Bike Made From Cardboard Is Too Cheap To Steal

July 26, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 77 Comments

If you’ve ever had to replace a bicycle, [Izhar Gafni] is your man. He created a bicycle made completely out of cardboard that is strong enough to support the largest riders and costs about the same as combo meal at McDonald’s.

[Izhar]’s bikes are made from varying thicknesses of cardboard, the thickest sheet being about an inch wide. After cutting and gluing these pieces of cardboard together, [Izhar] submerges them in resin and brushes on a little paint creating an incredibly strong, very light, and unbelievably inexpensive bike.

[Izhar] says the cost of production is about $10 per bike and estimates it could be sold for $60 to $90, cheaper than even the most inexpensive metal bike. If you’ve ever had a bike stolen, you know the sting of having to replace your main means of transportation. [Izhar] says his bike is so cheap thieves wouldn’t even bother taking it off your hands.

You can check out the awesome video of [Izhar] making a cardboard bike after the break.

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Adding Bluetooth Audio Playback To A Toyota Matrix

July 25, 2012 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

In this project [Ryan] shows how he added Bluetooth audio to the stock stereo of his Toyota Matrix. The work he did with his add-on hardware is quite good. And the installation was surprisingly easy. For example, the dashboard bezel which is hanging in the foreground of this picture simply pulls off without the need for any tools. Also, the CD changer input for the stereo is what he uses to patch into the system. It just happened to have a 0.1″ pin header so finding a connector that would work wasn’t a problem.

As for the add-on hardware, he built his own circuit board around an ATmega168 microcontroller and Bluegiga WT32 Bluetooth module. To connect to the car’s data system he went with an RS485 driver chip. It’s not quite the right part but it works well enough for his purposes. So far he can get audio playback working and plans to add support for hands free phone calls and displaying audio track information. Hey, maybe he’ll even add some extra shake-based automation; who knows?

Get a look at the install in the clip after the break.

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Heads Up Controls For Your IPod

July 24, 2012 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Cmonaco3’s] girlfriend wanted a better way to control her iPod when driving. She didn’t want to take her eyes of the road and asked him if he could help. He ended up building a heads up display which reads out track information and offers a few simple buttons for control.

The display includes controls for track forward, track back, and play/pause. Those buttons, along with the LCD screen, mount on the windshield using a suction cup. This way the driver doesn’t have to completely remove focus from the road to control the iPod which is sitting in the passenger’s seat.

To accomplish this [Cmonaco] used a dock connector breakout board for communication between an Arduino and the iPod. The Arduino pulls song information to be displayed on the graphic LCD screen, and sends commands to the iPod when it detects a button push. See a quick demo of the setup after the break.

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DIY GLOBARS For Nighttime Bike Visibility

July 21, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

Inspired by a non-existant yet still cool illuminated bicycle handlebar project, [Becky] over at Adafruit came up with her own version of light up handlebars. Not only is her project actually real, they’re also a pretty cool build that brings a little lightcycle ambiance to twilight bicycling.

[Becky]’s light up handlebars are inspired by the GLOBARS concept design that made the blog rounds earlier this year. Instead of custom machined aluminum tubing, [Becky] used an Adafruit LED strip neatly assembled with heat shrink tubing and waterproof tape, along with an 8 AA-cell battery holder in a fabric and velcro pouch suspended from the top tube on her bike.

After wrapping the LEDs around the handlebars, [Becky] wrapped them in clear handlebar tape she sourced from Amazon. From the video after the break, the 2 meter LED strip on [Becky]’s handlebars verge on lightcycle territory, but sourcing a 6 AA-cell battery holder over an 8-cell will bring the brightness down to a reasonable but still safe level.

You can check out [Becky]’s build video after the break.

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Store Your RFID Transit Card Inside Your Cellphone

July 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 54 Comments

Check it out, this is a Boston transit pass — or at least the parts of it that matters. [Becky Stern] got rid of the rest in a bid to embed the RFID tag inside her cellphone.

The transit pass, called a CharlieCard, started out as a normal credit card shaped tag which you might use for access in the workplace. She unsheathed the chip and its antennae by giving it a generous soak in acetone. In about thirty minutes the plastic card looks more like paper pulp, and you can gently fish out the electronics. These are now small enough to fit in the back cover of a cellphone much like those inductive charging hacks.

[Becky] put hers in an iPhone. But the idea comes from [Dhani Sutanto] who used the same technique to extract the coil from a London transit pass. He then embedded the hardware in a resin cast ring.

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Summer Travel Is A Breeze With This Scooter Trunk

July 16, 2012 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

Travel backpacks are so passé. All the cool kids, like [Niklas Roy] are using scooter trunks for easy travel. Think of it, not only does it remove the need to carry your heavy baggage, but you get to coast along for the ride as well. We wonder what the officials at air, train, and bus travel hubs are going to think?

The idea came from seeing a similar build with a flight case (plywood box with metal edges and hardware). In that project the flight case folded out to be something of an impromptu street kiosk. But [Niklas] knew the aluminum camera trunk he uses for travel was going to work great in the project. He designed a bracket to replace the steering column on his kick scooter. It holds the case securely in place, but still allows the scooter to fold down to be stowed in the train overhead bin.

At first we thought this would have been better if integrated into the trunk itself. Keeping the two parts separate means you can leave the case wherever you’re staying and take just the scooter for day trips.

Fabricating Headlights For An F250

July 13, 2012 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

The amount of time that is going into these custom headlights is just staggering. [Mcole254] is working on his brother’s truck, replacing the stock headlights with High-Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps and rolling some nice LED features into the mix while he’s at it.

The build starts by removing and disassembling the stock headlight assembly. In order to get the enclosure apart he heated it in the oven until the glue was softened and the parts could be pried apart. The goal is to replace the reflectors with an assembly that suits the new lamps and LEDs. Above you can see the white pieces which were vacuum formed from a mold that [Mcole254] made from wood and PVC. He tried several iterations using his home-made vacuum former but couldn’t get the definition he really wanted. The most recent posts from him show some massive 3D printed parts that will be used instead.

While inside he added a line of amber LEDs for the turn signal. You can seem them mounted along the silver strip between the upper and lower reflectors. A demo of those super bright additions is embedded after the break.

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