Hello all,
So I received a phone call the other day from my sister. It seems that her and her husband are going to start working with bees. They went to a seminar and were told there that putting a fan in the bee hive / box will help with the production of honey. I guess this is because it will free up the bees to go gather nectar and such instead of trying to cool the hive with their wings. Anyway... They were guided to a website that sells these solar powered fans that are temperature controlled and mounted on some sort of enclosure that fits all the standard hive/box shapes. They sell for around $120 each. I was asked if I could come up with something that was cheaper.
I looked at the site they were looking at and the fan is nothing more that a computer fan that moves about 20 - 30 CFM. I'm thinking this is fairly straight forward. So I came up with a simple circuit with a thermistor, trim pot, and transistor. The question that I have is what kind of problems may be encountered with the circuit? The solar panel that I have is kind of small to run a fan, 6VDC open circuit and 120mA short circuit.
I did do a test build of the circuit just lighting an LED and it works decently. Though I did notice that when it is on the threshold of fully turning on the LED is flickering a little. Is there another solution to this that I am overlooking? I was trying to keep it simple. This circuit is about as simple as I can think of.
Thank you for any input.
Brian
So I received a phone call the other day from my sister. It seems that her and her husband are going to start working with bees. They went to a seminar and were told there that putting a fan in the bee hive / box will help with the production of honey. I guess this is because it will free up the bees to go gather nectar and such instead of trying to cool the hive with their wings. Anyway... They were guided to a website that sells these solar powered fans that are temperature controlled and mounted on some sort of enclosure that fits all the standard hive/box shapes. They sell for around $120 each. I was asked if I could come up with something that was cheaper.
I looked at the site they were looking at and the fan is nothing more that a computer fan that moves about 20 - 30 CFM. I'm thinking this is fairly straight forward. So I came up with a simple circuit with a thermistor, trim pot, and transistor. The question that I have is what kind of problems may be encountered with the circuit? The solar panel that I have is kind of small to run a fan, 6VDC open circuit and 120mA short circuit.
I did do a test build of the circuit just lighting an LED and it works decently. Though I did notice that when it is on the threshold of fully turning on the LED is flickering a little. Is there another solution to this that I am overlooking? I was trying to keep it simple. This circuit is about as simple as I can think of.
Thank you for any input.
Brian
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