User:Pbarring9583/ENES100/Project 2

Project Preference
1. Beat Bearing(Implement)

2. MakerBot PLA

3. Automatic shaker table

Week 1 Narrative
For this first week of our Wireless electricity Project, my task was to research how do LED's work. The reason I got this task was because my group planned to first start with testing wireless electricity in LED's, So to do that first we have to learn about LED's to make it work. The reason we are starting with LED's because we are not so much familiar with WiFi electricity, so we don't want to take risk with too much voltage of current. While researching about LED's, I found this website that has very important info about LED's ( http://www.edisontechcenter.org/LED.html ). I found very important info about LED's from this website that will help us while Lighting up the LED's wirelessly. (LEDs create light by electroluminescence in a semiconductor material. Electroluminescence is the phenomenon of a material emitting light when electric current or an electric field is passed through it - this happens when electrons are sent through the material and fill electron holes. An electron hole exists where an atom lacks electrons (negatively charged) and therefore has a positive charge. Semiconductor materials like germanium or silicon can be "doped" to create and control the number of electron holes. Doping is the adding of other elements to the semiconductor material to change its properties. By doping a semiconductor you can make two separate types of semiconductors in the same crystal. The boundary between the two types is called a p-n junction. The junction only allows current to pass through it one way, this is why they are used as diodes. LEDs are made using p-n junctions. As electrons pass through one crystal to the other they fill electron holes. They emit photons (light). This is also how the semiconductor laser works.) I also found this video from that website, "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu6lJJbJs_M#t=75"

Week 2 Narrative
During this week my task was to finalize the material we need to test our project and find videos of existing designs of wireless electricity.

For this first two weeks my group was unsuccessful to light up an LED wirelessly. We tested many different ideas and ways of lightning up and LED, but nothing worked. We also tried finding solutions online, but it didn't explained anything briefly of how we have to connect everything. This weekend while I was trying to think of way we can connect everything to make it work, something came in my mind that was very important and none of us thought about it. It is that we weren't giving ground to our LED, this was the reason it wasn't lighting up. Ground is very important to circulate the energy in the coils, without ground the energy doesn't flow in one direction and doesn't give power to anything. After this came up in mind, I did drawing of how we are going to put everything together. I will show the drawing at the end of my writing.

Materials
 * The material we will be needing to test our LED is 2 copper coils, one 9V battery, one 1k resistor, three long wires, one LED and a peace of metal.

New Design
 * First we will connect positive end of the battery to a 1k resistor (we might change the resistor depending on how much energy it's absorbing) and that resistor will be connected to on end of coil, the negative end of battery will be connected to the other end of coil for a ground.
 * On the second coil, at the end of the coil will be connected to one leg of LED for power, the second leg of LED will be connected to a piece of metal for ground.

I didn't get chance to test this concept because I don't have the material needed to test this project. I will test this concept when i go college. Hopefully it will work as i planned.

Drawing of my concept

I did some research and went to different websites. I found these two videos that shows about how one coil connected to a power source transfers the current to the other coil wirelessly.


 * http://youtu.be/mnQUxN78hBU


 * http://youtu.be/-Wf7aadxBkE

Week 3 Narrative
During this third week of our project my task was to determine the length of coils and to test the coils.

Last week I came up with a idea to light up the LED. My idea was to give the ground to the coils in order to make it work. Me and my group tested that idea, it didn't worked as I thought it will. We also tried to change around the wires, but nothing worked out. Then we thought to change the whole concept. As my task was to find the length for the wires. I started researching on my task. Through my research I wasn't able to find the exact length of wires, but I found that we should try to make the loops of the coils to see maybe it works.

Testing
 * While researching for different ideas to light up an LED, I found a video of someone lightning up an LED wirelesly. "http://youtu.be/4Pi1Jw3ezRA", this was the video that I found on you tube. Through this video I found a website that clearly explains how we should connect everything and what things we will be needing. "http://skory.gylcomp.hu/kapcs/", I found the idea on this website. the idea we are using is at all the way end of this website. This idea is completely different from the idea my group my using before. After finding this idea. I started gathering material to test the idea if it works. I was able to find everything that I needed, except the transistor. The website asked to use the "BD137" transistor, but we didn't have it in the lab, so i asked teacher and they gave me different trasisitor to use that was similar to it. I followed the direction and connected everything together the way this website says to. Then I connected it to the battery. After that i tried if the concept works. The LED didn't light up. Then I check with the volt meter, if the coil is receiving the current. The coil wasn't receiving the current, so I knew that something is wrong with my setup. When I checked, all the capacitor were receiving the current and also the resistor, but from the transistor the current wasn't passing to the coils. There was some problem with the transistor. While i was testing the current the battery was connected for long time. When i touched the transistor it was way too hot, i Quickly took it out of the bread board. Then I again put the transistor in, the second time i was putting it in, the sparks came out of the transistor and it burned out. I couldn't figure out the reason of why it burned out, but I guess maybe it was because of too much current that the transistor couldn't hold it. I try to change the transistor, maybe that helps.

Pictures
 * These are some pictures of my concept connected together.




 * This is the concept I found on the website

Week 4 Narrative
For this last week of our project my task was to finalize the design and how everything is connected and test another design. For our final design we decided that we will need to a resistor, two coils, bread board, LED and AC current. We decided to use AC current instead of using DC current. The reason we decide to use AC current is that it has more power and it helps to flow the current to the coil easier than the DC current. We connected the resistor to the power and then from resistor to the coil, on the other coil only the LED is connected to the coil. During the test of design, the LED didn't light up, however the coil was receiving the current, but it wasn't enough for LED to light up. It was only receiving 30MV current, which was way too little. We also decided to use a metal rod because it increases the metal field, but we didn't had any metal rod, so we weren't able to test it.


 * This is a video during testing that shows the current it's flowing.

Research


 * I also did some research over the weekend, I found this new different design of wireless LED on this website. "http://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-L-E-D/". I didn't had time to test this design to see if it works, but it might be helpful for the next group and can help with their design.