Nantakan, if you mainly work with manual chairs...the only real moving part you have is the wheels...I have though about this over this weekend....if you were to use a series of magnets embedded or simply stuck to the circumference of the wheel....they could move pass a stationary inductor...this would induce an electric current (each time a magnet passed the inductor) it would give a small pulse....you could use super capacitor technology to "collect" the current generated by these pulses...then make a decision if you should store the energy collected in the supercap or maybe trickle charge a small lithium ion battery..etc..etc......I would recommend a 5 volt system...and link it to a USB output....the amount of useable electric current is completely dependent on how much the user actually rolls around in their chair......I would be very surprised if it were possible to just pick up vibrations of a manual chair and convert them to a "usable amount" of electricity. I think the only viable option you have is using magnetically induced electric current from the rotational motion of the wheelchairs wheels....Keep me in the loop...I would LOVE to see what you come up with.......I will say this....If it were possible to create a small box...that picked up vibrations...and stored the energy of the vibrations.....that would be totally awesome....I think the induced limitations of physics will prevent us from reaching such a lofty goal.....I hope you can indeed actually build such a device...it would have radically redefine the energy harvesting field....I do indeed hope your team could devise such a device......If you need anything please let me know...I am very interested in this project...and If I can be of assistance I would welcome the opportunity. ( I have a preliminary circuit design for the supercap charging circuit to USB conversion sitting on a desk in my lab....I am working on a different technology platform to interface with it....I would be happy to give you the design....if you think it would help with your vibration collector device) - Robert

Could you send me some details?

Yes, i am.

1) Which are the needings ?;

2) Do you need work as research, or for industrial-made devices ?.

Thanks indeed, Research and then make for individual for free. We need the better way to convert a wheel movment and collect or storage an output electrical energy, either voltage or current. And then we should know more what the devices could be.

This is quite interesting.

Thanks for all the responses. Firstly, our method for energy conversion on the wheelchair movement is not so practical, please suggest or tell us about yours. Secondly, taking a generated energy for sending and recieving data of a patient's location seems to be one of the best applications. What do you think?

Hi Nantakan, I am the Director of R&D for Richardson Products Inc. located in Frankfort Illinois...I currently manufacture power supplies specifically for wheelchair devices...I would be happy to help you in any way I can. If you could elaborate on what you are specifically looking for...I'd be happy to help you. I am well versed with all different types of wheelchairs and how they currently operate. hope to hear from you... - Robert

Thanks Robert. I've read your excellenct work on the automatic wheelchairs. Ours is a manual one with simple opeation and inexpensive. We aim to make something vibration while the wheels are moving, and that vibration could lead to an electrical output for simple electronics. We've actually tried connecting something but it is not nice enough. Hope to hear more from the RG people.

Nantakan, if you mainly work with manual chairs...the only real moving part you have is the wheels...I have though about this over this weekend....if you were to use a series of magnets embedded or simply stuck to the circumference of the wheel....they could move pass a stationary inductor...this would induce an electric current (each time a magnet passed the inductor) it would give a small pulse....you could use super capacitor technology to "collect" the current generated by these pulses...then make a decision if you should store the energy collected in the supercap or maybe trickle charge a small lithium ion battery..etc..etc......I would recommend a 5 volt system...and link it to a USB output....the amount of useable electric current is completely dependent on how much the user actually rolls around in their chair......I would be very surprised if it were possible to just pick up vibrations of a manual chair and convert them to a "usable amount" of electricity. I think the only viable option you have is using magnetically induced electric current from the rotational motion of the wheelchairs wheels....Keep me in the loop...I would LOVE to see what you come up with.......I will say this....If it were possible to create a small box...that picked up vibrations...and stored the energy of the vibrations.....that would be totally awesome....I think the induced limitations of physics will prevent us from reaching such a lofty goal.....I hope you can indeed actually build such a device...it would have radically redefine the energy harvesting field....I do indeed hope your team could devise such a device......If you need anything please let me know...I am very interested in this project...and If I can be of assistance I would welcome the opportunity. ( I have a preliminary circuit design for the supercap charging circuit to USB conversion sitting on a desk in my lab....I am working on a different technology platform to interface with it....I would be happy to give you the design....if you think it would help with your vibration collector device) - Robert

Thanks a lot. " Though-over-the-weekend" project shall soon be though-over-the week. You are already in the loop, Robert. Chandra, Antonio and others are also welcome to get in the loop, it's big enough.

The best researcher in this field I ever met is Prof. Patrick Abellard – Universite du Sud Toulon-Var, France.

A simple example of this can be visualised in the following picture of a bycycle dynamo below.

rectification and smoothing LC circuits are required for using this power supply for electronic circuits.

Thanks Marius, thanks Anik.

Have you ever tried feeding the power for something (exclude the light bulbs) ?

@Nanatakan, would like to follow up this product of yours. Kindly do keep us updated.

Hi, update.... we just bought 2 dynamos a couple of days ago . I am glad for your photo that convince us what we should do. Yet, we do not get a proper circuit that keep the output working well and long enough. We also need a small implementation that fits most to our patients' usage. We have to decide what to feed and how. ...ok...end of news. :)

Thats good news.

Its a very common practice. Just go through some SMPS circuits.

AC-DC conversion is required followed by reducing the ripples in the DC using cascadded LC filters. The output from this circuit is to be used for charging the cells, which in turn would supply your electronic cicuitry.

I agree Anik...Nantakan I will send you a schematic to charge a super cap bank or a series of cells....with all the voltage regulation, filtering caps, and diode protection you will need. :-)

Thanks Robert. The modification of the wheelchair is now promising. So, I start looking for transmitter - receiver of low power consumption. It can be seen that yet I do not stop searching....

Hi robert,

I would also like to see circuit that you have said.

Thanks in advance.