West Florida Components

Doesn’t it always seem to happen that the iPod battery dies just as you arrive at the gym? Here’s a sad truth: the more complex and feature-laden your mobile handheld device is, the quicker the battery is drained.

Fortunately, there are some non-essential apps and features that you can turn off on the iPod and other handheld devices that run on batteries.

Here’s a partial list of some apps and features on the iPod that can be adjusted to extend the life of your battery:

backlight
hold switch during playback
equalizer
sleep mode
creating playlists

View the video for step by step instructions.

Have any other suggestions we could add to this list? Let us know!

Also – stay tuned for a homemade solar powered charger for your iPod or any similar handheld mobile device. We’ll be providing instructions and selling the supplies in a kit very soon!

What better way to illustrate how to build a basic electronic connection than to use coins to build a battery?

Here’s what you need:

quarters or dimes
aluminum foil
blotter paper (see below)
salt
cider vinegar
wire (short length of both black and red wire – ~16 gauge)
1 LED (any through hole LED)
scissors
pen or marker
voltmeter (optional)

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Trace the coins on the aluminum foil and blotter paper. Cut out 10 of each so that you have 10 circles of aluminum foil and 10 circles of blotter paper.

(Blotter paper can be found in the art store or the art section of your local craft store. You can also find blotter paper in the cosmetics department. If you can’t locate blotter paper, then you can also try using thick paper towels.)

Mix a small amount (1/4 cup) of vinegar with some salt. Stir the salt until dissolved. If the salt can not dissolve, then you’ve added too much. Add some additional vinegar and stir. Soak the circles of blotter paper in the vinegar and salt mixture.

Stack the foil, blotter paper and coins as shown in the video. It is important that the foil not touch the other layers. Let the ‘battery’ stand for about 15 minutes to develop a charge.

Connect each lead of the LED to a short piece of wire; the black wire connects to the negative lead and the red wire is attached to the positive lead on the LED. Place the exposed end of negative wire on the bottom of the ‘battery’ touching the foil, and the end of the positive wire to the quarter on top of the stack.

Optional: Use the voltmeter to measure how many volts are generated by the battery. A battery with 6 or more cells should be able to light up a standard LED with no problem!

In honor of PAC-MAN’s 30th Anniversary, we present a great electronics project.

Is “Big” your favorite movie? Are you saving your money to buy a WII? If you answered ‘yes’ to both of these questions, then you should check out this video project: How To Build a Giant Floor Mat Nintendo Controller.

The best thing about this project is that it’s super easy and requires very few electronic components, parts and supplies. If you’ve done some electronics projects recently, you may have everything you need already at home! OK, so maybe you might need to go buy the felt….but other than that, you’ve probably got everything on hand to make a floor mat Nintendo controller.

Here’s what you need:

A Nintendo game system and controller

Materials required:

3-feet by 5-feet piece of cardboard
40 feet of insulated red wire
6 feet of insulated black wire
Aluminum foil
Packing tape
32 sheets of construction paper
2 yards of gray felt
1/2 yard of red felt
1/2 yard of black felt

Tools required:
soldering gun
screwdriver
scissors

View the video to see all the steps:

For those of you wanting to hear just how good a custom built vacuum tube amp or console stereo will sound, here’s a video from Steve at Custom Tube Art which shows the workmanship of his projects and the quality of the sound.

Steve had this to say about his latest project:

Here is a 1960′s style custom console stereo I built displaying the vacuum tube amplifier right next to the Garrard type A turntable. The 807 tube amplifier has a conservative output of 30 watts per channel and uses 6SN7 and 12AU7 pre amp tubes. The speakers are a pair of Jensen 15″ drivers and a pair of DeForest 3″ tweeters in each cabinet. The entire project took two months to build.

You can see more of Steve’s custom work on his Vacuum Tube Amp web site.