How Far Can You Push A £500 Small Electric Car; Four Years Of The Hacky Racer

June 22, 2022 by Jenny List 31 Comments

Four years ago when the idea of a pandemic was something which only worried a few epidemiologists, a group of British hardware hackers and robotic combat enthusiasts came up with an idea. They would take inspiration from the American Power Racing Series to create their own small electric racing formula. Hacky Racers became a rougher version of its transatlantic cousin racing on mixed surfaces rather than tarmac, and as an inaugural meeting that first group of racers convened on a cider farm in Somerset to give it a try. Last weekend they were back at the same farm after four years of Hacky Racer development with racing having been interrupted by the pandemic, and Hackaday came along once more to see how the cars had evolved. Continue reading “How Far Can You Push A £500 Small Electric Car; Four Years Of The Hacky Racer” →

Don’t Mind If I Ski-Do

June 20, 2022 by Matthew Carlson 6 Comments

There is an age-old tradition among hackers of just making it yourself. Whether the real thing is too expensive or you think you can make a better one, the itch strikes, and it can quickly spread. [Homemade Madness] has quite the itch as he builds his own jetski.

What is a jetski but a boat with a shell on top? In an earlier video, he created a boat out of plywood and, after the usual steps of fiberglass and sealing, was proud to float around in his relatively normal-looking boat. But now that he had a working bottom, it was time to return to CAD. He printed out templates for all various shapes he would need, each labeled with a different designator, and glued them to the plywood. No fancy CNC here, just a steady hand and a jigsaw. We love the professional build instructions he compiled for himself that detail in LEGO-like quality exactly how each piece slots into where and in what order to do them. In addition to the top layer of the jetski, he also designed a stand for the boat to rest on while he made it, which is just going the extra mile. A ceiling-mounted winch made it easy to lift the ship into position. Next, he connected all the various framing pieces with PU glue. Thin plywood acted as cladding on top of the skeleton. Filling, sanding, and fiberglass overlaid the structure, making it waterproof. More sanding and some primer later, and it was ready for another water test.

He designed a version with an outboard motor, but he’s trying to build one with a built-in jet drive. So we’re looking forward to seeing the next step and him flying around on his custom watercraft. But what he has already done is quite impressive. If you’re looking for something a little smaller to pull you around the water, why not take a look at this little 3d printed tug boat? Video after the break.

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Can A Drone Push A Bike?

June 19, 2022 by Matthew Carlson 20 Comments

It sounds like a rhetorical question that a Midwestern engineer might ask, something on the order of ‘can you fix this bad PCB spin?’ [Tom Stanton] sets out to answer the title question and ends up building a working e-bike with a drone motor.

You might be thinking, a motor is a motor; what’s the big deal? But a drone motor and a regular e-bike motor are made for very different purposes. Drone motors spin at 30,000 RPM, and an e-bike hub motor typically does around 200-300 RPM while being much larger. Additionally, a drone motor goes in short spurts with a large fan blowing right on it, and an e-bike motor can run almost continuously.

The first step was to use gears and pulleys to reduce the RPM on the motor to provide more torque. A little bit of CAD and 3D printing later, [Tom] had a setup ready to try. However, the motor quickly burned out. With a slightly bigger motor and more gear reduction, version 2 performed remarkably well. After the race between a proper e-bike and the drone bike, the coils were almost melted.

If you’re thinking about making your bike electric, we have some advice. We’ll throw in a second piece of advice for free: use a larger motor than the drone motor, even though it technically works. Video after the break.

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Custom Cycling Camper Continues Car-Free

June 18, 2022 by Matthew Carlson 36 Comments

If you own a camper or RV, you might think twice when taking it out after giving gasoline prices a look. Towing all that extra weight and wind drag along can really eat into your fuel efficiency. [Drew] decided to keep the camper but take gasoline out of the equation by building a teardrop trailer he pulls behind his bike.

It’s a relatively simple idea. A 1″ by 1″ steel tube frame makes up the bottom, which [Drew] welded together. On top of that, plywood walls were built up over a plywood base. The wheels were stolen from an older bicycle and the top was made with many bending techniques using a portable fabric steamer for clothing. [Drew] found used doors and windows right in his backyard, which helped lower the cost. The trailer is insulated with sheet foam because it’s cheap and easy to cut.

In addition to the creativity, there’s a big focus on waterproofing and durability throughout this build. [Drew] applied caulk to the threads of every screw to prevent water from getting in and rotting the plywood. Canvas was used instead of fiberglass to save cost as it provides a fairly high level of protection from rain when finished properly. Cheap LEDs and a USB battery pack created stylish and functional lighting inside.

Overall, we think it turned out quite well, and we would love to bike somewhere and camp out in our own teardrop trailer. It’s a gorgeous example of welding, woodworking, and some plain ingenuity in the face of adversity. We’ve seen solar-powered trailers for e-bikes and campers for custom motorcycles before, and we think [Drew]’s trailer would fit right in. Video after the break.

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The Little 3D-Printed Tugboat That Could

June 14, 2022 by Robin Kearey 24 Comments

If you’ve ever spent time watching the goings-on at a seaport, you must have seen tugboats at work: those little boats that push, pull and nudge enormous cargo ships through tight corners in the harbor. They manage to do that thanks to hugely powerful engines sitting inside their relatively small hulls; their power-to-tonnage ratio can be ten times that of most commercial ships.

One hardware hacker who enjoys building similarly-overpowered machinery is [Luis Marx], and it might not come as a surprise that his latest project is an actual tugboat. Living on the shores of Lake Constance in southern Germany, [Luis] likes to spend time on the water, but got fed up with the chore of paddling. Local regulations restrict the use of outboard motors but allow the use of R/C model boats; therefore, building an R/C tugboat to move yourself around the lake should be perfectly legal.

While we’re not sure if the Lake Constance Police will follow the same reasoning, [Luis]’s model tugboat is a wonderful piece of engineering. With a design inspired by 3DBenchy, the standard 3D printer benchmark that probably anyone with a 3D printer has printed at some point, it took about 30 hours to create the parts plus a generous helping of epoxy resin to make it all waterproof. A beefy lithium-ion battery pack drives two brush-less DC motors designed for racing drones, which together can put out nearly one kilowatt of power.

That, unfortunately, turned out to be way more than the little boat could handle: any attempt at using it simply caused it to leap out of the water and land on its back. Setting the motor controller to around 50% made it much more controllable, yet still strong enough to move [Luis] around on his standup paddle board. The boat is controlled through a custom-made handheld R/C controller that communicates with the ESP8266 inside the boat through WiFi. With no rudder, left-right control is effected by simply reducing the power of one motor by half.

A fully-charged battery pack provides enough juice for about 40 minutes of tugging, so it’s probably a good idea to bring along paddles in any case. Unless, of course, you’ve also got a solar-powered autonomous tugboat ready to come to your rescue.

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Safety Not Guaranteed: Flying Motorcycle Might Be Coming Soon

June 12, 2022 by Al Williams 50 Comments

According to [Victor Tangermann] over at Futurism, JetPack Aviation is showing a prototype of its P2 Speeder flying motorcycle and it looks both awesome and — to quote Ralph Nader — unsafe at any speed. The prototype can lift 1,000 pounds, travel at up to 500 miles per hour, and cover up to 400 miles. We assume those things are not at the same time, of course.

As you might expect, the thing isn’t FAA-approved yet and we wonder if it ever will be. The company plans remote control flights later this year and, even later, actual piloted flights. You can see more from Mayman Aerospace which is related to JetPack (which, of course, makes jet packs).

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A disassembled EV charging station, and a working one

Modernizing An Outdated Electric Vehicle Charging Station

June 12, 2022 by Robin Kearey 15 Comments

One of the drawbacks of being an early adopter is that you might end up investing in equipment that becomes obsolete rather quickly. Although it’s clear that electric vehicles are here to stay, those who bought a charging station for their EV a few years ago may find it slow and incompatible with modern cars or billing networks, necessitating an upgrade to one of the latest models.

If you don’t mind tinkering, these older chargers can provide an excellent base to construct your own state-of-the-art charging station, as [James] over at Diary-of-a-Geek did. He bought a Chargepoint CT2000 series charger and installed a brand-new charging unit inside based on OpenEVSE components. The CT2000 is an older model that’s no longer manufactured, and although it can still connect to Chargepoint’s network, a subscription renewal would cost several thousand dollars. [James] was not willing to make that investment for a unit that he was going to install at home anyway, so he decided to buy replacement parts from OpenEVSE, a supplier of open-source EV charging stations and components.

An OpenEVSE controller mounted on a bracket — The OpenEVSE charging controller sitting on the ChargePoint bracket

The insides of a charging station are actually pretty simple, since the real battery charger is inside the car: the station just contains a beefy contactor to switch the AC current on or off, along with some circuitry to measure the current flowing and an interface to connect to a payment network of some sort. The first step therefore was to hook up the contactor and current transformer to the OpenEVSE controller. This was easy since the new part was way smaller than the original and could simply be mounted onto an existing bracket.

The second step was to provide the user interface and network connections. [James] removed the displays and wireless systems from the head unit and cut a large hole into the front to provide space for new LCD displays. A set of status LEDs plus WiFi connections completed the system, which now looks just as professional as the original. Tests showed that the LCDs were hard to read in bright sunlight, so [James] replaced them with OLED displays, but otherwise the renovated charging station worked perfectly.

Of course, working with high voltages and large currents requires the proper skills and tools, which [James] clearly has available; he also stresses the importance of including a ground-fault circuit interruptor in any equipment placed outdoors. He isn’t the only one to make his own charging station either. If you’re confused by the many types of EV charging connectors, have a look at our recent article describing all those different plugs and sockets. Thanks for the tip, [Kevin]!