No Arduino, no Raspberry Pi, no electronics whatsoever.
I just connected a slightly oversized motor to a toy hand-crank generator.
My son had made something vaguely propeller-shaped out of clay, so I spun it up for him.
Materials
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I used a "Home Kite" — an indoor kite with a hand-crank generator that spins a propeller.
It's a fun toy on its own, but for some reason it gets clearanced out on Amazon and at Toys R Us.
A regular hand-crank generator toy runs about ¥1,500, but if you disassemble a Home Kite you get the generator for around ¥500, plus a choice of colour options for the handle.
As a bonus, the kite comes with a small motor for spinning the propeller — worth about ¥500 on its own.
You also get the propeller itself.
Once you pull out the generator, motor, wires, and propeller, all that's left is the kite itself — nearly zero waste.
A superb parts donor.
Check on Amazon
For the motor, I salvaged a large DC motor from a broken inkjet printer.
Buying motors new gets expensive.
Hunting for a junked printer at Hard Off or similar second-hand shops is a good move.
Disassembling a printer does produce an alarming amount of waste, though…
How to Build It
- Cut the Home Kite's wire somewhere in the middle
- Connect the cut wire to the motor
Done. Too silly for photos.
If you don't want to destroy the kite, remove the back panel of the generator and solder a separate wire directly onto the internal generator coil (which is just a plain DC motor).
The generator casing is soft enough to score with a craft knife. Shaving a bit along the seam to create a gap for the wire makes things much tidier.
As the clay prop gets bigger, the load on the handle increases — you can feel conservation of energy in action. Sort of.
Hook it up to a light bulb instead and it glows, of course. One hand-crank generator, endless possibilities.
Long live the Home Kite. Long live the clearance sale.
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