Raspberry Pi users have shown enormous creativity when it comes to powering their small computers, but this latest project throws us headfirst into the world of steampunk – not the "artistic" steampunk with gears glued everywhere, but the "real and dirty" steampunk. It uses a steam engine connected to an electric motor and a regulator to generate the 5 volts needed to bring a Raspberry Pi Zero to life.
How the project works
Want to learn all the details about steam engines? There are YouTube tutorials for that. Want to know how to build your own steam engine or maintain an existing one? There are YouTube tutorials for that. And what if you want to use a steam engine to power a Raspberry Pi? Well... you guessed it. From a technical standpoint, a steam engine can power almost anything – you just need to "polish" the transfer system. The user "Alexzpro" from the "Svenska Elektronikforumet" decided to use a rubber band as the main belt to connect an electric motor to the crankshaft and flywheel.
Technical details
In the second video (available in the source, we have problems with the embed) we can see that the electric motor easily exceeds 13 volts (the limit is 17 volts with the steam engine at full capacity), and it is regulated to 5 volts with the help of an L7805 and what appears to be a huge bank of capacitors. The steam fed to the engine is created with two blowtorches that heat water in a copper boiler (that's better seen in the first video above). Everything that comes out of the engine after completing its cycle is water, mixed with traces of lubricant that you can detect instantly. One of the first things you learn about a steam engine is the huge amount of lubricant it demands.
If anyone were to calculate the efficiency of this setup, they'd probably find a number below 10 percent, and that wouldn't be bad at all. Any plan to increase efficiency would also raise the complexity of the machine, which makes no sense when you just want to send a little power to a Raspberry Pi Zero. Now, this project makes it clear that steam engine enthusiasts are out there doing wonderful things, and anyone who decides to get their feet wet can find toys or kits to assemble.
