Blue Fire Project (01-16-09)
WEEK ONE (Project Proposal.)(01-16-09)
I have sent an E-Mail to my Instructor asking about the projects I wanted to do for application project.
“Hello,
I got a couple question about the project:
1. Can I do the dryer thing I showed you last semester?
2. If not, what do you suggest for me to do that is related to lighting? (More electrical than electronics. Like 20% electronics and 80% electrical.)(No PLC programming unless I get to keep the PLC since I want the project to be something I can use at home.)
3. Do you know a good place where you can get electrical/electronics parts second-hand? Budget is tight for me. (It's the reason I asked if I could pull the 12/4 cord (for the dryer project) out of a scrapped machine, whatever that machine was.)
4. I will e-mail the progress reports like you told me along with a link to my website showing the pics of the progress of the part finding and build. (Website work is easy so that's not gonna be a problem with schedule.)
Thanks.”
I’ve started planning two projects in case the first one is not approved. The first project was the Dryer Project. It has nothing with the appliance itself but the power outlet it goes into. It was to have three rows of 15A receptacles. The outer rows are the 125V receptacles while the center row is the 250V receptacles. The receptacles will be fused to 15A fuses while the main fuse will be the 30A ones. The 125V lines will have one fuse each row while the 250V line will have two fuses. The receptacles and their fuses will be mounted inside a metal box and having a power cord that plug into the dryer receptacle.
The idea of the project was to get 240V power out to use in light fixtures that have 240V ballasts without cutting up the walls and wiring up a new circuit. This is especially if I am in a rented apartment.
The second project is going to get a codename. It will be called Blue Fire. It will experiment what effects the most common streetlamps are going to have on the plants at night time. The box will be metal and 84” Long, 36” Wide, and 30” Tall on a 10” Tall dolly. (It will consist of 4 major pieces.)
There will be 10 “cubicles” for each plant. The first two will have full darkness at nighttime. The other 8 will have one mercury vapor lamp (100w), ceramic metal halide (50w), quartz metal halide (70w), and finally high pressure sodium vapor (50w). There will be coated lamps and clear lamps of the four types of lamps. All the HID lamps will send off 4000 Lumens each. All cubicles will have two F15T8 Daylight Lamps to simulate daylight.
The lights will be lit 13 hours each with ½ hours overlaps at dusk and dawn. It will have a self watering system that will water each plant as needed. The water will activate independently of each other, in order to eliminate drowning other plants that doesn't need water. The plants used will be the Pinto Beans species since it grow fast and is easy to work with.