Hackaday Links: Saturday, April 30th

Custom EBike with a 200+ km range

ebike

[Doctorbass] constructed an awesome electrical bike back in 2008 from a Mongoose bicycle. The bike boasts a top speed of 76km/h and a total range of 210 km on a single charge. Some car company needs to hire this guy STAT.

[via Make]

Build to order Xbox 360 laptops

xbox_laptop

[Ed] recently got his hands on a CNC machine and immediately constructed an Xbox 360 laptop. They look pretty sharp, and he’s willing to make a custom laptop if you are interested. We’re thinking someone needs to organize a contest between [Ed] and [Ben Heck].

A portable GameCube to rule them all

gamecube_portable

It’s no secret we enjoy portable console hacks around here, and this portable GameCube is quite the looker. Clearly a lot of thought and work went into this mod, and it shows.

[Thanks, Samjc3]

Ultrasonic backup sensor for the parking impaired

park_ranger

If you decided not to spring for those backup sensors on your new ride, [Eric’s] got you covered. He walks us through how he created an ultrasonic backup sensor using an Arduino and an add on programmable logic board.

Mega laser construction begins

mega_laser

Europe’s Extreme Light Infrastructure project is set to start building the world’s most powerful laser measuring in at 200 petawatts. Scientists are betting on the laser to be able to tear apart the vacuum of space and time itself, if only for a fraction of a second. Seems like a solid plan to us – what could possibly go wrong?

[Thanks, KonaStar]

23 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: Saturday, April 30th

  1. Fascinating stuff that laser experiment, I’m curious what we’ll learn.
    And it’s nice to see the EU getting more active as the US is seemingly in a general decline. It’s nice to think science will continue even if the US is lost somewhat.

    (and no that isn’t sarcasm but how I observe things and estimate how it might continue.)

  2. You might want to change the link to the GC portable to point to the first page of the thread :)
    Also, am I the only one who wants a high res wallpaper of that laser picture?

  3. First it was CERN and black hole maker, oops there goes Earth and the sun. Now they want to make a CVE.
    There is a classic Doctor Who with Tom Baker where the Bad Guy makes such an event! It starts in some out of the way corner of the galaxy and keeps on going till it reaches Earth. What great writers they had. Doctor Who was more popular than The Beatles! I thought it was just a great Doctor Who episode till I heard a science story on NPR’s ATC. It’s called a Charge Vacuum Evoitment, it’s a mathematical condition where there is a condition that is more stable than a vacuum and will consume the less stable states. They said it would take 2 of the highest energy cosmic particles hitting each other head on to bring it into existence!
    I hope this is just a flash in the pan and not THE END.
    Where’s the Doctor!

  4. Good luck getting your 10 beams aligned to the same spot. The national ignition facility has had a hell of a time getting all of their prisms and mirrors etc to play nice together. Granted they’re using 20x as many beams…
    The power requirement for this laser system isn’t as impressive as I was first expecting, 3kJ. The real trick is in the hardware, finding switched and diodes that can handle the 1.5E-14s power dump

  5. It’s funny because Doctorbass was the main guest of a TV show I watched last year where he broke the electric bike speed record. (I don’t remember the show title but it was hosted by Réal Béland on Ztele.)

    I cannot confirmed when it happened but, with another electric bike he build himself, he was able to tow a school bus (nearly 16000lb).

    So far, he prove we can get speed and torque using two electric bikes.

    The next question is: “Where I can bought one of each of these electric bikes?”

    Simon

  6. @leithoa the beam alignment isn’t as tricky with this the national ignition facility is trying to hit a single point at the same time from many different directions to uni-formally compress it. Because of the differing lengths from different beams lots of optics are needed to time the beams correctly. This laser will not need the uniformity so alignment should be easier.

  7. @ Whatnot

    where did you see that Europe was not active in research?

    CERN is european, as Ariane program. Einstein, Von Braun, Newton, Maxwell, Pasteur were european.

    AIDS virus has been discovered by a french team…

    Except for military purposes, american research is not that impressive.

  8. A Back to the Future reference, a Portal reference, a Half-Life reference…hmm, what’s left? Oh!

    I’m going to have to put you on the gaming grid.
    End of line.

  9. @parking sensor

    I built a much ghettoer version of this a while back because my mom kept hitting the stairs in our garage. It’s much simpler but after watching this video I think it you could modify this to run attached to the car as well. Just need a 9V source from the car battery. Also, it wouldn’t transmit sound…just a visual indicator.

    Anyway, feed free to copy anything and us it on your own projects…

    http://iwearshorts.com/portfolio/diy-parking-sensor/

  10. The “Black Hole creation” Thing actually happened, you know. :P We didn’t get sucked into the sun because the singularities they create don’t have enough mass to be self-sustainable.

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