Playing With The Sun

Below is a short video featuring two robotics projects that are perfect for summer camps—or for some fun garden tinkering: The Spin Art Robot and the Hanging Robot!

Solar Power? - It is easy, trust me!

There’s something about my work that I love—and that probably nobody has ever noticed: all parts I use are compatible with one another. For example, everything works with button cells. So you can easily hot-swap the LED of the Minecraft-Inspired Torch and connect a motor with a propeller. Just like that, you have a handheld fan gadget. If you hot-swap the button cell with a solar cell, it becomes solar-powered.

This is huge for summer, because you can go out and have some fun with all my robotic projects using solar cells! All you need to do is remove the batteries and connect the solar cell to the plus (+) and minus (-) tracks of the main circuit.

In bright sunlight, the solar cells I use even provide more power (current) than button cells. I link to the solar cells I use in my shopping lists that come with the templates.

Why this works

All my robotic projects use a solar motor, as these run on very low currents. Most DC motors require AA batteries (or other types of batteries) because they wouldn’t even start moving when connected to a small button cell.

So take the opportunity and power my robots with solar cells! You’ve already seen two of my robots in action — here’s another one: the DIY Bristlebot.

This is the very same motor used for the Spin Art Robot. So getting a solar motor and a solar cell already gives you two options for experimenting with solar power.

The motors I use are also included in my shopping guides with every download.

More robots

If you get geared solar motors, you can either make a solar-powered chameleon (first video) or any other Hanging Robot! Or you can make the remote-controlled Easy Robot:

For the Easy Robot, you need two geared solar motors. These motors are awesome! You can remove the solar motor from the gearbox to get the motor needed for the Spin Art Robot or the Bristlebot. You can even change the gearing in the gearbox to adjust the robot’s speed.

Once you’ve got your motors and solar cells, you’re ready to experiment. The “ultimate Paintbot” is another solar-powered robotic experiment from me.

I have a lot more solar-powered robots planned. Make sure to subscribe to my newsletter to get updates on my work. If that’s not your cup of tea, maybe Mastodon or YouTube is your way to follow me.

So what’s the point of this?

Of course you can and should integrate my DIY projects into a curriculum about renewable energy and teach kids about sustainable living. My motivation, however, is different: Solar and other renewables are the power sources of the future, and I want my projects and ideas to reflect that. These power sources should become the new normal.

So I am currently looking even further into this! I’m exploring ways to store energy from solar cells inside supercapacitors, so you can use the energy later, when the sun is not available. I’m also looking into ways to repurpose the geared solar motors as power generators to produce energy on the fly. But that’s for another blog post...

Last but not least: The title of this blog post is inspired by an awesome project by Amos Blanton, who has dug deep into this topic: Playing with the Sun.