Ljusa hack

For the research "Design & Energy Harvesting" we looked charging device which was appropriate to hack and redesign, employ in other projects.
Constraints:

• cheap
• easy to hack
• easy to understand
• reusable parts
• generating sufficient energy for small projects

First we looked into a very cheap dynamo light torch which could be bought at ACTION for 1 euro. This device is very interesting because it uses different energy transformaton. The downside was that the generated energy was too low for powering up an ATtiny85 for some time.

The Ljusa of IKEA is a device which fits all the constraints.

Some people already hacked it and reported about it:
Ljusa Hack 1
Ljusa hack 2

It is very easy to hack the Ljusa, the price is 4 euro's.

After hacking it a way was found to reassemble the vital parts and integrating it into a test setup.

Parts:

• Dynamo
• Supercap for storing energy
• push button, switch on/off
• 90 seconds of power fro three LED's

Illustrator files, which can be used to lasercut perspex for reassembling the vital energy generating parts:
download. [[vos2a.jpg|300px]
Setup 1:
Wearable: Victory over the Sun

Setup 2:
Parts which can be attached to garments.