Garage Clicker Dashboard Integration

February 15, 2014 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

Vehicles with the highest level of trim package sometimes come with the ability to learn garage door opener codes. Less costly offerings lack that feature as well as others bells and whistles, leaving blank plates where fancy buttons would have been. [JiggMcFigg] makes the best of this situation by gutting his garage remote and hiding it behind a button blank.

One thing that raised an eyebrow is the coin cell battery holder you can make out on the size-check image shown to the left. But really, these remotes must drain their batteries at a rate nearly the same as an unused battery so why complicate the hack? A holder was soldered onto the board, and jumper wires were soldered to the push button added to the blank plate. This type of utilitarian button is much more satisfying to use than those fancy-pants silk-screen molded-plastic types anyway!

Of course you could go the other way with this hack. [JiggMcFigg] started out with the problem of losing the remotes in the mess of the car. You could retrofit it with a huge button to make it harder to misplace.

Self-Balancing Uni-board?

February 12, 2014 by James Hobson 8 Comments

Capture

There are skateboards, long boards, and snowboards. This was originally a snowboard, but we’re not quite sure how to classify it now… Introducing the Segbot Snowboard.

[Steve Ghertner] has been playing around with accelerometers lately and decided to try making something practical. He’s taken a snowboard and turned it into a two-wheeled, segway-like balancing board. The two parallel wheels are powered individually by 12V scooter motors. An Arduino Uno takes care of processing the data from a MPU-6050, which is a triple axis gyro and accelerometer.

You can control the board by leaning, or by using a small two-button remote. He hasn’t taken it very far out of the lab yet, but plans to after cleaning up the programming a bit.

Stick around for the following video where he explains it at his local hackerspace in Nashville, the Middle TN Robotic Arts Society where members strive to “Control Them (robots) Before They Control You!”

Continue reading “Self-Balancing Uni-board?” →

The Beginning Of A DIY Vehicle Night Vision System

February 5, 2014 by James Hobson 57 Comments

night vision car

[Stephen] has just shared with us the current progress of his night vision vehicle system, and it’s looking quite promising!

The idea of the project is to provide the driver with a high contrast image of the road, pedestrians and any other obstacles that may not be immediately visible with headlights. It’s actually becoming a feature on many luxury cars including BMW, Audi, GM and Honda. This is what inspired [Stephen] to try making his own.

The current system consists of an infrared camera, two powerful IR light spot lights, and a dashboard LCD screen to view it. It may be considered “not a hack” by some of our more exuberant readers, but [Stephen] does such a great job explaining his future plans for it, which include object recognition using OpenCV, so we felt it was more than worth a share, even at this point.

You see, the idea of vehicle night vision is not to constantly watch a little screen instead of the road — it’s designed to be there when you need it — and to let you know when you need it, [Stephen’s] planning on adding a Raspberry Pi to the mix running OpenCV to detect any anomalies on the road that could be of concern. We shudder at the amount of training a system like that might need — well, depending on the complexity of this image recognition.

Anyway, stick around after the break to hear [Stephen] explain it himself — it is a long video, but if you want to skip to the action there are clips of it on the road at 1:53 and 26:52.

Continue reading “The Beginning Of A DIY Vehicle Night Vision System” →

S.A.M. The Safety Attention Monitor

January 30, 2014 by James Hobson 19 Comments

Capture

Last term’s project at Chico State University hopes to reduce driver distraction by alerting you when it notices you aren’t paying attention (to the road!).

The team designed SAM using OpenCV to track your face in order to recognize when you aren’t watching the road. It alerts you through a variety of audible beeps and LED lights, and is programmed to only alert you after set time values — i.e. it’s not going to go off when you’re checking your blind spot, unless you’ve been checking it for over a certain length of time. It also has a silence button you can press for situations like looking around while you are parked.

The proof of concept device was built using a Raspberry Pi, the PiCam, and a breadboard to accommodate some manual controls, the buzzer, and LEDs. It also continuously records video of you on a 30 second loop, and in the event of an accident, it saves all the video — perhaps proving it was your fault. Can you imagine if all cars had this installed? On the plus side you wouldn’t have to argue with insurance companies — but if it really was your fault, well then you’re straight out of luck.

Repairing A Plane In Antarctica

January 25, 2014 by James Hobson 40 Comments

One of our tipsters just sent us in an amazing story about repairing a plane in Antarctica — and flying it home!

On December 20, 2012 a Basler BT-67 Turbo 67 (DC-3T) — named Lidia — went down in Antarctica. Thankfully out of its 15 passengers there were no fatalities. For full details on the crash you can check out the accident description on the Aviation Safety Network.

Lidia was built back in the 1940’s, with its wings apparently put together by Rosie the Riveter herself in 1943. Its virgin flight was in 1944. Today, it is operate(d) as a tour plane, and before the accident it was conducting a tour of the Holtanna Glacier in Antarctica.

The plane sat in the snow for almost a year, before a team came back to repair it and bring it home. The expedition lasted two months, and they brought with them two new engines, a new cockpit, landing gear, and fuselage repair supplies. They’ve shared an incredible slideshow of photos that are available on Facebook, or you can stick around after the break to watch a video slideshow of the process.

Can you even begin to imagine repairing a car in Antarctica conditions — let alone a freaking airplane?

Continue reading “Repairing A Plane In Antarctica” →

Stealth Camper Van

January 23, 2014 by Mike Szczys 84 Comments

Sometimes you need to sleep where you’re not supposed to. In this case, [MisterE] wanted to cut the costs associated with his climbing trips. He took a 2001 GMC Savana cargo van and turned it into a stealthy mobile living space. The project is from back in 2008 and we almost waved off from featuring it. But when you start to look at all of the creative space-saving solutions in the hack we think you’ll agree it’s worth a look.

Since he’s a climber that means time in the mountains, which can be quite cold. The sides and floor of the van were insulated to about R19 before the build work itself started and there’s a small wall-mounted heater. For comfort, a fouton was a must for sleeping but also for its double use as a sofa. For style the only choice here was bead-board to cover all of the walls. There is a small kitchenette that is mainly just a sink (we’ve seen running water in vehicles before). A couple of extra batteries power all of the electronics: audio, laptop, etc. When asked, [MisterE] confirms that he added hidden storage areas for his more pricey gear. Total cost on the project came it at $11,500. About nine for the van and the rest for improvements.

He mentions he blew an inverter because of grounding issues while starting the van. As long as he turns it off before start-up he’s fine. Shouldn’t there be a better way to build protection into this? Please leave a comment after the break and let us know what you’d do differently.

[Thanks Mac]

3kW Electric Scooter

January 11, 2014 by James Hobson 23 Comments

IMG_20131228_012222

[Exco] had been playing around with the idea of building an electric scooter for a while now, and over the holidays he decided to just do it.

Similar to the motorized long board we shared last month, this scooter makes use of an RC hobby motor — in this case, a 63mm 3kW brushless outrunner (for a RC plane), coupled with a 100A ESC. He bought the scooter (“kick board”) off eBay for cheap, and spent a few days in the machine shop modifying it. It has better wheels now, and custom milled aluminum brackets for mounting the motor. The drive system uses a belt and pulley with a sliding rail to provide tensioning.

To power it, he bought a bunch of 2.5Ah, 18V LiPo packs on eBay originally from a Makita drill set. He then sorted out the cells, removed the dead ones, and soldered everything together for his own Frankenstein pack to balance them. The final configuration features twenty-one 18650 lithium cells. He even shrink wrapped it, which makes it look relatively professional!

It’s controlled by a push-button potentiometer hooked up to the ESC. Theoretical top speed is about 27km/h @ 1285RPM, and they managed to get it up to 25km/h in a real test. There’s more info over at the Endless Sphere forum, and we’ve got two test videos for you after the break.

Continue reading “3kW Electric Scooter” →