I’m getting pretty interested in building an electric motorcycle, and I ran across this little hack to charge multiple batteries with one charger. It uses a 4020 counter that’s pulsed by my dear friend the 555 to activate a series of relay pairs to switch a single charger sequentially between battery cells. A more advanced version could use a microcontroller to monitor the state of each cell to ensure even charging. If you’re thinking of constructing an uber-ups, this could be useful.
Transportation Hacks1668 Articles
Electric Motorcycle
Lets face it, riding a segway or any other electric scooter just doesn’t get quite the respect that we’d wish. Eliot pointed out this video of an excellent electric motorcycle conversion in action. It’s a such a clean looking conversion that I couldn’t resist posting it. The major components to do the conversion were six SLA batteries with a DC converter that acts as a speed controller. I think it sounds like a giant R/C car rolling down the road.
I’ve been meaning to build an electric bike myself. I think there’s a huge potiention for EV home builders and bikes. The component cost is significantly less for a bike, and it’s just ideal for one-off development. Perhaps the day of the dorky EV is ending? [via kneeslider]
[Update: Calling this a motorcycle is a bit generous. Since it’s a 50cc chassis originally, it’s technically a converted moped. Still, I wanna see Woz charge one of these with his segway…]
EV Jeep Cherokee
[Dayne] sent in this sweet EV Jeep Cherokee conversion. It was built a while ago, but I couldn’t resist posting it, I dig jeeps. Post conversion it’s still got 4WD. The AX-15 isn’t that great of a transmission, but he re-used the original clutch to avoid shredding it. (I don’t need this sort of encouragement)
Improved VW Solar Charger
VW has been shipping their cars to the US with small solar panels inside to keep the batteries from going dead during shipment. Dick Streefland picked one up and added a small monitor circuit to monitor and charge his battery. Batwatch is based on the Atmel ATtiny13V and measures the voltage on two sides of a resister to determine the voltage of the battery while the solar panel is charging the system.
Wireless Brake Light Helmet
[Firoz Ahammad] added 5 ultra bright LEDs to his motorcycle helmet. It uses a Maxim wireless tx/rx pair and is powered by 3 rechargeable batteries. He spaced the LEDs evenly across the thickest area of the helmet. I personally wouldn’t mod my safety equipment or I’d at least put the LEDs in preexisting vent holes.
Luxeon LED Bike Headlight
[Ian] built this headlight for his commuter bike. It is based around the Luxeon Star LED which is supposed to be equivalent to a 5W halogen. He mounted it to an aluminum frame and used a Fraen narrow lens. It’s powered by a pack of 4 rechargeable AA batteries. He’s got a list of improvements he would make. The first one is a better casing since his looks terrible compared to Suzy Jackson’s sexy light.
Smart Wheely
I found this self-balancing unicycle via Trevor Blackwell’s site. Dr. Hofer’s self-balancing unicycle uses a wide tire for lateral stability. Trevor had spent several months learning how to ride a unicycle before building his; the large tire makes the learning curve for this one a lot less severe. The project site is in German, but I found one write-up in English. The majority of it is dedicated to the control scheme. It is very difficult to model the unicycle as an inverse pendulum due to so many unknowns. Dr. Hofer’s team used fuzzy control instead which let them apply several layers of rules without requiring a lot of previous knowledge. Here’s a photo gallery of the device.
[sean] reminded me that I forgot to include the obligatory link to Bombardier’s Embrio concept.
