- 3D Print a Base for Your RPi and Pi-Plate
- LAN/WiFi Speaker Switch
- Solar Powered Remote Environmental Data Logger
- Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Mount
- Using a THERMOplate to Measure Temperatures on the RPi4
- Making Sparks with Pi-Plates
- Dual Syringe Pump
- Cigarbox Pi
- Benchmarking the Pi 3
- Turn Your Raspberry Pi into a Network Monitoring Tool
- Using Pi-Plates with the Raspberry Pi 400
Sometimes, it's hard to tell if you're dealing with a genius or a madman. And after talking to Vance Turner for the first time over two years ago, I wasn't sure. After all, he wanted to use Pi-Plates and a Raspberry Pi to generate carefully timed explosions for pumping water. That just sounded a little crazy to me. But, we built up a stack of eight RELAYplates for him and shipped them out. And after that, things went quiet for over a year.
But Vance and his team weren't idle. During this time they refined their idea and focused on building an efficient system for water desalination on ships. The next time we spoke, he gave me a better understanding of how his system worked and why it was more efficient. The best way to explain this is to think about the gasoline engine in your car. Inside the engine are anywhere from 4 to 8 cylinders. While the engine is running, thousands of controlled explosions of compressed gasoline in each cylinder are applying downward force to a piston every minute. That force is then transferred via linkages and shafts to the wheels of the car. All of those mechanical parts required to transfer energy add a certain amount of frictional loss and decrease the efficiency of the process.
To pump water, Vance and his team ignite a bubble of hydrogen above a column of water. The resulting thermal expansion pushes the water through a pipe on the side, through a check valve, and up to the desalination system. So, instead of a cylinder, he uses a tank. And instead of a piston, he's pushing down on water. There are no mechanical parts to reduce the energy of the system making it extremely efficient. Here's a short video of an early firing: https://youtu.be/XdH0kaGDpAY.
Like a gasoline engine, Vance's pump uses a spark plug the ignite his hydrogen. In fact, he's even using an ignition coil designed for a GM engine. But a few months ago, he was having trouble getting the coil to work properly, so we took a look at it. After some review, research, and discussion we were finally able to decipher the schematic and build a simple setup for generating sparks. Instead of an engine block, we used a piece of aluminum. And, instead of a spark plug, we placed a piece of 14 gauge solid core wire about 3/4" away from the aluminum. Our wiring looked like:
The code looked like this:
