hashwolf ( 520572 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @08:11AM (#10086877)
    "Can a rodent generate enough electricity to power a light by running on it's wheel?"

    Well it methinks it all depends how big the rodent is... AFAIK the capybara is the biggest rodent.
    From the size of it I guess it could generate enough electric juice to power a high power halogen lamp.

    Here are some pics of the beast:
    http://www.rebsig.com/capybara/capy2.jpg [rebsig.com]
    http://stockpix.com/stock/animals/mammals/smallmam mals/9801.jpg [stockpix.com]
  • Has somebody been watching Cartoon Network? Kids Next Door? Come on, you can be honest with us...

  • Nocturnal (Score:2, Troll)

    by kzinti ( 9651 )
    Why do hamsters need a night light? They're used to working in the dark because, guess what boys and girls, hamsters are nocturnal! [yptenc.org.uk]
  • When I was working in downtown Toronto and participating in the morning pedestrian rush hour in the underground tunnel network beneath the financial sector (for those unfamiliar with the area, it's pretty extensive), I started to wonder if there were some way to harness the power of the motion of the many doors (including the fire-break doors). Now it seems that, like the hamster on the wheel, we have a way to transform the mindless movement of the masses into something useful.

    Now if only we had a way to just plug people directly into the power grid....

  • Sorry! The mutiple hampster wont power much beyond the LED. Dexter tried it with 100 and no go! Would not recharg his lab!

    Even if you use a larger creature like a water buffalo like Gyro Grearloos did in an underdevelop country. It still takes way too many men to shove them up and down the ramp to generate power.
  • The problem I have with this is that skippy needs fuel. He's going to be burning extra calories pushing that little alternator that the folks have sneaked onto his wheel.
    • Is the cost of those extra sunflower seeds and the extra grain cheaper than driving this alternator with an internal combustion engine?
    • What happens when skippy gets bored, he'll have more food but less excercise - who's going to pay the vets bill when skippy gets obese?
    • Will this cause or prevent heart disease in skippy?

  • Just one? (Score:2, Funny)

    by qray ( 805206 )
    One hamster may not be much, but imagine a building full of hamsters each running on its own wheel! And for those peak usage periods just throw in a cat to the mix.
  • What would be great would be a hamster-powered handheld or notebook computer. That way, instead of needing to recharge the batteries, you could just give your hamster a scrap of food. You'd need a fairly energy-efficient computer (transmeta?)--and maybe more than one hamster.

    Even better, one could have general-purpose generator that you can hook up to your handheld, cell-phone, or notebook depending on your need.

    For flying, if you can carry the unit onto the cabin, maybe could share your in flight munchie

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @10:09AM (#10087915)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ...he doesn't bite and he doesn't squeal. He just runs around on his hamster wheel!

  • I Tried That (Score:5, Funny)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @10:54AM (#10088375) Homepage
    Captured the mouse in my room.

    Told him to run fast enough to power my night light.

    He didn't run fast enough to make enough light for me to see to feed him so he didn't have enough energy to run fast enough to...

    Result: dead mouse. No night light.

    Now I can't see to clean up the dead mouse.

    Room smells bad.

  • Probably this [ccph.com] rodent can...

  • Some time ago I got a flat tire, and was constantly blown back by the windforce of passing trucks. The thought occurred to me, that all that energy goes to waste despite being very predictable and fairly ubiquitous accross our country. I'd like to see someone invent a very disposable, mass-producable, cheap windmill, maybe as big as a pinwheel, that we can use to cover the center medians of our highways and possibly power at LEAST all the traffic lights.
    This article looks like the efficiencies are increasin

  • Screw hamster power (Score:5, Informative)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Friday August 27, 2004 @01:04PM (#10089746)
    I'm just glad to see otherpower.com linked on Slashdot. Well, maybe. Er.. Anyway, I'm not participating in the /. effect this time (in other words, I did not RTFA) because I've read his site a million times.

    The guys at otherpower.com do cool stuff. If you're wondering, "what's the point" with the hamster nightlight, you aren't seeing the whole picture. These guys have built, on their own, dozens of pieces of creative power generator equipment -- mostly out of wood!

    Click around on the site a little bit (AFTER the Slashdotting subsides) and check out the other, real stuff they do. Like, making a 3 kilowatt wind turbine using a Volvo brake assembly, neodymium magnets and hand-wound copper coils, and hand-made wooden blades. I dream of having a workshop to do that kind of stuff.

  • definitely my new favorite metric. That makes the whole article worthwhile.

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