Offgrid Outlet Open House
Wednesday, 6/11/2008, 4-7 PM
As a part of the 2008 Habana Labs workshop series, students from New York City’s Little Red School House and Elizabeth Irwin High School (LREI) have designed and built The Offgrid Outlet, a solar-powered AC outlet and 12V DC power port. The system has a custom two-axis motorized tracking mechanism to increase the output of the solar panel by pointing it towards the sun. The outlet's users can directly drive the solar panel using switches and observe the relationship between the panel, the sun, and the energy captured and consumed via embedded displays. The Offgrid outlet will mainly function as a charger for laptops and other portable devices in the courtyard of Brooklyn Ecoeatery, Habana Outpost where patrons will be invited to “plug into the sun” while visiting the restaurant.
The students where led Tim Cooper, an educator at Little Red School House/ Elizabeth Irwin High School. During the creation of the Offgrid Outlet, the students discovered that following the sun is a non-trivial, real-world robotics challenge. The problem is further complicated by the particulars of the panel's ultimate location, which will only receive direct sunlight for about half the day. Using LEGO Mindstorms robotics kits, the students have tackled the problem and on June 11th, they'll take it on a test drive at Habana Outpost.
The first weekend of every month between December and March the Lab ran a sustainable energy workshop. Workshop #3 happened Saturday, February 3rd, at the Glide Design Studios in the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO, and focused on the electronics required to convert kinetic energy to electrical energy. Further information is here. The video below is a short montage from all the workshops.
The Lab's second sustainable energy workshop picked up where the first left off, building small lift-based vertical axis turbines. Check out the details here.
The Lab's first sustainable energy workshop dealt with small vertical axis turbines - check out the details here.
12/10/06: Kids Design and
Race Windpowered Vehicles
Lab R&D director Jeff Feddersen created a workshop
for Eyebeam's Holiday
Hackshop in December. Kids of all ages created their own wind powered
sail cars - and then supplied the wind too, via hand-generated electricity
and small fans.
10/19/06: Brainstorm and Screening
The Lab hosted a screening of the BBC show "Battle of the Geeks", featuring the Lab's Dustyn Roberts as one of six engineers competing in a challenge in Namibia. We also offered a "one-idea-one-drink" brainstorm incentive to gather suggestions for the Lab.
