Yup, more EV stuff today. This car [Cache mirror]is just so impressive that I think it’s definitely worthy. The car is a Birkin S-3 reproduction kit. Instead of the 4 cylinder, he put in a 3 phase 100HP, yes, 100HP electric motor. That’s pretty kickin. The *really* interesting twist is the battery pack. Multiple hybrid car battery cells (think prius NiMH) were salvaged to provide the juice. It runs around on tires designed for the EV1.
Author: Will O'Brien805 Articles
TiVo External SATA Bypass
TiVo left the external SATA port on the series three disabled. [Lightrunner] bypassed this silly restriction by adding a sata to esata cable (AFAIK the only difference is the shape of the connector and shielding on the cable.) and a nice big SATA RAID array. Silly TiVo, massive recording storage is for everyone.
DIY Projector Redeux
My latest how-to is up over on engadget – I’m writing up my build of a HD projector – This one features DVI-D with HDCP support along with component, VGA and on board tuner. This is one of those projects where you can make all sorts of compromises, but I’ve gone all out on the hardware. Pro lenses, electronic ballast, 6500k lamp… If you’ve been considering building one of these, you should check it out. When it’s done I’ll give it a good going over – is the picture quality worth the effort? Peace of mind at using a $50 lamp instead of a $300 one?
Ipod Tube Dock
Kurtis Berry sent in his response to all the ipod speaker docks out there. Instead of buying one, he built one. It’s really a combination of several projects, and it looks great. He used a monoblock tube amp kit to provide 8 watts of excitement to a well known diy speaker design, all encased in oak. He’s hit that wall we all know – that point where we quit because it’s working so nicely as it is. Still, I’m not sure that adding a second channel would add too much to the sound experience with his speaker unless he wants to build a matched set. (I can’t give him too much grief, I’m jealous.)
Sequential Battery Charging
I’m getting pretty interested in building an electric motorcycle, and I ran across this little hack to charge multiple batteries with one charger. It uses a 4020 counter that’s pulsed by my dear friend the 555 to activate a series of relay pairs to switch a single charger sequentially between battery cells. A more advanced version could use a microcontroller to monitor the state of each cell to ensure even charging. If you’re thinking of constructing an uber-ups, this could be useful.
USB Port Phone Hack
This one is more case mod than real hack – [computerguru365] whacked a female mini-b USB port into his Samsung [thx rsilvawashington] to avoid buying the overpriced Nokia cable(Reminds me of the infamous $65 startac serial cable) I like it, internal cell phone hardware hacks don’t come along very often, and he found a use for one of those useless demo phones.
Removable Laptop Water Cooling
[Bard] just sent me a nice water cooling hack. He built a simple water cooling system that can be manually inserted into the cooling system of his laptop. He wanted it for watching movies sans annoying fan noise. He soldered the parts together using a stove instead of the standard propane torch. Necessity is definitely the mother of invention. I hope he relocates the water cooling supply. When he wants to go mobile, he just unplugs the cooling fins.
