Builder [Justin Gray] brought a pair of electric motorcycles to Maker Faire last weekend. Pictured above is the R84, which has 28 LiFePo cells and an 84v AC induction drive providing 54HP. All of that is stuffed in a 2000 Yamaha R1 frame. You can buy it now for $14,000.
makerfaire200810 Articles
Maker Faire 2008: SWARM
SWARM is a large scale kinetic art project. The electrically powered spheres move by shifting the batteries around the center axle. By tilting the central ring, th orb can steer as well. The SWARM members are currently radio controlled, but the plan is for them to eventually receive commands from a mother node. More information about the orbs’ design is available on the project wiki. A video of the wobbly buggers in motion is embedded after the break.
Maker Faire 2008: Stribe Music Controller
We saw a lot of interesting gear at Maker Faire last weekend and thought we’d highlight some of those projects this week. [Josh Boughey]’s Stribe was originally inspired by the monome 40h. It features of 16 columns of 64 LEDs for a total of 1024 individually addressable lights. Even with all those LEDs, PWM control means it can run off of USB power. 8 spectrasymbol softpots are used between the columns for user input. It’s really quite an amazing feat for being [josh]’s first board design. All of the circuit designs and firmware are available. Check out Flickr for more photos from this weekend.
