Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with powered

I need the name of this small motorized friction toy truck. Please!

orehek — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 08:59:00 -0800

I need the name of this small motorized friction toy truck. Please! Hi All,

Around 3 Christmas' ago, I saw a small toy trucks sold at Walmart. They were in the same aisle as MatchBox cars. These toy trucks were packaged within a cardboard frame (packaging was around 9" x 5" or so) with a rigid clear plastic cover. There was also an opening in the plastic to permit one to place their finger inside so that one could propel the truck and you would see it move by way of friction...no batteries.

The truck was actually housed inside a circular ring. So when examining it in the store, you pushed the truck from behind and it would begin to scale the ring/surface which it was house in for demonstration purposes. The truck had a low gear motor which allowed it to move at a slow consistent speed yet had a great deal of climbing power due to the low gear ratio.

This truck did not wound back. You simply pushed it firmly forward and it would start to really scale the ring it was contained in. To be clear, the ring was not part of the toy, it was just part of the packaging so that one could see how the truck worked. I think it came to two sizes but the one I remember was about 2.25" long and about 1.5" tall. Lastly, they had robust rubber tires for good traction. Does anyone have any idea as to what this toy truck product and/or series was called? And is it still on the market? Thanks so much.

It gets 20,000 miles to the isotype!

Funmonkey1 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:12:49 -0800

[ScienceFilter]: I want to drive a nuclear powered car. If nuclear power is good enough for submarines, why can't the technology be scaled down? Looking for big picture such as limitations, environment, storage, infrastructure and adaptations required.

What powered mixer do I need?

rumsey monument — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:58:43 -0800

I have two 200-watt, 8 ohm speakers. What PA head do I buy? I received 2 PA speakers as gift. On the back, its says they are 200 watt, 8 ohms. What would be the proper powered mixer to buy to complete my little PA system? I don't really need any more than 8 inputs, and do not need anything with bells and whistles. Thanks!

Help me build a bicycle powered water pump.

electroboy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:37:12 -0800

Help me build a bicycle powered water pump. So I got drafted into putting together a human powered water pump for the neighborhood Green Fair. I tried to tell them I'm a civil engineer, not mechanical, but to no avail. So I thought I'd ask y'all for suggestions.

Anyway, the organizer is interested in a demonstration pump similar in concept to the Playpump, so that the local kids can pump water from Bucket A to Bucket B. Eventually the pump will end up at the community garden to be used to pump water from the rain barrel onto the plants.

So the basic requirements are:

1. Relatively cheap (hopefully the bike will be donated)
2. Somewhat durable. It won't be used 24 hours a day, but should be able to stand up to rowdy kids and semi-regular use in the garden.
3. Reasonably efficient, so that a normal person pedalling at a moderate rate can move 3-4 gallons in a few minutes.

It'll be drawing out of a rainbarrel so it won't need to generate a lot of suction, nor will it need to blast the water out of the hose.

I was thinking of trying to salvage a waterpump from a car and fitting it with a sprocket. Is this a reasonable idea? Any other suggestions for cheap, nonelectric pumps? Will the gear ratio be enough to get any volume out of the pump or should I try something different? Has anyone built anything like this before?

Portable digital recorder with powered mic in and removable storage

neustile — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:58:36 -0800

Looking for a portable digital recorder that is as small as possible but has a powered 1/8" stereo mic in (for a binaural mic), records uncompressed PCM at at least 16-bit 44KHz, has removable storage, and does not need special software to transfer and deal with files on a computer (e.g. it should record direct to aiff or wav on the card.)

CCTV for remote locations

lemonfridge — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:26:26 -0800

I have a need for a CCTV system in an area with no power or wired connections. The images/video would only need to be retrieved in the event of a break in or something of that ilk. What are my options? The obvious power solutions would be wind and solar power to charge batteries so that the system can work over night.

I guess the video/images would need to be stored on some kind of HDD or memory card, as a VHS player would drain the battery power pretty quickly.

Help my protect my sisters stables Hive Mind!

Compressed Air Car

curiousleo — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:42:48 -0800

What could be the most viable environmentally friendly car? I some how focused in compressed air powered cars. Let's get some ideas going here.
I was looking at

http://auto.xprize.org

and started to do some research.

What could be the most viable environmentally friendly car? I some how focused in compressed air powered cars.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/116641/Car_Runs_on_Compressed_Air

http://www.theaircar.com

This seems to be ... from what I've read so far... the best method. It uses current technology and there is no bad byproduct. In a big picture I assume compressing air in mass can be done via wind, water, nuclear power...

There are fair amount of ethanol, hydrogen, etc powered car info.... but strangely there aren't too many compressed air car information... Is it a technology that just doesn't work? Is it not better than other technology?

Check out the digital journal video posted above.

Please tell me anything regarding the Air powered cars, X Prize, and why other technolgy is better.

I will be on THIS all day.

How should I control/setup my external comptuer speakers

grouse — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 16:14:10 -0800

I recently acquired some Altec Lansing powered speakers that are loud enough that I don't have to keep my MP3 player and Windows volume settings at maximum in order to be able to hear anything. So what should I set them to? Should I mainly rely on the external speaker volume knob?