AirLegs Augment Your Cardio By 10%

September 7, 2014 by James Hobson 36 Comments

Here’s another very interesting project to come out of the 4 Minute Mile challenge — pneumatically boosted legs.

It’s another project by [Jason Kerestes] in cooperation with DARPA. We saw his jet pack a few days ago, but this one looks like it has a bit more promise. It is again a backpack mounted system, but instead of a few jet turbines, it has a pneumatic cylinders which move your legs for you.

Just watching it it’s hard to believe it makes it easier to run, but apparently after being tested at the Army Research Laboratories last year it demonstrated a whopping 10% reduction in metabolic cost for subjects running at high speeds. It can actually augment the human running gait cycle, and is the only device the US Army has confirmed can do so.

He is already hard at work designing version 2.0 which is lighter and more flexible. There’s a bunch of test videos after the break so stick around to see it in action.

Continue reading “AirLegs Augment Your Cardio By 10%” →

Finally, A Working Jet Pack

September 6, 2014 by James Hobson 55 Comments

Well, kind of. This is one of [Jason Kerestes’] latest projects as a masters engineering student at the Arizona State University — A jet pack designed to increase your running speed by quite literally giving you a boost.

It’s one of the proposed solutions to the 4MM (4 Minute Mile) project, which is part of the ASU Program called iProjects, which brings students and industry together to solve problems. The 4MM project is trying to find a way to make any soldier able to run the 4 minute mile — quite ambitious, but DARPA is actually working on it with [Jason]!

The whole rig only weighs 13lbs and features two electric turbines which provide the thrust. They originally tested the concept by seeing if you could pull a person with an electric golf cart around a track to make them run faster — turns out, you can. Further more scientific testing led them to find that there is a specific thrust to body-weight ratio that works best, with the direction of thrust about 25 degrees below horizontal. Continue reading “Finally, A Working Jet Pack” →

Many Gave Their Lives For This Cargo Bike To Be Re-Born

September 4, 2014 by Rich Bremer 27 Comments

Cargo bikes are very specialized and you don’t see too many of them out on the streets because of that fact. Being uncommon also means they’re rather expensive if you wanted to buy a new one. Like any hardcore bike DIYer, [Mike] got around this issue by building his own out of a couple old bikes. His goal is to show car-dependent people that you can get away with biking most of the time, even if you need to move some stuff from place to place. The build process for this monster was so involved that it required two pages of documentation; Part 1 and Part 2!

There are a few types of cargo bikes. There is the trike (seen often in regular or reverse trike varieties) with a bin between the 2 adjacent wheels. Two-wheeled options are usually either front loaders (the storage area between the rider and the front wheel) or those with rear racks. Mike’s bike is the latter.

He started with a 26″ wheeled bike that was already a Frankenbike of sorts, even the frame alone was a conglomeration of two separate bikes! To start, the rear wheel and chain was discarded. A kid’s mountain bike with 20″ wheels was disassembled and the head tube was cut off. The top and down tubes of the smaller bike were notched so that they fit nicely with the seat tube of the larger bicycle. The two frames were then welded together along with several pieces of support to make sure the bike stayed together through the rigors of riding. The rear rack is made up of some old bike frame tubes and some metal from the frame of a sofa that was being thrown out. Nothing goes to waste at Mike’s place! The 20″ kids bike rear wheel already had a 5 speed cassette so that was a no brainner to re-install. In the end, Mike has a bike that cost him zero dollars and shows the world it is possible to build a utilitarian bike and reduce your dependence on automobiles.

If cargo bikes are your thing, you may be interested in this up-cycled cargo bike, this one with a huge front bucket or maybe even this nifty bike trailer.

GPS Tracker Tracks Your Stolen Bike

September 2, 2014 by Rich Bremer 37 Comments

Bikes are great for cruising through congested cities but there is a serious downside to pedaling your two-wheeler around… bike theft. It’s a big deal, for example, yearly estimates for stolen bikes in NYC are in the 60,000 – 100,000 range. Only an extremely small percentage of those are ever recovered. [stbennett] just got himself a halfway decent bike and is not too interested in having it stolen, and if it is stolen, he wants a way to find it so he built himself a GPS tracker for his bike.

The entire project is Arduino-based. It uses a GSM Shield and a GPS module along with a few other small odds and ends. A 2-cell LiPo battery provides the required power for all of the components. It’s pretty neat how this device maintains an extremely long battery life. The metal cable of the bike lock is used as a conductor in the circuit. When the cable is inserted and locked into the lock housing a circuit is completed that prevents electricity from passing through a transistor to the Arduino. In other words, the Arduino is off unless the bike cable is cut or disengaged. That way it is not running 24/7 and draining the battery.

The entire system works like this, once the bike lock cable is cut, the Arduino wakes up and gives a 15 second delay before doing anything, allowing the legitimate user to reconnect the bike lock and shut down the alarm system. If the bike lock is not re-engaged, the unit starts looking for a GPS signal. At that time it will send out SMS messages with the GPS location coordinates. Punching those numbers into Google Maps will show you exactly where the bike is.

Of course your other option is to park your bike where nobody else can access it, like at the top of a lamp pole.

THP Semifinalist: The Medicycle

September 1, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 50 Comments

Despite a seeming lack of transportation projects for The Hackaday Prize, there are a few that made it through the great culling and into the semifinalist round. [Nick], [XenonJohn], and [DaveW]’s project is the Medicycle. It’s a vehicle that will turn heads for sure, but the guys have better things in mind than looking cool on the road. He thinks this two-tire unicycle will be useful in dispatching EMTs and other first responders, weaving in and out of traffic to get where they’re needed quickly.

First things first. The one-wheeled motorcycle actually works. It’s basically the same as a self-balancing scooter; the rider leans forward to go forward, leans back to break, and the two tires help with steering. It’s all electronic, powered by a 450W motor. It can dash around alleys, parking lots, and even gravel roadways.

The medi~ part of this cycle comes from a mobile triage unit tucked under the nose of the bike. There are sensors for measuring blood pressure and oxygen, heart rate, and ECG. This data is sent to the Medicycle rider via a monocular display tucked into the helmet and relayed via a 3G module to a physician offsite.

Whether the Medicycle will be useful to medics remains to be seen, but the guys have created an interesting means of transportation that is at least as cool as a jet ski. That’s impressive, and the total build cost of this bike itself is pretty low.

Video of the Medicycle in action below.

The project featured in this post is a semifinalist in The Hackaday Prize.
Continue reading “THP Semifinalist: The Medicycle” →

Green Light Your Commute With America’s Unsecured Traffic Lights

August 31, 2014 by Edward Becker 85 Comments

Remember that episode of Leverage (season 5, episode 3), where Alec uses Marvin to wirelessly change all the street lights green so they can catch up to an SUV? And you scoffed and said “that’s so not real!”… well actually they got it right. A new study out of the University of Michigan (PDF warning), shows just how easy it is to make your morning commute green lights all the way.

The study points out that a large portion of traffic lights in the United States communicate with each other wirelessly over the 900Mhz and 5.8Ghz ISM band with absolutely no encryption. In order to connect to the 5.8Ghz traffic signals, you simply need the SSID (which is set to broadcast) and the proper protocol. In the study the researchers used a wireless card that is not available to the public, but they do point out that with a bit of social engineering you could probably get one. Another route is the HackRF SDR, which could be used to both sniff and transmit the required protocol. Once connected to the network you will need the default username and password, which can be found on the traffic light manufacturer’s website. To gain access to the 900Mhz networks you need all of the above and a 16-bit slave ID. This can be brute forced, and as the study shows, no ID was greater than 100. Now you have full access, not to just one traffic signal, but EVERY signal connected to the network.

Once on the network you have two options. The completely open debug port in the VxWorks OS which allows you to read-modify-write any memory register. Or by sending a(n) UDP packet where the last byte encodes the button pressed on the controller’s keypad. Using the remote keypad you can freeze the current intersection state, modify the signal timing, or change the state of any light. However the hardware Malfunction Management Unit (MMU) will still detect any illegal states (conflicting green or yellow lights), and take over with the familiar 4-way red flashing. Since a technician will have to come out and manually reset the traffic signal to recover from an illegal state, you could turn every intersection on the network into a 4-way stop.

So the next time you stop at a red light, and it seems to take forever to change, keep an eye out for the hacker who just green lit their commute.

Thanks for the tip [Matt]

Hacklet #13 – Chopper Royalty

August 29, 2014 by Adam Fabio 7 Comments

This week’s Hacklet focuses on two wheeled thunder! By that we mean some of the motorcycle and scooter projects on Hackaday.io.

We’re going to ease into this Hacklet with [greg duck’s] Honda Sky Restoration. Greg is giving a neglected 15-year-old scooter some love, with hopes of bringing it back to its former glory. The scooter has a pair of stuck brakes, a hole rusted into its frame, a stuck clutch, and a deceased battery, among other issues. [Greg] already stripped the body panels off and got the rear brake freed up. There is still quite a bit of work to do, so we’re sure [Greg] will be burning the midnight 2 stroke oil to complete his scooter.

Next up is [Anders Johansson’s] jaw dropping Gas turbine Land Racing Motorcycle. [Anders] built his own gas turbine engine, as well as a motorcycle to go around it. The engine is based upon a Garrett TV94, and directly powers the rear wheel through a turboshaft and gearbox. [Anders] has already taken the bike out for a spin, and he reports it “Pulled like a train” at only half throttle. His final destination is the Bonneville salt flats, where he hops to break the 349km/h class record. If it looks a bit familiar that’s because this one did have its own feature last month.

[GearheadRed] is taking a safer approach with FireCoates, a motorcycle jacket with built-in brake and turn signal indicators. [GearheadRed] realized that EL wire or LED strip wouldn’t stand up to the kind of flexing the jacket would take. He found his solution in flexible light pipes. Lit by an LED on each end, the light pipes glow bright enough to be seen at night. [GearheadRed] doesn’t like to be tied down, so he made his jacket wireless. A pair of bluetooth radios send serial data for turn and brake signals generated by an Arduino nano on [Red’s] bike. Nice work [Red]!

[Johnny] rounds out this week’s Hacklet with his $1000 Future Tech Cafe Racer From Scratch. We’re not quite sure if [Johnny] is for real, but his project logs are entertaining enough that we’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Down to his last $1000, [Johnny] plans to turn his old Honda xr650 into a modern cafe racer. The new bike will have electric start, an obsolete Motorola Android phone as its dashboard, and a 700cc hi-comp Single cylinder engine at its heart. [Johnny] was last seen wandering the streets of his city looking for a welder, so if you see him, tell him we need an update on the bike!

That’s it for this week. If you liked this installment check out the archives. We’ll see you next week on The Hacklet – bringing you the Best of Hackaday.io!