THE DEGUPOWER.COM BLOG
A record of
my progress with ideas, hardware, software, and website for degupower.
May 16, 2006
Updates with pictures showing 2-story Degu Home.
April 27, 2006 - May 3, 2006
Major Sidetrack, My 62-year old father was hospitalized after having a major heart attack. The short version of things: Drove himself to the hospital, was flown by Helicopter to Hamot Hospital in Erie, PA. The surgeon installed 2 Stents in the artery that feeds the front side of the heart. In less than a week Dad was ready to go home, but under serious restrictions. He's not permitted to lift anything over 10 pounds, etc. His long-term prognosis looks good.
April 22, 2006
MIXED NEWS, The due date came and went for DSL to work and the pretty green DSL light on the modem remained dark. I called Tech Support and they sent someone out to check for signal. He attached his magical DSL meter and it said ZERO. He inquired how far it is from here to the phone exchange, and the answer is seven miles. He assured me that the farthest he had seen DSL work was about 4 miles.
There is a lot of telephone company work going on a mile and a half the other side of me, so I had high hopes that the result would be DSL soon. The telco tech checked into it, and I will have DSL available sometime in July. :-)
April 17, 2006
GREAT NEWS, Today I called the Phone Company to see if they had ADSL
available in my area yet.
I've been calling them each month for about 4 years. Surprisingly, they
accepted my order! I ordered 3 Megabit ADSL, it is scheduled to be
installed
DSL will be a huge improvement for DeguPower projects, as I'm currently with
StarBand where Download speeds are wonderful, Upload speeds are no better than
5K a second, and communication goes away whenever we get heavy rain, wet
snow, or ice buildup. Those are common conditions here in Western NY.
DSL also has the advantage of only adding $25.00 to our phone bill while replkacing $70.00 a month worth of StarBand charges.
April 14, 2006
BIG NEWS, we now have two more Degus! DeguPower now has three full-time employees!
April 8, 2006
Small progress, I got a mounting plate and 3 aluminum blocks made to hold the Reed Switches to measure speed and direction of Cheech's wheel.
March 27, 2006
All work and no play makes John's projects wait. All work... Cheech continues to do his part, running like mad in his wheel. I'll be making more progress shortly.
March 15, 2006
Two weeks have slipped by, and I've gotten only a fair start on the DeguPower
project.
Bearings and mount for the wheel are working perfectly, as is the rectifier
board and stepper motor.
Today I got my ideas for monitoring wheel speed and direction drawn up and
posted on the SPEED 1 page.
It begins to look like my April 1, 2006 goal is unrealistic.
March 8 & 9, 2006
Drew a Schematic for the rectifier circuit, but Work called so will have to finish later. See Tests pages for details.
March 5, 2006
Drilled holes in Cheech's cage and mounted the pillow blocks to hold his
wheel using ball bearings.
Initial tests using a stepper motor and LEDs look
promising!
March 3, 2006
More progress on the website. I got started on a mount to attach the wheel through some sturdy ball bearings to the Generator. Pictures coming soon.
March 1, 2006
Today I started getting the ideas from my head moved into the DeguPower website. Miles to go, but it's a start. My goal is to have things completed prior to April 1, 2006.
February 29, 2006
A very busy day. Today we went to PetSmart and purchased a wheel for Cheech to run in. When we got home, we purchased www.degupower.com and 2 years' worth of storage at www.godaddy.com
Cheech LOVES to run in his new wheel, and soon will be generating Electricity while running!
February 24, 2006
Today we went for a walk in our woods. I took a small handsaw with and cut a small maple sapling, about 2.5" at the base. I cut it into 3 sections and we brought it home for Cheech to chew and play on. He seems to like it.
The idea struck me to have Cheech's running wheel generate electricity. It won't be much electricity, but could be a fascinating and inspiring example of data acquisition.
February 9, 2006
At Home Depot today we found a miniature version of chromed restaurant shelves. They are about 18" wide, 18" high and 6" deep. Perfect to give Cheech a "second story" to climb.
January 28, 2006
A client offered us a new pet, a 3-year old Degu named Cheech. The little beast was WAY too cute to resist, so we brought him home. His name is Cheech and he came complete with a big aquarium .