Markets Week 3

Week 3

Last week I left of with the tagging system from the film I saw and I knew that the batteries
will eventually die out so I would need to find an alternative to the power source so I
decided to look into alternative ways of powering the lights. That is when it strike me that
there was a project I was involved for a short time which used floor panels that would have
been powered by people by just walking on them This is called PIEZO electricity and
theses are little crystals that produce small amount of electricity when compressed. An
example of this technology is used in everyday life object we all have, lighters have them.
Models where you just press the button and light it up. I bough a few Piezo discs from
Maplin Electronics to play with the and see how they work. As it turns out it does produce
electricity when tapped or pressed but not enough to light up an LED so it can attract your
attention to it.
I did more research into this Piezo on the internet and I found a youtube video showing
how one person manages to store the piezo electricity in a capacitor which is connected to
a LED which uses this energy to light up bright. I replicated the circuit used for that it and it
work the way it did on the video.
This was the first time I was involved with electronics in my project and I learned some
basic things like how capacitors work, what a diode us and how it works as well as the
Piezo electricity which is literally fee energy. From that I came up with an idea to create a
series of panels with piezo discs inside with capacitors and LED lights. These panels
would have been replaced with the concrete pavement down London Bridge and when
people walk on them as this are as it is very busy the energy would have been stored in
the capacitors and then used by the LEDs which would light up and show people the way
to the market.