Transportation Hacks

1599 Articles

Swedish Senior Rolls In Style With Hybrid Hoverboard Walker

August 19, 2016 by 25 Comments

You don’t have to know a word Swedish to understand that 86-year old [Lasse Thörn] is the coolaste modernaste pensionären in Gränna. All you have to do is see him rolling on his walker-assisted hoverboard and you’ve got the whole story.

Still, not knowing any Swedish and the spotty nature of Google translations makes it hard to discern the details of this build. Did [Lasse] build the folding aluminum bracket that connects the battery-powered hoverboard to his walker himself? We guess that he did, since another story says that he built a pedal boat back in the 1950s because he thought it sounded cool. He also says that he gets a lot of attention when he’s out on his contraption, and that other seniors have asked him to build one. [Lasse] says he’s too old to start a business; we don’t think he’s giving himself enough credit, but if he’s willing to leave the field of affordable personal mobility open to the rest of us, we say go for it.

We’ve seen lots of hoverboard builds lately, and lots of hate in the comments about the use of that term. Seems like the false advertising vibe grates on folks, but face it: “rolling wheelie board” is kind of awkward, and until technology catches up with the laws of physics, it’s the best we’re going to do.

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Alternator Becomes Motor For This Electric Go-kart

August 14, 2016 by 49 Comments

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, a go-kart was a quick ticket to coolness, second maybe to a mini-bike. In both cases, a welded steel tube frame and a cast-off lawnmower engine were all that stood between you and neighborhood glory. Looks like a couple of engineering students caught the retro juvenile delinquent bug and built this electric go-kart for their final project.

While the frame for [Adrian Georgescu] and [Masoud Johnson]’s build was a second-hand find, the powertrain is all custom. They targeted a power output of 3 kW but found no affordable motors in that range. So, in true hacker fashion, they rolled their own motor from a used Subaru alternator. The three-phase motor controller came from an electric scooter, three LiPo packs provide the juice, and a pair of Arduinos takes care of throttle control, speed sensing, and sending data to the virtual dashboard on an Android phone. Some lights and a snappy red and black paint job finished off the build. While the video below shows that the acceleration isn’t exactly neck-snapping in the Tesla style, the e-kart can build up to a good speed – 53 km/h. Not too shabby, and no deafening engine right behind your head.

If you’ve got the e-kart bug, best check out some of our previous posts, like this kart built from off-the-shelf components, or this four-wheel-drive mini-kart. Any way you build it, you’ll rule the cul-de-sac.

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[Nick Thatcher]’s Plan-B Is A Commuter Electric Unicycle

July 29, 2016 by 19 Comments

[Nick Thatcher] is a serial builder of self-balancing rides. His various Segway clones and unicycles have until now suffered from one significant problem, that of portability when not being ridden. Taking one on a train was a significant undertaking, hardly convenient in a personal transport machine.

His latest design, the Plan-B, is an electric unicycle designed to address this problem to create a truly portable piece of commuter transport. It has been designed to be as compact as possible with the ability to fold to fit in a confined space, and the weight has been reduced to a minimum.

Power comes from a 24V 350W geared motor kept on a leash through a Dimension Engineering motor controller by an Arduino with a gyro to maintain the unit’s stability The battery is an ULTRAMAX LiFePO4 , and the single wheel is an inexpensive plastic wheelbarrow part with chain drive from the motor.

The result is both rideable and portable, though with a 10mph top speed not the fastest of personal transport. He’s posted a video which you can see below the break, showing him taking it on a train journey and traversing the British urban landscape.

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All-terrain Hoverboard Junk Pile Build

July 28, 2016 by 21 Comments

If you’re anything like us, chances are pretty good you’ve got at least one underused piece of fitness gear cluttering up your place. Rather than admit defeat on that New Year’s Resolution purchase, why not harvest the guts and build an all-terrain hoverboard for a little outdoor fun?

The fitness machine in question for [MakeItExtreme]’s build was a discarded Crazy Fit vibration platform. We’re not sure we see the fitness benefits of the original machine, but there’s no doubt it yielded plenty of goodies. The motor and drive belt look stout, and the control board eventually made it into the hoverboard too. The custom steel frame was fabricated using some of [MakeItExtreme]’s DIY tools, which is what we’re used to seeing them build — check out their sand blaster and spot welder for examples. A couple of knobby tires in the center of the board let the rider balance (there’s no gyro in this version) and power is provided by a couple of 12 volt AGM batteries. Sadly, the motor was a line voltage unit, so an inverter was needed. But it was the only part that had to be purchased, making this a pretty complete junk pile build.

See the video after the break for build details and a few test rides. Looks like it can do 20 mph or so – pretty impressive.

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3D Printed Electric Unicycle

July 24, 2016 by 10 Comments

Actually riding around at 30 km/h on a 3D printed means of transportation is pretty gnarly, if not foolhardy. So we were actually pleased when we dug deeper and discovered that [E-Mat]’s unicycle build is actually just a very nice cover and battery holder.

We say “just”, but a 3D-printed design takes a couple of cheap parts (the wheel and pedals) from the Far East and turns them into a very finished-looking finished product. Custom bits like this fulfill the 3D printing dream — nobody’s making it, so you make it yourself. And make it look pro.

It turns out that other people have noticed this motor/controller/pedal combo as well. Here’s some documentation to get you started.

It’s funny. Just four years ago, self-balancing powered unicycles were the realm of the insane hacker. Then came some hacker improvements, and now we’re at the point where you can mail-order all the parts and 3D print yourself a fancy enclosure.

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Liddiard Omnidirectional Wheels

July 23, 2016 by 46 Comments

Omnidirectional wheels are one of the hardy perennials of the world of invention. There seems to be something about the prospect of effortless parallel parking that sets the creative juices of backyard inventors flowing, and the result over the years have been a succession of impressively engineered ways to move a car sideways.

The latest one to come our way is courtesy of Canadian inventor [William Liddiard], and it is worthy of a second look because it does not come with some of the mechanical complexity associated with other omnidirectional wheel designs. [Liddiard]’s design uses a one-piece tyre in the form of a flexible torus with a set of rollers inside it which sits on a wheel fitted with a set of motorised rollers around its circumference. The entire tyre can be rotated round its toroidal axis, resulting in a tread which can move sideways with respect to the wheel.

The entire process is demonstrated in a video which is shown below the break, and the small Toyota used as a demonstration vehicle  can move sideways and spin with ease. We would be wary of using these wheels on a road car until they can be demonstrated to match a traditional tyre in terms of sideways stability when they are not in their omnidirectional mode, but we can instantly see that they would be a significant help to operators of industrial machines such as forklifts in confined spaces.

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It’s Not A Bridge, And Not A Tunnel. Or, Maybe It’s Both?

July 22, 2016 by 94 Comments

The gist of the idea is to suspend an underwater tunnel from floating pontoons. By the time you finished reading that sentence, you probably already had a list of things in your head that seem to make this a terrible idea. After all, it does seem to combine the worst aspects of both underwater tunnels and bridges. But, the idea may actually be a good one, and it’s already being seriously considered in Norway.

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