Electric (motor)cycle Extra


[Zach Norman] built this electric bike on a Harley frame. I couldn’t dig up much in the way of details, but the flickr photo set looks good.

[Micheal Raines] built a great looking electric chopper.

In the lightweight category, this hybrid (pedal/electric) bike uses li-poly batteries and a simple motor-tire drive to keep going. via [hacknmod]

Early this morning [tnkgrl] sent in her HSDPA mod for the OQO Model 2. Engadget beat me to it, but it’s a great mod for anyone who visits outside of those handy EVDO areas but want the speed for their UMPC. Living in the middle of nowhere means that I’m stuck with RxTT.

[andrew] built a handy parallel port A/D converter – so far he’s got it logging temps. The parts count is pretty low, depending on an ADC, a 555 and some OP amps.

GPS Enabled Radar Database


The page pretty much lacks every possible detail, but [Mattias] put together his own RADAR camera notification. It uses a published database of camera’s and a GPS receiver to notify the driver that they’re approaching one of the many permanent speed detection cameras in Sweden. Despite the lack of details, I can guess about the design. It shouldn’t be that difficult to construct something similar with a PIC or AVR with a decent amount of memory. Just compare the current location with the list, and notify the driver when it determines that it’s within a specified distance. Unfortunately all the RADAR detectors where I live are strapped to police cars.

Laser Dance Pad


[A. Smyth] passed this along – it’s another take on the non-mechanical dance pad. The first prototype used IR detection, but apparently the hardware was flaky. The new version uses cheap laser pointer style diodes with photo detectors. Personally, I want to see one that breaks the laser into a line and collimates the resulting beam, and senses beam interference by measuring the intensity. (And it would look incredible with a fogger) The electronics are pretty simple – the photocells are interfaced with the guts of a USB game pad and breaking the beam creates a button push.

Industrial Alarm Clock


While clocky runs away from you, this alarm clock can probably strike back. It’s got a pair of basic stamps along with relay’s to control external devices. [Jason] built it from parts he already had, and has visions of it being used for stage fx control later on. For now, I’ll bet that none of the guests will want to attempt turning it off for fear of reprisal by the clock.

Accessing The RPM Sensor On A Pc Fan


This one is almost too simple, but it might come in handy. It turns out that Pabst fans (and probably several others) already have the circuitry for RPM monitoring. Pop it apart allow pcb access and add your own RPM sensor lead to the PC board. Not all fans will have it, but it’s a safe bet that it’ll have an RPM sensor instead of a rotor lock indicator on the common PC board component.