I once built a “solar chime” using broken solar panel pieces, a microcontroller, battery, wind chime, motor and two magnets.
The idea was simple: when the sun comes up, chime.
It would charge up the battery during the day, lose current over night, and when current came back in the morning it would spin up a magnet using the motor (hidden under a platform) which would then cause the chime to activate (after attaching a magnet to the central chime string).
The whole thing resembled a flower in a pot, with a wind chime hanging off it.
After I finished, a guy came up to ask what it was. He and I were both a bit delirious as it was 6 or 7am after a long night of hacking. I demoed the solar chime and he exclaimed: “wow, it’s like analog to digital to analog!”
The idea was simple: when the sun comes up, chime.
It would charge up the battery during the day, lose current over night, and when current came back in the morning it would spin up a magnet using the motor (hidden under a platform) which would then cause the chime to activate (after attaching a magnet to the central chime string).
The whole thing resembled a flower in a pot, with a wind chime hanging off it.
After I finished, a guy came up to ask what it was. He and I were both a bit delirious as it was 6 or 7am after a long night of hacking. I demoed the solar chime and he exclaimed: “wow, it’s like analog to digital to analog!”
I now thing about most things that way.