OT: Battery Charger DIY...

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow Chris.
At 12:49 PM 10/19/99 +0100, Chris Crosskey wrote:
>HI Folks...
>
>I've just got (well recently got anyway) a Sinclair C5..it's a little
>electric/pedal powered trike dating from the mid-eighties for those of you
>who don't know....

Oh you didn't? Way to go Chris. :) I can't help with your problem but I
thought I'd lend my condolences. :) It's funny, I was thinking about those
things the other day. I was wondering if you could rip them apart and turn
them into a power pack for my skates. :) Good ol' Clive. He came up with
some spectacular ideas. It's a shame they never caught on. I would have
loved to have seen London streets crowded with thousands of those things of
a lunch time. :)

I have had enough trouble trying to run a rechargeable system for my 3 volt
lighting system on my skates. To which I have been largely unsuccessful at
developing a system at all. In my case it's weight that is the problem. A
Sealed Lead-acid would be ideal in terms of current but carrying round that
kind of weight on the off chance you might use it is too much. I think it's
back to trying to charge alkalines for me. But I had two thoughts.

Firstly: You probably wouldn't want to be carrying round a linear battery
charger of that kind of current delivery. It would weigh almost as much as
your batteries. So you'd probably want to look into a switchmode for the
charger it self.

Secondly: I don't know what your sun's like there in the summer but you
might be able to make up a couple of hours charge time by carrying solar
panels on every available surface. After all, they race from Darwin to
Adelaide on nothing but Solar cells. Though they have trouble when it's
over cast. The solar car Race is on right at the moment as it happens.
These guys really skoot when they get some sun. We're talking 90KMPH
average. They've been known to break 110KMPH. (Which is our maximum highway
speed limit) But they have an extremely efficient aerodynamic design and
they aren't carrying half a ton of batteries. But I was thinking that you
could use solar cells as a top-up while you travel. And It might
effectively give you an extra couple of hours charging time for nothing.
(Nothing except the enormous cost of solar cells of course)

Anyway. Best of luck. Keep us informed of how you get on. I'd be most
interested to read about it.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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