More of my EV kick coming through. A solar tracker is used rotate a solar panel to get optimum energy from the sun. This one uses LEDs as the light sensor and mosfets to drive the output to rotate on a single axis. He even reduced the duty cycle on the fets so no heatsink is needed. Mounting in a peanut butter jar keeps the circuit dry and allows the sun to shine through. (The designer sells these, but has circuits up on the site)
Environmental Monitoring
[Daniel Klien] sent me his thermd environmental monitoring project. It’s written in perl, but the cool part is the sheer number of supported devices. It’s pretty rare when a single developer is given test hardware so he can add support for it.
Sure, this isn’t a hardware hack, but temperature logging is one of those irritating problems of hardware hacking. I’ve got loads of uses for it – coffee roasting, house management, battery charging, monitoring for my EV motorcycle project.
Wake On Lan Network Tester
[Jachin] sent in his network port tester built from a network card, wake on lan cable and a battery holder. Three AAs supply 4.5v DC just like the motherboard would to the card via the WOL cable. Nice trick, I’d consider adding a static bag at the least to keep the card from getting zapped.
Electronic Door Lock
[Dheera] sent in his electronic door lock. The current version is purely microcontroller based, but I loved this crazy iteration. Seeing something like this evolve is fantastic. I really wanted a keypad door lock when I was old enough to dream of electric sheep.
Pre Geek-o-ween Mini Extra
[Zodiac] sent in this pumpkin computer. Gutted laptop, dvd drive, need I say more?
[max] sent along this ‘flaming’ led modded pitchfork.
I ran across Woz lighting himself up.
[Jon] and [Shawn] sent along this freaky project. [Warning: Involves taxidermy] [Jon] suggests a bluetooth headset… Dude.
ZipIT Running Linux PDA Software
[karosium] sent in this one. He(?) put in alot of effort on this one. After flashing the EEPROM on the ZipIT he got the PIXIL embedded linux distro running on the ZipIT. It’s a work in progress, but the web browser works. Even if you don’t have a ZipIT, it’s worth checking out. There’s mention of building a PLCC32/DIP32 flasher built from an old PII. Great work!
Electric 7 EV
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.
