wind-powered wifi AP repeater
I can not really take credit for this one, but a couple weekends ago I helped a friend of mine, Dan Lampie, set up a wind turbine here at RIT (check out his website for more details). Dan has been talking about/working on this project for about a year now (well, he started it last year at least). Last summer he sent me a couple of pictures of the turbine set up in his backyard. It was more or less the same set up that he has now, only the previous iteration was just being used to power a light bulb (and to measure what kind of power it can supply). Dan built the whole thing himself along with a bit of advice from a professor and some internet forums. It is quite impressive and (at least to me) surprisingly not terribly complicated to do.
He wanted to set it up at RIT for Imagine RIT: RIT’s Innovation & Creativity Festival (on May 3rd, if you are in the area, check it out). After about half a year of red tape and bureaucracy (literally 100s of emails), he finally managed to get RIT’s permission to install it on campus. Dan drove up for the weekend from Boston (where he’s currently interning at Cisco) and asked me to help him set it up. We took a bunch of pictures, so here’s a few. This first one is after we got most of the stakes down, when we were installing the turbine itself onto the post.
I’m the one with my back turned to the camera, Dan is in front of me, and Chris (who also offered to help) is the one in the brown sweatshirt.
The next step was just to stake everything down. You can’t really tell from the picture, but the ground was extremely wet as it had been raining quite a bit. The stakes went in rather easily, but we were covered in mud by the time we finished.
This picture shows the electronics that make the whole thing work. Dan built the charging circuit himself. Essentially the windmill recharges two 12V batteries and the circuit exists to make sure it does not over charge them. The wireless AP/repeater (not in the picture) is connected to the battery terminals. We “waterproofed” it using plumber’s putty, the platic tuperware box, and that metal box that Dan got off ebay). It is not exactly environmentally tested, but the components are rugged enough that they should be fine even if a bit of water gets in there from humidity/condensation.
There’s Dan standing proud with his finished product. As you can tell from the picture, when there’s a big gust the blades spin pretty fast. Standing right underneath it was kinda scary, but it is very stable. The location is not ideal for a wind turbine because the trees/buildings shield it from the wind, but it still works. The building behind him is Gracie’s (the main RIT cafeteria on the dorm side of campus). The turbine’s AP gets the wifi signal from there and then broadcasts it down the “quarter mile” (RIT’s main walkway from the dorm to the academic side of campus). We haven’t done too much extensive testing of it, but it does work. Dan will probably be up here before the festival to do a bit more tweaking of the project. It’s certainly cool and goes along with the seemingly “new trend” of eco-friendliness/”going green.” If you are interested in doing something like this yourself, there is a vast amount of resources online (search diy wind turbine) or contact me and I can get you in touch with Dan.
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You have the repeater inside of a metal box? Seems to me that that would seriously impede its performance. Do you have antennae coming out of the box? If so, it might be useful to put the repeater under ground to prevent vandalism.
Just a thought…
coool !! nice job and idea !!
I hope there’s a grounding rod in that system!
I would mount this on top of a building, with restricted roof access or something to prevent the vandalism angle. And would transmit a stronger signal with an external antenna. Most APs/Routers have detachable antennas that are a standard coax connector, so you could diy a longer antenna to mount near the fan blades. Does the turbine change the direction it faces, or is it fixed?
Great work, by the way!
If you’re looking at the last picture shown, there is a fairly large external antenna on far side of the box that you can’t see. I’m also fairly certain that the turbine rotates depending on wind direction.
How much power does the wind turbine generate? I am hoping that sometime when you are home we could build one of them to power an emergency 12V sump pump. You know how your Mom flips out when the sump pump craps out or we loose power.
Hi, this is realy an good idea. Well I wanted to ask more about the wind power, could anyone help me and tell me how can I build one for my house because here in my country in Kosovo electricity is not so good, there are days when we dont have it more than 10 hour a day 10/24. so please if there is someone who can help that would be great for me and my neighbours. all the best.
Interesting news.., dude
I’m glad you all liked the project idea. Dan put his website together. I added the links in my post. If you’re looking for some more information about the project or some of the other cool things that he has done, check it out!
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I very liked this post. Can I copy it to my blog?
Thank you in advance.
Sincerely, Your Reader.
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how about using solar power instead ?