This is one of those hacks that scares me a little bit. The ‘Bad Boy’ charger was created by Tom Martin to charge EV battery packs. [Pictured is one built by Mike Chancy] You can find the schematic under austinev’s tech files. This thing is a bare minimum power supply – it’ll deliver loads of essentially unregulated power into a set of batteries. If you check out the circuit, you’ll see just how scary this thing really is, but according to its users, it works.
Month: November 2006
POV Golf Club
We’ve had several POV projects, the bike, the pendant… but [max] over at zedomax knows how to use the tip line – and I do swing a club now and then. This time the POV device is attached to a golf club. They call it a training device, and I’d have to agree, as it could be a good way to get your swing into a proper rhythm. [I *know* ladyada has plenty of POV boards if you want one that’s easy to build.]
Ben Heck Interview Part 2
Here’s part 2 of my interview with Ben. (Or just grab it via the feed) We answer some more questions and go off on a few tangents about cnc machines, the PS3 and part sources. It cuts directly to the interview – I don’t want to wait 6 hours to record it. I should have a regular podcast up in the next day or two.
Analog Video Synth
I’d call this more of a video mixer with audio inputs, but it’s an interesting way to hack video signals. [brian] sent in the VS001 Analogue Video Mixer. He noted that it’s along the same idea as the Mac SE/30 visualizer, but outputs VGA and can route signal through audio gear for even more interesting permutations. It looks like all the information is there if you want to build your own.
Five Dollar Eprom Programmer
A couple years ago I spent a good week wiring up a fairly complex EPROM programmer so I could burn a prom for my jeeps EFI system. Today I ran across this $5 version. build built by Jay Kominek He uses shift registers to handle the addressing and IO lines, all driven directly by the parallel port. There’s no way to escape the number of pins that have to be wired up, but the schematic itself is pretty simple.
[By the way, arcade supply shops are a great source for cheap UV erase EPROMS.]
[Update: I’d forgotten about the voltage change (3 vs 5 if I remember) needed to write UV EPROMS vs EEPROMS. With a little mod, you can certainly use this for EPROMS as well.]
Siamese Electric Motors
I’ve been meaning to post something about these for a while. Jim builds motors for EV hobbiests on the side – one of his cooler creations is the siamese electric motor. Some others have used belt drives to combine motors, but Jim actually builds the motors into a single unit. He built this set of 8 inch twins for the White Zombie drag racer.
I pumped Jim for more details, but he’s not done tweaking his next set of siamese motors. So, why is this even a hack? It’s a nice piece of machine work, but it gets interesting if you consider some stock specs. Most EV cars get 9″ motors – these are rated at 19hp or so. They take some monster hardware just to drive – high amperage, high voltage. Running a pair of 8hp motors can produce similar power with significant cost savings – everything gets cheaper. To generalize, you need a $1500 motor and $1000 controller just to get in the game. Not to mention that rebuildable forklift motors can be had for a song.
Locksport International Visual Picking Guide
[Chronos] let me know that Locksport International released a new visual lock picking guide. The MIT guide is a classic, but not nearly as easy on the eyes. This one covers all the basics and it reads like a comic book.
