If you’re marooned on a desert island, you want to have a Professor who can build useful items out of coconuts. [LostMachine] is one of those guys, and he’s currently building a land-loving pirate ship. The wacky vehicle will use the giant wheel above to propel the vessel while the captain sits comfortably in the lofty crow’s nest. A crack-pot concept? Not really, he plans to take this to Burning Man where it will be a fairly useful build compared to the folks who have really gone off the deep end.

The story here is the build quality. Take some time to watch his videos which we’ve embedded after the break. In the first, he details his method for creating a precisely level building surface on top of his uneven driveway. This is accomplished by welding supports in a circle that are level compared to the center point. He goes on to share his liquid-cooling system for cutting the pipe supports with a custom-built jig and an old windshield washer water system pump from an RV (second video). The final video shows the construction of the wheel which came in with 2000 welds and about 250-300 hours of construction time.

If you hadn’t guessed, [LostMachine] is a structural engineer. Unfortunately he was laid-off this spring which has put a damper in his building schedule. We hope that with a quality project like this in his portfolio a new job is just around the corner for him.

Creating a level surface on an uneven driveway.

Cooling jig to cut fish mouthed joints in pipes.

Building the big wheel.

[Thanks Rebecca]

[Blacklight99] made this cool tool. It is a tester for those radar detectors that people keep in their cars. Though this seems like it would rarely be a tool we would need, it’s an interesting project. Some speed guns that the police use have a “stealth” mode that makes them invisible to some detectors. This tool can tell you if your detector is vulnerable to this. While this really is just a complicated flashing LED, he notes that it could be taken further to be made into a detector that is programmable and not vulnerable to any of the stealth modes.

Here’s one that brings back that giddy feeling we got when the original episodes of thebroken were posted all those years ago. The lunatics over at Waterloo Labs have altered a beat-up Oldsmobile for remote control via laptop, iPhone, and…. wait for it… Power Wheels.

Brake and gas pedals are actuated using a wrench connected to a motor bolted to the floorboards of the car. The steering wheel has been replaced with a gear and connected to a motor using a motorcycle chain. Much like the van we saw last month, an iPhone app has been written to wirelessly control the car of doom. This leads to some car surfing and ghost riding the whip in the video after the break.

To our delight, they’ve also implement the most unorthodox automotive interface yet, Power Wheels. A chain has been added to measure the orientation of the toy steering wheel, and an optical encoder is used to measure the speed of the tiny electric vehicle. It looks like it doesn’t do the best job of translating to a full size vehicle, but it maxes out their style points.

Related: thebroken

Group riding can be a bit dangerous if the pace is fast and riders don’t notice a slowing in the front of the pack. [WyoJustin] designed a brake light system for cyclists to try and remedy this issue. LEDs are mounted in the end caps of the handlebars on a road bike. When an accelerometer senses the bike slowing down the LEDs light up, warning those behind you that you’re slowing down.

The system is made to be portable, as a lot of serious riders have multiple bikes. To make this happen, all of the electronics are housed in the handlebar tubing for easy transfer. This includes an accelerometer with built in voltage regulator, an Arduino to control everything, and a battery. Take a look at the brake lights in action after the break.

Most of the bike lights we see are for the front of the machine, but this backward-facing package is a clean and easy solution we can get behind (safely).

The Spirit of Berlin team has developed an iPhone app to remotely control a minivan. They didn’t have to do much to the vehicle to get this working because the platform was  developed for the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge. The iPhone connects with the driving circuitry via WiFi and offers a gas button, a brake button, and a steering button to enable the accelerometer for turning. The front camera video is transmitted to the iPhone in real-time.

In the picture above you can see the operator in the center of the van’s camera view. It looks like the van’s top speed is limited, but remembering our own ineptitude in piloting RC vehicles, we hope this doesn’t result in a Darwin Award. We’ve embedded a video after the break. Everyone loves to see some Mario Kart reeneactment. You can catch some around 2:28 into the video. Enjoy.

[Thanks Miketron]

[Jukka] wanted a bike light that wasn’t afraid to go into the woods during the dark winter. He put together a lamp that uses eight 3 Watt LEDs to pump out 1680 lumens (english translation). The high power LEDs were mounted on a large aluminum heat sink and use lenses to optimize the beam of light. The system uses a 2 amp driver board that he assembled himself. Power is provided by sixteen AA Nickel Metal Hydride batteries that are housed along with the driver circuit in a water bottle.

This more than doubles the output of the last bike light we thought was too bright. Where will this lumen-arms-race stop?

[Thanks Sami]

[Mark] wanted a Segway but why buy something if you can have more fun building it? His end product is an amazing homemade version of the self-balancing transportation package. We’ve seen several projects that include auto-balance, but this one is large enough to ride on and has a bit of an advantage in the design. The motors, batteries, and other components are mounted below the wheel hubs and are weight balanced. This means that the device wants to find balance naturally, even when the electronics are switched off.

The frame was modeled in CAD and then welded together. For propulsion [Mark] has installed two 750 Watt motors which will use sprockets and chains to turn the wheels. The machine balances based on data from both a gyroscope and an accelerometer, with the entire packaged tied together using an Arduino.

[Mark's] build log is well laid out and details each part of the build with a different post. His two most recent entries include video of the unit balancing and of him riding the 95% completed project. A big thanks to [Mark] for taking the time to document this so that we can share in the excitement of a well-executed project.

When you’ve got problems with your lunar rover you can’t just “trust the Midas touch”. Every unexpected repair that happens outside of the Earth’s atmosphere is a hack and it seems the common ingredient in each one is Duct tape. If you’ve seen the movie Apollo 13 you know it was used in making a square carbon dioxide filter fit into a round filter socket. [XD] let us know about another hack where NASA used Duct tape to replace a fender on the lunar rover during the Apollo 17 mission.

The rover kicks up a lot of moon dust as it cruises around on its wire tires. When a rear fender started to come loose it was secured with duct tape. We delighted in watching a moon-man tear off chunks of tape for the fix, shown in the video after the break. When the fender finally flew off of the vehicle, the engineers on the ground came up with a way to replace it using laminated maps and more duct tape.

We’ve been critical of the use of duct tape in the past. But when you’re in a bind, accept no substitutes.

[Jerome's] been working on some improvements to an electric foot scooter he picked up from a friend. He ordered up a powerful brushless motor and some lithium batteries. His system uses a belt drive and at 33 volts it can reach 25 miles per hour.

He had some problems with too much torque when the motor was first started. This resulted in unintentional wheelies, which sounds really cool if you’re not the one trying to hang on to the scooter. [Jerome] is using an Arduino to control the system so he built in the ability to gradually ramp up the speed of the motor and also added the ability to control the speed via remote control. You should note in the video after the break that [Jerome] is test-piloting his build sans-helmet.

So, we spend a lifetime and countless sums of money filling our noggins with knowledge. This is a precarious investment since a rather small bump to the melon could corrupt all of that data and end the once spectacular cognitive power. If you’re smart enough to build a foot scooter that can go 25mph, be smart enough to wear a helmet when you ride on it!

The folks over at Kirkham Motorsports have turned out two things of beauty. The first is a sky’s-the-limit milled aluminum car. The second is a book about the making of the car that runs $4500 per copy. Why so much for a book? The binding is milled out of a 35 pound aluminum billet.

The project spans a 2 1/2 year build cycle and showcases the gamut of craftsmanship. The extremely detailed build log is available at their website in PDF form. Of particular interest to us is Chapter 10: Milling. The sheer volume of machined parts for this roadster is mind-boggling. There’s also plenty of CNC pipe bending involved with the body work in Chapter 18.

Finish up your work this morning and spend the rest of the day with this fantasy creation. If you’ve got too much to do, why not shell out for the hard-copy version and devote your weekend to metal-working romance?

[via Makezine]

[Rosenberger31] did a nice job of adding a USB port to his 2010 Toyota Prius. He removed the access door on the console where the traditional “cigarette lighter” 12 volt port is located. A Dynex 12-volt to USB adapter was piggy-backed onto the power lines and the USB connector was then fit into the blank accessory plate next to it.

There is no data connection here, the port only provides 5v regulated power to devices plugged into it. None the less, it is still a pretty nice looking alternative to having a power adapter hanging out of the dash all the times. If you try this, heed one of the warnings from the comments and make sure you add a switch if you vehicle powers the 12 volt port even when the car is not running.

This makes us wonder: will this void your warranty?

Reader [Philippe] tipped us off about this video showing a set of subway steps being turned into a piano keyboard (english translation). The creators wanted to make taking the stairs rather than riding the escalator a bit more fun. They added pressure sensors to each step, then covered them with white and black keys to resemble a keyboard. When a passenger puts their weight on a step, the corresponding pitch is played out loud.

We may have lied in the title as this doesn’t really compare to hearing Josh Bell play for pocket change at your train stop. But coming across this setup on an otherwise mundane commute would really brighten up our day.

Who wouldn’t want a DeLorean, honestly it has to be the one of the coolest cars around, what with its gull wing doors and stainless steel siding. Joking aside [Tom Neiland] and [Dave Delman] went even further, creating eD, the electric DeLorean. It contains around 910 pounds of deep cycle lead batteries, custom transmission adapter plate, and a WarP 9 DC motor controlled by a water cooled 2000 amp Z2K-HV, all together to produce 200 horsepower reaching over 85 miles per hour.

The project cost ended up around $18,000 and they plan to add even more including a digital dash and Lithium batteries to extend the cars travel distance from the currently limited 30-40 miles on a single charge. Unfortunately the two couldn’t get their flux capacitor working, but we feel Dr. Brown would still be proud. Check out a video after the break and the writeup at Jameco.

[Thanks Tech Olive]

Want to be visible when cycling at night? [Neon Dean] came up with this possible solution, which he cruised on at Nuit Blanche. Its a bicycle with neon lights mounted on every surface possible. [Dean], who gave a similar treatment to his car, explained how it worked. All of the tubes take their power from a 12VDC battery he carries in a fanny pack. 12V is a far too low voltage to power the tubes, so a step up transformer is used to bring that number way up. [Dean] also decided to install a neon tube on each wheel. In order to deliver power to them, he mounted a rotor on each wheel, with two conductive tracks running close to the edge of each rotor. Two strips of steel act as brushes (in a manner similar to those on slot cars), and deliver the stepped-up power to the tubes. One creative, but perhaps not so bright, idea is [Dean]’s neon tube helmet.

As part of a “disruptive technologies” course at the United States Military Academy, [Roy D. Ragsdale] produced a working prototype of a Google Street View-like system called PhotoTrail. Like its corporate-backed inspiration, the system captures georeferenced 360-degree panoramas that can be viewed interactively in a web browser…but at a hardware cost of only around $300. [Ragsdale’s] prototype is based entirely on consumer-grade off-the-shelf components and open source software, all tied together by the yin and yang of DIY: foam core board and a few Python scripts.

This article from IEEE Spectrum magazine provides some background on the selection of parts and construction of the system, including a hardware shopping list and a list of links to all of the open source packages used.

The PhotoTrail prototype is surprisingly small and lightweight. A vehicle isn’t even required; the camera array can be carried overhead by a single person, making it possible to capture remote locations. But [Roy] expects future revisions to be even smaller and less obtrusive, perhaps mounted to a headband. Mount Everest awaits!