Solar Powered R/C car (zip-zap)

Three solar powered cars are demonstrated; a pitsco kit, a sunwindsolar.com kit and a homemade kludge of a solar landscaping light and a remote/radio controlled "zip-zap" from radioshack. The Kit Cars are given to middle school girls by AWIS, the Association of Women In Science to be built and taken home in the hopes of early indoctrination and proof of concept for photovoltaic power.

If "make magazine" is watching, the project is under $40 bucks, and I want credit! ;) If you want to sponsor me to build a two person Solar powered pedal car, I need $8K to start. I'm unemployed so if there is any way I can make money doing this please don't be shy.

This is my silly invention, if you can even call it an invention. A solar powered remote controlled car has been something of a pipe dream for me since I was in grade school (4th grade) and this was cheap and easy. I've been waiting 3 days for the sun to shine to film this so I could be sure it would work w/o a 100W bulb.

This may seem silly, (it is) but it could conceivably be an important platform in the future for amateur robotics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzFCA-xUc8w&feature=related

When I was young, I didn't understand Ohm's Law, really I still probably don't, at least when you use I's and V's, but I do know "Watts = Amps*Volts." I didn't understand why I couldn't just add 3x .5v panels to drive my 1.5v toys. I wasn't getting enough amperage. The prebuilt kits provide kids with special low amperage motors intended for solar applications. The zip-zap landscaping kludge already has cheap built in circuitry that allows a .5v solar cell to charge a 1.2v battery. In the kludge, the photovoltaics charge small capacitor instead and could very easily be changed to charge both by adding an AAA battery (which is why for now the battery terminals/spring are just sort of hanging on).

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Solar
• photovoltaic
• R/C
• remote-control
• zip-zap

[Hasdasable]

no comment.

[Gregorybot]

i made the middle one in middle school

[akitaishi]

I falling asleep hearing your commentary. But I survived watching your video. Nice effort. Thanks.

[mach1000000000000000]

cool first comment