Ride, Captain, Ride Aboard Your Arduino-Controlled Autopiloted Sailboat

January 8, 2014 by Kristina Panos 22 Comments

[Jack], a mechanical engineer, loom builder, and avid sailor wanted an autopilot system for his 1983 Robert Perry Nordic 40 sailboat with more modern capabilities than the one it came with. He knew a PC-based solution would work, but it was a bit out of reach. Once his son showed him an Arduino, though, he was on his way. He sallied forth and built this Arduino-based autopilot system for his sloop, the Wile E. Coyote.

He’s using two Arduino Megas. One is solely for the GPS, and the other controls everything else. [Jack]’s autopilot has three modes. In the one he calls knob steering, a potentiometer drives the existing hydraulic pump, which he controls with a Polulu Qik serial DC motor controller. In compass steering mode, a Pololu IMU locks in the heading to steer (HTS). GPS mode uses a predetermined waypoint, and sets the course to steer (CTS) to the same bearing as the waypoint.

[Jack]’s system also uses cross track error (XTE) correction to calculate a new HTS when necessary. He has fantastic documentation and several Fritzing and Arduino files available on Dropbox.

Autopilot sailboat rigs must be all the rage right now. We just saw a different one back in November.

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Building An Engine Control Unit With The STM32F4

January 1, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 60 Comments

If you’re looking to soup up your whip, the first place you’ll probably look is the engine control unit. This computer shoved in the engine compartment controls just about every aspect of your car’s performance, from the air/fuel ratio, the ignition timing, and the valve controls. Upgrading the ECU usually means flashing new firmware on the device, but [Andrey] is taking it one step further: he’s building his own ECU using the STM32F4 Discovery dev board.

[Andrey]’s ride is a 1996 Ford Aspire, but while he was developing his open source ECU, he wanted to be able to drive his car. No problem, as going down to the junkyard, picking up a spare, and reverse engineering that was a cheap and easy way to do some development. After powering this spare ECU with an ATX supply, [Andrey] was able to figure out a circuit to get sensor input to his microcontroller and having his dev board control the fuel injector.

With a few additional bits of hardware [Andrey] has his open ECU controlling the fuel injection, ignition, fuel pump, and idle air valve solenoid. Not a bad replacement for something that took Ford engineers thousands of man hours to create.

[Andrey]’s ECU actually works, too. In the video below, you can see him driving around a snow-covered waste with his DIY ECU controlling all aspects of the engine. If the engine sounds a little rough, it’s because a wire came loose and he was only using two cylinders. A bit of hot glue will fix that, though.

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Electric Snow Scooter

December 30, 2013 by James Hobson 20 Comments

SAM_0041

[Dane] decided he wanted to make a rather large electric scooter, capable of taking him through even the most inclement weather — that’s right, even snow.

Well, after about 18 months of stop and go work it is finally complete — for now. It features an impressive 7kW brushless 3-phase motor, a massive lithium ion battery pack and more custom parts then you could shake a stick at!

The frame started out as one of those big push scooters from the 80’s, in fact, it is the same as the one shown in Macklemore’s Thrift Shop video (pic)! But since then it has had many a modification done to it — it looks as though the front end is the only part that wasn’t touched!

He’s got an incredible build log his website, so if you want to build your own (you will once you’ve seen the video after the break), it’s a great starting point.

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Motorized Longboard

December 27, 2013 by James Hobson 18 Comments

What were you building in your junior year of highschool? Well, for [Aaron Cofield], he built a motorized longboard.

He started with a plain longboard in the design he liked, gave it a nice paint coat (aesthetics over functionality people!) and then started looking into motorizing it. As it turns out there’s actually a pretty handy blog dedicated to converting longboards to electric. After many hours of research he settled on a 2400W RC prop motor and a 150A high performance RC car ESC unit. Who knew it was that simple!

A few metal brackets, some belts, sprockets, an idler and a whole ton of lithium-ion batteries later and the build is complete! He’s currently controlling it with an RC car remote, but had plans to control it using a Wii nunchuck and Arduino. The test runs this past summer got the board going about 20mph!

It looks done for now, but we’re sure he’s going to be continuing to refine it next summer — stick around after the break to see one of its first test drives!

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Full-size Lego Car Can Hit 30km/h!

December 21, 2013 by James Hobson 20 Comments

[Steve Sammartino] is a Melbourne entrepreneur, and he had an idea: could it be possible to design and make a functional full-size Lego car?

He sent out a single tweet to try to crowd fund the project:

Anyone interested in investing $500-$1000 in a project which is awesome & a world first tweet me. Need about 20 participants… #startup

Not one, not two, but forty Australians pledged money to start this crazy idea dubbed the #SuperAwesomeMicroProject. With the money raised, [Steve] and [Raul Oaida] purchased over 500,000 Lego pieces and began the build in Romania, where [Raul] lives.

Now before you get too excited, the car is not “fully” made out of Lego. It features real tires and some select load bearing elements. That being said, the entire engine is made completely out of Lego. It features four orbital engines utilizing a total of 256 pistons. The top speed they tested it to was about 20-30km/h — it might go faster, but they didn’t want to risk a catastrophic failure.

Since its completion (it took nearly 18 months to build), it’s been shipped back to a secret location in Melbourne, but the team has made an excellent video showcasing the project. Stick around after the break to see your childhood dreams come to life.

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Shopping Trolley Is Wired For Camp

December 17, 2013 by Adam Fabio 13 Comments

[James] needed some cool transportation for the upcoming Easter Camp in New Zealand, so he created a custom motorized shopping trolley that is sure to turn heads. The base of this project is a standard mobility scooter, which conveniently has a modular design. All of the electronics have connectors for quick service and the entire rear axle and motor assembly pop off with the pull of a lever.

[James] had to do a bit of welding and chassis rework to achieve his goal of mounting a shopping cart top to the scooter’s frame. Once finished, though, the setup looked great. It was actually comfortable to sit in, as [James] made a cutout for the driver’s feet to pass through. The real fun came with the electronics. The trolley is the most wired mobility scooter mod we’ve ever seen. Most of the electronics are contained in a project box under the seat, with several Arduinos that control the various systems: interfacing with the original scooter electronics, a GPS receiver, and a GSM radio. [James] also went as far as to add RGB LED headlights, a horn, and a multi-tone siren from Jaycar.

Driving the trolley is simple. An arcade joystick selects the speed, and the scooter’s standard hand controls are used for forward, reverse, and steering. One of the more interesting mods [James] made was a custom Windows app to control the trolley via a USB radio module. The entire system can be secured, with the security code stored in NVRAM to prevent a power cycle from unlocking the system. [James] can even command the trolley to go forward or reverse from his touch screen. We’d love to see him add a steering servo to make it a completely remote-controlled solution, though this step would require some sort of clutch for manual control.

The final design works very well. [James] may not win any drag races by keeping scooter’s original speed controls and associated electronics, but he did extend the range with larger batteries, so we’re sure the trolley will be a hit all over the camp. Similar projects have been built using the base of an electric wheelchair. If you have one that you want to control without invasive changes to the hardware, check out this accessibility hack which interfaces using a connector.

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An Awesome Electric Bike

December 8, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

bike

Converting a motorcycle to electric is always a favorite project of ours, and [Peter]’s build is up there with the rest of them.

The bike is a 2002 ZX6E he bought from a salvage shop. It had been parted out over the years and for $250 this very light aluminum frame made the for the perfect electric conversion frame. After learning MIG welding from his brother, [Peter] cut up a few plates and built a motor mount for his new 4.2 kW power plant.

The controller is a 300 amp IGBT he found on eBay, with an extraordinarily sturdy looking circuit built into an ammo box. The motor from the bike was replaced with 16 60Ah LiFe cells providing 52 volts. [Peter] also built his own battery management system using a Cypress PSoC 3 microcontroller and a beautiful custom PCB.

It’s still a long way from being finished, but already [Peter] has a great looking bike and an awesome weekend project on his hands.