So, after discovering the eddy brake, and being stuck without any solutions, the little waterwheel project just sat there, untouched for many months. I was pretty discouraged.
We used to call the local landfill The Mall. It was amazing what kind of goodies we found there. We’d usually stop by on the way to town, not so much to drop off but to see what new things we could find. One day I found an old “ghetto blaster” and brought it home. I really didn’t need it but it looked like it was in good shape, so why not.
I had some batteries so I put them in and turned it on. Nothing. I figured out pretty quickly why it was at the dump. Well, I thought, maybe there were some good parts in it, so I took it apart. As I dismantled it, I came across a couple of little DC motors, some little pulleys and thought, hmmmm, I wonder if I can spin them with the waterwheel and make them generate electricity. I mean, a generator is just a motor right?
I press fit one of the little pulleys onto the motors shaft, and went down to the ravine. I stuck the pipe in the creek and got the thing spinning. I had a 12V light bulb wired to the motor, pressed it against the spinning solid rubber tire and, it worked! The light bulb lit right up. I had made power from my creek!
I ran down to the main camp and announced my triumph and everyone came up to see. Yep, it was very crude, but it worked. The next thing was to attach the motor to the frame of the exercise bike, wire it to the old battery and it dawned on me, I’m going to need wire, a lot of wire.
After a long series of trials and errors, I had made electricity from my creek!