Build Your Own Car… From Scratch


Most of us settle for modding the latest car we’ve bought. [Steve Graber] took another approach and built his own car from scratch. [John] sent in this impressive project. The original was built around Toyota MR2 parts and the body was made from fiberglass after the design was hand made from a wooden support frame, foam and drywall mud that was sanded down to create the shape. After that, molds were made from the slug to allow the panels to be cast from fiberglass. [Steve] is actually offering the car up as a build-it-yourself kit. Personally, I’d like the see the price come down a bit – the 1,500lb street weight would make a sweet basis for an electric car.

Bonus: If you’d doing EVs, bots or R/C toys, you might like this comparison of the latest breed of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries by [Ian Hooper].

A123 LiIon Battery Pseudo Extra


Every so often I have to slap myself in the head. I’m surprised that we haven’t covered these things by now. DeWalt’s been selling a LiIon 36 volt battery pack that’s full of the latest A123 cells. These are the same ones that were used in the Killacycle. (I think they’ve got a new batch of cells now).

A while back, [Jeff] sent in a circuit for using multiple packs, leaving the internal BMS in place. [The link is fixed now]

[Robert] sent in a scooter that’s been designed to run these same cells. The custom fabrication and machine work looks fantastic.

CCCamp 2007: Quad-copters


R/C quad-copters have been quite popular at CCCamp. Our friend, Dan Kaminsky shot this video of two different models in flight. The first is a 10K Euro commercial version, but the second one is a 500 Euro home built one. The commercial unit has a head mounted display so you can fly it from the onboard camera. There is a second video after the break that shows the maneuverability.

Continue reading “CCCamp 2007: Quad-copters”

Wiimote Car Accelerometer


This one’s pretty simple, but anyone who’s ever spent time tweaking an engine will appreciate it. [Kevin]’s been using a wiimote to measure the acceleration of his car. He put together a script to dump the accelerometer output to a CSV file, then graphed it with Excel. He notes that the accelerometer output isn’t that precise, but it’s good enough to give you feedback on your mods.

AVR Modified EV Charger


[Gary]’s built some nice AVR projects. The most interesting is the charge controller/monitor he built for his EV Porsche. Each board controls a charger – with one charger per battery. When the system isn’t charging the batteries, it provides real-time data to a VFD display in the dashboard of the 1978 Porsche 924. Hopefully he’ll notice the spike in traffic and will update the charger project page.