This one’s In honor of my new project bike. [wildwestsyndey] converted his Suzuki DR 350 from the stock carbs to EFI using the megasquirt EFI controller and a custom machined throttle body. You can find a few pictures of the conversion here. To handle the ever annoying need for a high pressure fuel pump, he adapted an in-tank scooter pump with a machined mini-reservoir to fit in-line with the original tank. For more motorcycle builds, check out the megasquirt success stories forum.
Misc Hacks4182 Articles
Ghost External VGA Display Hack
Certain OS installers cough*osx*cough don’t like the on-board displays on some machines. [Ziddan] posted a paperclip based work around for them on the eeeuser forums (originally posted by [mugan] on insanelymac). Apparently by shorting the pins, the video card will report that there is an unknown external display attached.
Simple Serial Servo Controller
There’s nothing quite like a nice, simple hack. This serial servo controller uses a PIC12C671 and a pair of resistors. Leaving out the power supply, that’s the lowest part count I’ve ever seen.
Simple Fan Controller
When I built my LumenLab projector, I used a thermal switch to run the fan. This simple control circuit looks like a nice alternative. The circuit is a simple adjustable temperature triggered Fet. If you know the resistance needed, you can replace the potentiometer with a cheap resistor. (You’ll want to use a DC fan)
DIY X-Men: Flame Throwing Wrist Guard
[everett] sent in his final project for his mechanisms class. In an attempt to create his own bolt on X gene, he built a wrist mounted hand activated flame thrower: The Pyro System. The wrist mount has an igniter and a nozzle for dispersing fuel. When he flexes his hand back, a switch actuates a servo on the fuel and fires the igniter. Quick disclaimer: Don’t try replicating this one! If you want to skip the movie clip, skip 33 seconds into the video.
Autonomous Catamaran
[Gabriel] put together an impressive writeup of his autonomous catamaran, Atlantis(PDF). It was certainly done as an academic project, but there’s a thorough explanation of the math logic behind the control systems. The heart of the boat was a waterproofed Pentium laptop with a CAN bus parallel interface used to talk to everything on-board. Sensors included GPS, wind, hull speed and rudder angle. In case the site can’t handle the load, I’ve mirrored the 1.4MB PDF here.
Tiller Autopilot For Small Sailboats
[Dennis] sent in the glider that [Art] built, but I had to feature his dinghy autopilot. It runs on solar power, takes GPS data via serial and maintains the heading using a servo motor to drive the line. It’s an excellent solution for the hardware hacking boater.
