Hardware Insights Forum

Here you can talk about creative ways to use pre-existing objects as solutions to common problems/annoyances/etc.

To start off, I like to use fans to cool down hot food. (It's best if the fan is small and light enough, like most cooling fans, that you can pick it up and aim it.)

Now that I remember, that particular idea could well make a brilliant concept for a "sideline" Vornado product: I'm sure many of us technical-minded people have practically longed for a fan we could take with us, in the same fashion we can our mobile phones (and, to a modest extent, video games). Following the breakthrough of affordable and increasingly power-efficient brushless DC motors, such a dream is more achievable now than ever before; I will add that the fan I was using then for just that example was an NMB 3110SB-04W-B40-E00, which is openly marketed for excellent power efficiency among other things (drawing barely over 1W at full speed - whilst delivering a modest yet appreciable breeze, probably much like that from a Flippi V6). So put a fan much like it (although preferably not with ball bearings, in order to better withstand the inevitable shock events) together with a battery holder (and required switching, plus also an input jack for an AC-DC adapter to save batteries while stationary) and wait for it… And with a 1W drain from the fan, you could get roughly 5-7 hours of runtime per set of (as an example) 4×LR03 (alkaline AAA) cells, according to Wikipedia. Overall, I think that's a pretty good figure - certainly enough to make it an initiative worth taking on. In keeping with the present naming theme of Vornado's more "person"-oriented offerings, how about naming it Nifti?

EDIT: It seems that mobile fans already exist, albeit not from Vornado.

And with the 15th anniversary of Seagate's venerable Barracuda ATA IV due, what other better idea to bring to the topic than the legendary longevity of fluid-dynamic bearings? To me at least, it seems like the logical "next step" in Vornado evolution after the still-new (and yet to reach Australia) BLDC models…

LongRunner wrote:To start off, I like to use fans to cool down hot food. (It's best if the fan is small and light enough, like most cooling fans, that you can pick it up and aim it.)

Yeah I used to do that a lot couple years ago when I started playing with computers and electronics in general Unfortunatelly I no longer have any. Well, as long as I eat just next to a comp, next time I upgrade a case I can equip it with a single external fan header for this purpose

Behemot wrote:Well, as long as I eat just next to a comp, next time I upgrade a case I can equip it with a single external fan header for this purpose

No problem with that, I suppose, provided you add some safeguard against shorting the pins together (which would otherwise force the whole computer to power down); I would suggest either a 250mA to 1A replaceable fast-blow fuse, or a self-resetting PTC protector as calculated suitable for the purpose. You might also want to obtain a "shrouded" version of the header (or try to make your own).

Yeah I'll see what I come up with. Maybe switch will do good enough.