Murata has a cool new Micro-Blower (a tiny fan powered by a piezo element) For the size it gets a lot of airflow, and only requires a square wave to operate. It is generally for cooling components, but I can think of a lot of fun things to do with it. I can’t find them anywhere online for hobbyists though.
Murata site:
http://www.murata.com/products/micromec … index.html
Cool YouTube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmnlOflueuo
Although, this is total spam, it is still very interesting. So where are all the details on driving this board etc. IF you actually shared more information rather than linking to the rather uninformative website I think this could actually be beneficial to some folks.
lol, not spam. The company that I work at had some reps from Murata come the other day and they showed us this. The reason I suggested it here was for the very reason you stated, there is not much information at all online. There is not place to order them either (although you can get samples). I figured a place like sparkfun could buy and resell them for hobbyists. I don’t see why you think this is spam, seems like something cool to me that I wish was sold on sparkfun, isn’t that the purpose of this sub-forum?
The Murata website does say it needs a 15Vp-p square wave at about 26KHz. They have performance curves that show it operating at 20Vp-p too. I know piezo elements can usually handle a lot more voltage but they don’t give any indication if you get diminishing returns on the mechanical side if you keep increasing the excitation voltage.
-Bill
For this to be SPAM wouldn’t you actually have to have the ability to order the part?
The video of it pumping out water is simply amazing.
Murata has lots of interesting products on their website that would make for some interesting projects.
I for one am interested in their wireless power kit.
Hi
Regarding the MicroBlower from muRata, I have build a driver that can drive the MicroBlower at 20V from a 3.3V or 5V input.
There is and option to enable or disable the DC/DC up converter and thereby have two different volumes of airflow - High or low.
The driver have an onboard MOS-switch to switch the driver board on or off.
All inputs is controlled by a microprocessor or it is used as a standalone unit.
Link http://gadgetgroup.dk/?page_id=55&cat=72
Translate the site with http://translate.google.com
The driver is primarily sold as a raw PCB.
For the SparkFun folks, maybe you would be interesting in selling this board?
Best Regards
PeerK