cool hurricane wilma power hack

October 31, 2005

my buddy jorge has hacked together his own homemade generator using a car battery and some other parts. check out our google talk conversation:

Jorge: hey
Bwana: hey
Jorge: so they got some big industrial-sized generators so everyone could come back into work
but apparently didn’t put enough fuel or something
Bwana: wonderful
Jorge: so the power went out at the building
sent everyone home
Bwana: perfect
Jorge: i’m on dialup in the dark
Bwana: ugh
Jorge: i have a home-made generator
Bwana: ?
Jorge: bought a 200watt cigarette lighter inverter
Bwana: ah
Jorge: cut the cigarette lighter part off
put some connectors on the wires
bought a cheap-ass $37 car battery
Bwana: heh
Jorge: some alligator clamps
bam… instant AC power
Bwana: not bad
Jorge: yeah
will power up a lamp… and the laptop
Bwana: thats more than most have
i wouldnt have thought of that
Jorge: hopefully the battery lasts, cuz the battery on my laptop broke and won’t recharge and has no charge left
i kinda stole the idea from my neighbor
he has a litle 12V rated tv and a 12V rated lightbulb that he hooked up to a car battery
but was all dc… so you would need to hook in dc-rated stuff
and would somehow have to hook it up to the leads on the battery
so i took it a step further and found an inverter
home depot online has some up to 3000 watt… went to home depot, but they didn’t carry any in the store… :-/
found the cigarette lighter one at wal-mart for like $40
Bwana: heh
Jorge: i also bought some male-female connectors
so that way i can still use the cigarette lighter terminal
works both ways now
directly to a battery, or through a cigarette lighter
just gotta connect one or the other
Bwana: that rocks man
im gonna post it on my website
Jorge: hehehe… yeah
i’m recharging my camera battery with it too…
and cell phone
i’ll see if i can take a pic and post it