TV Trimmer

Robert Dody

Summary:

The major goal of this project is to promote exercise in obese youth and get the youth to watch less television; this can be accomplished via the TV Trimmer. The solutions considered were to put a generator on a bike and link that to the television or to have some type of impulse produced from the bike to make the television turn on. The impulse from the bike method was used because there were not any previous examples of this project done before and a normal television could be used with this method. The child would be more likely to use the product if he or she could use a “nice” television while they are riding the bicycle.

The design has many components but they are not very complex. The main idea of the design is to have a bike on a stand powered by a child at some velocity, and the tire will activate a snap switch, which will complete a circuit that allows to television to turn on. The most complex portion of the design is the circuit. A transformer powers the circuit and it connects to a capacitor that is in parallel with a relay switch. The capacitor is necessary to keep the voltage up to a certain level while the “pulse” from the snap switch is going through its off cycle. The relay switch completes the circuit of the television being plugged into an outlet. Another key part of the product is that it must have a lockbox that prevents the children from merely plugging the television back into the outlet or tampering with the circuitry.