outofelement
New Member
First, I have no training in electronics aside from college physics, so I am very basic in my understanding of electrical engineering. Please forgive any imprecise use of terms. Regardless, I am forging ahead. I would like to activate an electromagnet by RF remote. It only needs to work for a second, to reset a switch. So far, I've determined that a 1" length core of iron (old nail), wrapped twice with 22 ga. wire and connected to a fresh AA battery gets the desired strength. Size is important for the whole set-up, the smaller the better. I tried hooking the magnet and AA battery up to a small RC toy (a hex bug, or something like that) circuit board, but that didn't do anything. And I tried just hooking the magnet up to a wireless doorbell run on 2 C batteries, nada. I don't think enough current is getting through. What am I missing? How do I get past this? It seemed like a simple project, but apparently my brain is simpler.