Transportation Hacks

1580 Articles

Making An Ultralight Helicopter

September 8, 2025 by 38 Comments

Ultralight aviation provides an excellent pathway for those who want to fly, but don’t want to get licensed. These quite often cheap and cheerful DIY aircraft often hide some excellent engineering underneath. This is no more true than in [ultralight helicopter’s] four-year-long helicopter build saga!

While most ultralight builds are fixed-wing, a rotocraft can meet all the legal definitions of ultralight aviation. This helicopter is an excellent example of what’s possible with a lot of time and patience. The construction is largely aluminium with some stainless steel on the skids. A 64-horsepower Rotax 582UL engine powers the two-bladed main rotor and tail rotor. The drivetrain features a multi-belt engine coupler and three gearboxes to ensure correct power output to the two rotors.

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Making The World’s Smallest E-Bike Battery

September 1, 2025 by 25 Comments

Often times, e-bikes seek to build the biggest battery with the most range. But what if you want to take a couple lunch loops on your bike and only need 20 minutes of charge? That’s [Seth] from Berm Peak set out to find out with his minuscule Bermacell battery.

The battery is made from only 14 18650s, this tiny 52V batty is nearly as small an e-bike battery as can be made. Each cell is 3000 mAh making a total battery capacity of 156 Wh. All the cells were welded in series with an off the shelf BMS and everything was neatly packaged in an over-sized 3D printed 9V battery case. [Seth] plans to make another smaller battery with less then 100 Wh of capacity so he can take it on a plane, so stay tuned for more coverage!

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JuiceBox Rescue: Freeing Tethered EV Chargers From Corporate Overlords

August 27, 2025 by 32 Comments
The JuiceBox charger in its natural environment. (Credit: Nathan Matias)
The JuiceBox charger in its natural environment. (Credit: Nathan Matias)

Having a charger installed at home for your electric car is very convenient, not only for the obvious home charging, but also for having scheduling and other features built-in. Sadly, like with so many devices today, these tend to be tethered to a remote service managed by the manufacturer. In the case of the JuiceBox charger that [Nathan Matias] and many of his neighbors bought into years ago, back then it and the associated JuiceNet service was still part of a quirky startup. After the startup got snapped up by a large company, things got so bad that [Nathan] and others saw themselves required to find a way to untether their EV chargers.

The drama began back in October of last year, when the North American branch of the parent company – Enel X Way – announced that it’d shutdown operations. After backlash, the online functionality was kept alive while a buyer was sought.  That’s when [Nathan] and other JuiceBox owners got an email informing them that the online service would be shutdown, severely crippling their EV chargers.

Ultimately both a software and hardware solution was developed, the former being the JuicePass Proxy project which keeps the original hardware and associated app working. The other solution is a complete brain transplant, created by the folk over at OpenEVSE, which enables interoperability with e.g. Home Assistant through standard protocols like MQTT.

Stories like these make one wonder how much of this online functionality is actually required, and how much of it just a way for manufacturers to get consumers to install a terminal in their homes for online subscription services.

Volkswagen Joins The Car-As-A-Service Movement With Its ID.3 BEV

August 19, 2025 by 113 Comments

More and more car manufacturers these days are becoming interested in the recurring revenue model, with Volkswagen’s ID.3 BEV being the latest to have an optional ‘motor power upgrade’ that you can pay for either monthly or with a ‘lifetime’ payment.

As the BBC reports, this option is now available in the UK, with customers offered the option to pay £16.50 per month or £165 annually, or opt to shell out £649 for what is reportedly a ‘car lifetime’ subscription.

It appears that this subscription service has been in the works for a while already, with it being offered first last year in countries like Denmark, following which it appears to be rolled out in other countries too. The software unlock changes the maximum motor output from 150 kW to 170 kW, which some users report as being noticeable.

Regardless of whether you find this to be a good deal, the concept of Car-As-A-Service (CAAS) has becoming increasingly prevalent, with the BBC article referencing BMW’s heated seats subscription and Mercedes’ acceleration subscription. Considering that all the hardware is already in the car that you purportedly purchased, this is sure to rub people the wrong way, not to mention that from a car tuning perspective this seems to suggest that third-party tuners don’t need to apply.

Thanks to [Robert Piston] for the tip.

Practical Guide To Pedal-Powered Electrical Generators

August 17, 2025 by 51 Comments

An adult human can produce about 100 Wh of mechanical power whilst cycling, which is a not inconsiderable amount if you can convert that to electricity with reasonable efficiency. In a recent article on EDN [T. K. Hareendran] goes over a few ways that you can turn the rotary motion of pedaling into usable electrical power.

Suggested voltage regulator for pedal-powered generator. (Credit: T. K. Hareendran, EDN)
Suggested voltage regulator for pedal-powered generator. (Credit: T. K. Hareendran, EDN)

A basic form of this is already widely deployed, in the form of a bicycle dynamo that is used to supply power to the front and rear lights. These typically put out something like 3 watts at 6 VAC, so with a simple bridge rectifier and some smoothing this can power a pretty bright LED or two. To get more out of it, you need to use a more capable generator, which can also be a brushed or brushless DC motor in a pinch, with ideally a flywheel in the whole contraption to balance out variations in the human power input.

As for the potential here, a commercial solution like the K-Tor Power Box 50 is specified for ‘greater than’ 50 Watt, with a nominal 12 VDC output. Its target market is emergency generators, with enough capability to keep phones, radios and flashlights charged. Considering the $435 asking price, there is probably quite a lot of DIY potential well within that price bracket, especially if you already have many of the requisite parts lying around.

Fortunately this is not a new idea, with us having covered using bicycles as well as gym equipment to generate electricity in the past.

Meccano model of a Brennan's monorail

A Second Chance For The Single Wheel Monorail?

August 16, 2025 by 27 Comments

Lately, this peculiar little single wheel monorail came to our attention. Built by [extraglide1976], all from Meccano. His build started with modest tests: one gyro obviously flopped. Two gyros geared together ran slightly better. But when he adds active gimbal control, things suddenly come to life – the model shudders, catches itself, and carries on. The final green-roofed locomotive, with LEDs signalling ‘system go’, trundles smoothly along a single rail on [extraglide1976]’s deck.

To be fair, it houses a lot of mechanics and engineering which we don’t find in the monorails of today. We do have quite a few monorails in our world, but none of them balance on a single wheel like this one. So, where did this invention derail?

Outside of theme parks, Japan is one of the few countries where monorails are still used as serious urban transport: though Germany’s century-old Wuppertal Schwebebahn, the lesser-known C-Bahn, China’s sprawling Chongqing and Shanghai systems, Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur line, Brazil’s São Paulo network, the US links in Seattle and Las Vegas, and India’s Mumbai Monorail prove the idea has quietly taken root elsewhere.

The thing you’ll see in nearly all these monorails is how the carriages are designed to clamp onto the tracks. This is of course the most safe option, but it loses out on speed to the ones that sit on top of the tracks, balancing on one wheel. Such a train was actually invented, in 1910, by Louis Brennan. His original monorail promised faster, cheaper transport, even using existing rails. The carriages leaned into turns like a motorbike, without any intervention from the driver. Two counter-rotating gyroscopes kept the carriage upright, cancelling precession forces like a mechanical Jedi trick.

Back then, it failed commercially, but today? With cheap sensors, brushless motors, and microcontrollers, and intelligent software, why  not let it make a comeback? It could carry freight through narrow urban tunnels. With high-speed single-rail pods?

Investors killed Brennan’s idea, but we live in a different time now. You could start out with a gimmicky ‘snacks and beer’ highline from your fridge to your garage. Share your take on it in the comments!

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One Man’s Trash… Bicycle Edition

July 30, 2025 by 2 Comments

[Remy van Elst] found an obsolete bike navigation system, the Navman Bike 1000, in a thrift store for €10. The device was a rebadged Mio Cyclo 200 from 2015. Can a decade-old GPS be useful? Well, the answer depends on a little reverse engineering.

There were some newer maps available, but they wouldn’t download using the official software. Out comes WireShark and mitmproxy. That allowed [Remy] to eavesdrop on what was going on between the box and its home server. From there he could intercept the downloaded software image, which in turn yielded to scrutiny. There was one executable, but since the device mounted as a drive, he was able to rename that executable and put his own in using the same name.

The device turns out to run Windows CE. It could even run DOOM! Once he was into the box with a file manager, it was fairly straightforward to add newer software and even update the maps using OpenStreetMaps.

This is a great example of how a little ingenuity and open source tools can extend the life of consumer electronics. It isn’t always as easy to find an entry point into some device like this. Then again, sometimes it’s a little easier than maybe it should be.

We’d all but forgotten Windows CE. We see many people using WireShark, but fewer running mitmproxy. It sure is useful.