A yellow, three wheeled vehicle with a canopy that opens upward over the body. It looks a little like the cockpit of a jet figher.

Restoring A Vintage German EV

April 21, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 44 Comments

When you think of EVs from the 90s, GM’s EV1 may come to mind, but [bleeptrack] found a more obscure CityEL three wheeler to restore.

This Personal Electric Vehicle (PEV) is no spring chicken, but a new set of LiFePO₄ batteries should give its 48 V electrical system a new lease on life. [bleeptrack] shows us through the cockpit of this jet fighter-esque EV and its simple control systems, including a forward and reverse selector and the appreciable kilometers on the odometer.

Modernizing touches for this vehicle include a smart shunt to track the vehicle charge level as an improvement over the wildly unreliable original system and a new DC to DC converter after the original unit failed. These changes really cleaned up the electronics compartment from the original rat’s nest under the seat.

The design of this vehicle has us thinking of the Minimal Motoring Manifesto and how EVs could make cars simpler again.

Continue reading “Restoring A Vintage German EV” →

A finger points at a stack of yellow plastic plates sandwiched together like on a bookshelf. A grey metal rectangle holds the top together and black plastic sticks off to the left. The top of the pack has copper and nickel (or some other silver-colored metal) tabs pointing up out of the assembly.

Tearing Into A Sparky Sandwich

April 11, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 36 Comments

We’re still in the early days of modern EV infrastructure, so minor issues can lead to a full high voltage pack replacement given the lack of high voltage-trained mechanics. [Ed’s Garage] was able to source a Spark EV battery pack that had succumbed to a single bad cell and takes us along for the disassembly of the faulty module.

The Spark EV was the predecessor to the more well-known Chevy Bolt, so its nearly ten year old systems might not reflect the state-of-the-art in EV batteries, but they are certainly more modern than the battery in your great-grandmother’s Baker Electric. The Li-ion polymer pouch cells are sandwiched together with cooling and shock absorbing panels to keep the cells healthy and happy, at least in theory.

In a previous video, [Ed’s Garage] takes apart the full pack and shows how the last 2P16S module has assumed a darker color on its yellow plastic, seeming to indicate that it wasn’t receiving sufficient cooling during its life in the car. It would seem that the cooling plates inside the module weren’t quite up to the task. These cells are destined for other projects, but it doesn’t seem like this particular type of battery module would be too difficult to reassemble and put back in a car as long as you could get the right torque settings for the compression bolts.

If you’re looking for other EV teardowns, might we suggest this Tesla Model S pack or one from a passively-cooled Nissan Leaf?

Continue reading “Tearing Into A Sparky Sandwich” →

An image of the surface of Europa. The top half of the sphere is illuminated with the bottom half dark. The surface is traced with lineae, long lines across its surface of various hues of grey, white, and brown. The surface is a brown-grey, somewhat like Earth's Moon with the highest brightness areas appearing white.

Europa Clipper Asks Big Questions Of The Jovian Moon

April 5, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 16 Comments

Are we alone? While we certainly have lots of strange lifeforms to choose from as companions here on our blue marble, we have yet to know if there’s anything else alive out there in the vastness of space. One of the most promising places to look in our own solar neighborhood is Europa.

Underneath its icy surface, Europa appears to have a sea that contains twice as much water as we have here on Earth. Launching later this year and arriving in 2030, NASA’s Europa Clipper will provide us with our most up-close-and-personal look at the Jovian Moon yet. In conjunction with observations from the ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), scientists hope to gain enough new data to see if the conditions are right for life.

Given the massive amounts of radiation in the Jovian system, Europa Clipper will do 50 flybys of the moon over the course of four years to reduce damage to instruments as well as give it windows to transmit data back to Earth with less interference. With enough planning and luck, the mission could find promising sites for a future lander that might be able to better answer the question of if there actually is life on other worlds.

Some of the other moons around Jupiter could host life, like Io. Looking for life a little closer? How about on our nearest neighbor, Venus, or the ever popular Mars?

That’s A Lot Of Building Systems

March 8, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 10 Comments

The only thing makers like more than building things is making systems to build things. [Eric Hunting] has compiled a list of these modular building systems.

You’ve certainly heard of LEGO, grid beam, and 80/20, but what about Troxes or Clickaloo? The 70 page document has a helpful index at the beginning arranged in families of similar systems followed by information about each and some helpful links.

As the well-known XKCD comic likes to point out, the issue with standards is that they tend to proliferate instead of getting adopted, so this might be a good list to check before you start to implement your brilliant spin on modular construction. It’s possible the right system is already waiting for you.

The list certainly isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start. If you do have the modular building system that will solve all the world’s problems though, by all means, send it to the tipsline!

Team members Madeleine Laitz, left, and lead author Dane deQuilettes stand in front of a tidy lab bench equipped with oscilloscopes and computers. Laitz has a snazzy yellow jacket that pops compared to the neutrals and blues of the rest of the picture.

More Progress On Perovskite Solar Cells

March 8, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 20 Comments

Perovskites hold enormous promise for generating solar energy, with the potential to provide lighter and cheaper cells than those made from silicon. Unfortunately, the material breaks down too rapidly to be practical for most applications. But thanks to some recent research, we now have a better understanding of the nanoscale changes that happen during this breakdown, and how to combat it.

The research is focused on the topic of passivation, which seeks to increase the useful lifespan of perovskites by studying the surface interface where they meet other materials. Most of the perovskite material is a perfect latticework of atoms, but this structure is broken at the surface. This atomically “jagged” interface introduces losses which only get worse over time. Currently, the best way to address this issue is to essentially seal the surface with a very thin layer of hexylammonium bromide.

While this technique significantly simplified the passivation process when it was discovered, the effect had yet to be adequately characterized to further advance the field. According to lead author, [Dane deQuilettes], “This is the first paper that demonstrates how to systematically control and engineer surface fields in perovskites.”

Prefer to roll your own cells? How about a DIY dye sensitized cell or this thermionic converter model?

A white woman with a long ponytail in a green apron looks down at a mannequin head with pasta coming out of its chin. There is an orange pasta gun sticking out of the back of its head and a chef's hat on its head. It looks vaguely like a bust of Ramses.

Goatee Pasta Maker Makes Us Hunger For Hair

March 4, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 9 Comments

Some hacks are pure acts of whimsy, and [Simone Giertz] is back to her roots with this Goatee Pasta Maker.

If violence to mannequin heads is upsetting, the video may be a bit NSFW (to warn you now that you already clicked on it). What started out as a pasta-making version of those Play-Doh hair people quickly morphed into a more scaled-back endeavor with simply extruding pasta through the mannequin’s chin to create pasta hair.

Initial attempts at using a basketball to extrude clay (used as a pasta stand-in) through holes in a mannequin’s head were unsuccessful, so [Giertz] turned to a more conventional pasta gun to handle the pasta extrusion. Since the gun didn’t have the volume necessary to produce a full head of hair, or even a respectable mustache, the next mannequin’s chin was subjected to multiple drill holes for pasta to escape in a hairy tangle.

The results aren’t exactly appetizing, but it definitely does make edible pasta. If you’re looking for more pasta hacks, how about ramen in an edible package, flat pack pasta, or Barilla’s Open Source pasta tool?

Continue reading “Goatee Pasta Maker Makes Us Hunger For Hair” →

An open top of a black PC case. Inside we can see an aluminum extruded mini PC case inside the 5" optical drive bay. A Samsung SSD sits along the back wall of the case and a flash drive sits between the front of the 3D printed "drive" and the actual mini PC.

Outdated HP Microserver Gets A New Brain

March 3, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 7 Comments

What to do if you have a really cool old HP MicroServer that just can’t keep up with the demands of today? [jacksonliam] decided to restomod it by installing a mini PC into the drive bay.

The HP N54L MicroServer was still running, but its soldered CPU and non-standard motherboard made a simple upgrade impossible. Evaluating the different options, [jacksonliam] decided to save the case and PSU by transplanting an Intel Alder Lake mini PC into the drive bay with 3D printed brackets and heat set inserts.

Selecting a fanless “router” model to increase reliability, he was able to find an M.2 to mini-SAS adapter to attach the four drive cage to the NVME slot on the new PC. Power is supplied via the 12 V line on the ATX power supply and one of the mini PC’s Ethernet lines was broken out to a 3D printed PCI slot cover.

Looking for more ways to rejuvenate an old computer? How about putting a Mac mini inside an old iMac or a Raspberry Pi inside an Apple ][?