Building An Electric-powered Longboard For Under $100

September 24, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Alan] doesn’t have to kick to get around town because he added a removable electric motor to his longboard. It looks great, and works just as well because he didn’t reinvent the wheel. The idea is a mashup of an electric Razor scooter and his long board.

The majority of the project revolved around mounting everything he needed to the board. When it comes to the drive wheel he designed a tension system. When a rider is not on the board the back wheels of the long board are off the ground by about an inch. The springs in the suspension system make it so when you do mount the board all wheels are touching, with the main drive wheel held tight to the pavement even while turning.

Unlike some electric skateboard builds [Alan] didn’t need to raise the board off the ground as the battery compartment is mounted on top of the deck. He added cooling fans for the hot summer days, and even used velcro to attach the charger so that he can juice it up when away from home. Check out his three minute show and tell embedded after the break.

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Galaxy SIII Hack Puts Android In Your Dashboard

September 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

Here’s how you can have a hands-free, no worries about the battery, Android experience while you drive. [Steve] removed the head unit from his car and replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy SIII Android phone. The look is pretty nice, but we do have a few suggested improvements if you try this one for yourself.

It started simply by removing the factory stereo which left a double-height opening in the dashboard. [Steve] cut a piece of wood to fit the gaping hole, painting it a grey that would compliment the interior colors of the car. The phone is mounted on this plate, with plenty of room for the USB and audio cables. From there it is finished up with another wooden plate which has a cutout for the touch screen. See the final project, as well as glimpses of the installation, in the video after the break.

[Steve] demonstrates using the GPS features and playing music. We’d improve this in a couple of ways. First off, using something like the IOIO board you could add a physical volume knob, which we’re not interested in giving up for a touch screen quite yet. If you were willing to go the extra mile, a CAN-BUS chip could be added too that would monitor button presses from the steering wheel music controls.

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Giving The IPod Nano A Home On A Honda Dashboard

September 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Hyeinkali’s] iPod Nano looks right at home on the dashboard of his 2001 Honda Accord. He got rid of the simple LCD clock and the buttons that were used to set it. The hack holds the iPod securely in place, but it remains easy to remove and take with you.

He started by popping out the bezel that holds the clock module and hazard light button in place. The original display was about the same width as the Nano, but he wasn’t interested in mounting the mp3 player under the dash. Since he needed to be able to take it with him to sync his music library he made a space near the bottom of the bezel to accept the connector end of the USB cable while keeping the device accessible. After connecting the other end to power he covered the hole in the bezel with mesh and put everything back together. We’re not sure if audio is piped into the car stereo via a cable or through Bluetooth, but it does feed to the head unit.

[via Reddit]

700+ Hp Electric Honda S2000 Built By High School Senior

September 16, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 109 Comments

[Juan] dropped us a note to let us know about a little project he’s working on. A few years ago, he bought a Honda S2000. It served him well, but now he’s converting it to electric power, and it’s going to be a beast.

[Juan] is using 104 battery packs each containing 4 cells in parallel. The total output of his battery assemblage is 686 kilowatts, or 920 horsepower. [Juan] is assuming his drive train will be 85% efficient, meaning his wheels will be getting 782 horsepower and 1500 ft/lbs of torque at 0 rpm. Yes, this thing is going to scream.

A project of this caliber is usually undertaken by gear heads with decades of experience, but that’s not the case for [Juan]; he’s still a senior in High School. A build this awesome can only portend a very bright future as an engineer and certainly a few drag race wins. This car is going to be a monster, and we can’t wait to see it on the track.

Adding EPaper Navigation Data To A Sailboat

September 7, 2012 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Mike Holden] has been on the hunt for a display that is easy to read in bright sunlight. He wants to use it to read out navigational data on his sail boat. The best option is an ePaper display. He managed to build a system that will feed updating NMEA 0183 data to a Nook Simple Touch.

NMEA 0183 is a protocol that governs data from marine navigational equipment. The most obvious is GPS, but there are a lot of possibilities like sonar, a gyrocompass, and an autopilot. To get things rolling he wrote an Arduino sketch which generates dummy packets using the standard. This let him develop and test the system without being near any of the real equipment. The heart of the build is a WiFi router. It pulls in the data over a USB port using an RS232 to USB converter cable. A Python script parses the data and generates a webpage which refreshes the data every second. This is loaded using Opera browser on the Nook

Check out the video after the break to see a demo of the system.

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For Vacation On Hoth: Snow Speeder Sleds

September 3, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

Next time you’re taking a vacation anywhere that resembles the planet Hoth, you might want to take the time to build a snow speeder sled before you go. As you can see in the video above (at around the 1:00 mark), the sled looks great, even as it “flies” down the slopes. We were fairly surprised to find it was made entirely out of cardboard. We were also fairly surprised at how large the person was that unfolded from the cockpit when it stopped!

You can see pictures of the build process over at Dvice.

Motorizing This Trycicle

August 28, 2012 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Kaj] wanted to help out an aging family member by building them an electric tricycle during international Hack Day back on August 11th. He mixed in some reused parts with some new ones and ended up with bike that lets the rider troll other cyclists. Apparently when serious riders see an older man on a trike gaining on them they pedal like mad to make sure they don’t suffer the embarrassment of being passed. But there’s enough power and range to overtake the strongest of non-powered competitors.

Many of the parts came from a non-functional electric bike sold on Craig’s List. [Kaj] reports that the bike was trashed, but the motor system was mostly salvageable. He replace the batteries and charger and hooked up the motor to the rear axle. The initial install placed everything but the motor in the basket behind the rider. The weight and placement made the thing unstable when cornering. The solution was to house the batteries in a tool box and strap it below the basket. The lower center of gravity makes sure the trike is easy to handle, and now there’s still room in the basket for your groceries.

This would make a perfect platform for some road messages printed in water.