Mini Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Takes Moxie In KC

August 24, 2017 by John Baichtal 4 Comments

There are no shortage of fantastic and creative Power Racing Series cars, but here’s an especially fun example. [Pete Prodoehl] of Milwaukee Makerspace and his teammates [Kathy Cannistra] and [Kyle White] built a Power Racing car based on the design of the iconic Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

They created the wienie and bun out of fiberglass and foam. Meanwhile, with the KC Maker Faire approaching, the team scrambled to finish the project, with [Kyle] working on assembly while [Pete] tackled the electronics. [Kyle] also proved to be the best wiener rider, with everyone else getting thrown off.

It should be noted that Milwaukee Makerspace got a Moxie bump because a wienermobile is on the PPPRS’s “hit list” of desirable designs. Anyone being the first to create a Top Gun F14, a Mystery Machine, or a non-DeLorean car from Back to the Future gets extra points.

If you like the Power Racing Series, you’ll be able to catch the wienermobile at both Maker Faire Detroit and Maker Faire Milwaukee. Also check out our posts on better racing with Power Wheels and checking a PPPRS car into baggage.

Possibly The Most Up-Cycled, Hacked E-Bike You’ll See All Week

August 24, 2017 by Donald Papp 32 Comments

When it comes to bringing an idea to life it’s best to have both a sense of purpose, and an eagerness to apply whatever is on hand in order to get results. YouTube’s favorite Ukrainians [KREOSAN] are chock full of both in their journey to create this incredible DIY e-bike using an angle grinder with a friction interface to the rear wheel, and a horrifying battery pack made of cells salvaged from what the subtitles describe as “defective smartphone charging cases”.

Battery pack made from cells salvaged out of defective equipment. Sometimes, you use what you have on hand.

What’s great to see is the methodical approach taken to creating the bike. [KREOSAN] began with an experiment consisting of putting a shaft on the angle grinder and seeing whether a friction interface between that shaft and the tire could be used to move the rear wheel effectively. After tweaking the size of the shaft, a metal clamp was fashioned to attach the grinder to the bike. The first test run simply involved a long extension cord. From there, they go on to solve small problems encountered along the way and end up with a simple clutch system and speed control.

The end result appears to work very well, but the best part is the pure joy (and sometimes concern) evident in the face of the test driver as he reaches high speeds on a homemade bike with a camera taped to his chest. Video is embedded below.

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DIY Electric Beach Luge Is A Thrill

August 23, 2017 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

[John Dingley] describes his Electric Beach Luge Project as an exciting mashup between “a downhill luge board, a kite surf buggy, a go-kart, and a Star Wars Land Speeder” and it’s fresh from a successful test run. What’s not to like? The DIY experimental vehicle was made to run on long, flat, firm stretches of sand while keeping the rider as close to the ground as possible. The Beach Luge is mainly intended to be ridden while lying on one’s back, luge-style, but it’s also possible to lay prone in the “Superman” position.

The whole unit was built from the ground up, but [John] points out that the design isn’t particularly complicated. There is no fancy self-balancing or suspension involved and steering is simple. A tube bender and a welder took care of making the frame. The rest is mainly used go-kart parts obtained cheaply from eBay, driven by a 500W 24V electric motor from an old Golf Kart. Like a luge sled, the goal is for the vehicle itself to interfere as little as possible between the user and the earth to make the experience as visceral as it can be.

You can see it in action in the two videos embedded below, but even more videos and some great pictures are available on the project’s page. [John] says it’s great fun to ride, but feels it could use twice as much power!

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So, You’ve Never Made A Spaceframe Before

August 23, 2017 by Jenny List 20 Comments

It is sometimes a surprise in our community of tinkerers, builders, hackers, and makers, to find that there are other communities doing very similar things to us within their own confines, but in isolation to ours. A good example are the modified vehicle crowd. In their world there are some epic build stories and the skills and tools they take for granted would not in any way be unfamiliar to most Hackaday readers.

As part of a discussion about electric vehicles near where this is being written, someone tossed an interesting link from that quarter into the mix; a two-part treatise on building ultra-light-weight tubular frame vehicles. Or space frames, as you might know them.

You might think that making a tubular framed for a vehicle would be a straightforward enough process, but as the article explains, it contains within it a huge well of geometry and metallurgy to avoid a creation that is neither too heavy nor contains excessive weakness. Part one deals mainly with prototyping a frame, the selection of materials and joining tubes, while part two goes into more detail on fabrication. The author likes brazing which may offend the sensibilities of welding enthusiasts, but you can substitute your jointing tech of choice.

A particularly neat suggestion, one of those simple ideas that make you wish you’d thought of it yourself, is to prototype a frame in miniature with copper wire and solder to evaluate the effect of different forces upon it before you commit your final design to steel.

The articles are a few years old, but no less pertinent in the information they contain. Meanwhile if you are a spaceframe veteran, then you may have your own suggestions for the comments below. And if you’d like some tips on how not to build a spaceframe, have a look at this motorcycle.

Thank you [JHR] and [Jarkman] for the tips.

Electric Longboard With All-New Everything

August 21, 2017 by John Baichtal 15 Comments

We love [lolomolo]’s Open Source electric longboard project. Why? Because he completely re-engineered everything while working on the project all through college. He tackled each challenge, be it electronic or mechanical as it came, and ended up making everything himself.

The 48″ x 13″ deck is a rather unique construction utilizing carbon fiber and Baltic birch. In testing the deck, [lolomol] found the deflection was less than an inch with 500 lbs. on the other end. He modified the Caliber II trucks to add four 2250W Turnigy Aerodrive brushless outrunners driving the wheels with the help of belts. The motors are controlled by VESC, an Open Source speed controller. There are a lot of fun details, like the A123 lithium cells equipped with custom battery management system PCBs.

The board sports 5W RGBW headlights that are so bright he can only run them at 10% PWM, plus RGB LED underlighting. All of it is controlled by an onboard Linux box. You can check out [lolomolo]’s GitHub repository for code, schematics, and CAD files. His Instructable for this project also has more design notes and thoughts.

If sweet longboards are your bag, check out the 3D-printed longboard and the long-distance electric longboard we published previously.

Open Source Modular Rocket Avionics Package

August 21, 2017 by John Baichtal 20 Comments

Cambridge postgraduate student [Adam Greig] helped design a rocket avionics system consisting of a series of disc-shaped PCBs arranged in a stack. There’s a lot that went into the system and you can get a good look at it all through the flickr album.

Built with the help of Cambridge University Spaceflight, the Martlet is a 3-staging sounding rocket that lifts to 15km/50K feet on Cesaroni Pro98 engines. [Adam]’s control system uses several Arm Cortex M4s on various boards rather than having just one brain controlling everything.

custom-avionics-adam-greig-martlet-thumb

Each disc is a module that plays a specific role in the system. There are a couple of power supply boards sporting twin LTC2975 able to supply custom power to a dozen different circuits. The power system has a master control board also sporting an M4. There’s an IMU board with the guidance system — accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, and barometer, all monitored by an algorithm that computes the rocket’s position and attitude in-flight. There’s a radio board with a GPS receiver and an ISM band radio transceiver for telemetry, as well as a datalogger with 10 thermocouple measurement channels. Engines are controlled by the pyro board which controls firing currents on four different channels. The vertical spacers also serve to transmit power and data to neighboring boards.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out the project’s code and schematics on [Adam]’s GitHub repository.

[Adam] is no stranger to these pages, with his Nerf Vulcan turret published a few years back, as well as his balloon tracking rig published more recently. Photos are CC-SA and can be found in [Adam]’s Flickr feed.

Amphibious Houseboat Hits The Open Road

August 21, 2017 by Adam Fabio 13 Comments

What’s better than having your own houseboat? How about an amphibious houseboat? That’s exactly what [Theon Parseghian] is building in his driveway. It all started with a derelict 32-foot long houseboat. A 1967 model with a rusted steel hull, [Theon] originally bought it as a guest house.

[Theon] couldn’t let the boat rust away in his back yard though. Quickly decided to get it back on the open water…. and on the road. An amphibious houseboat. While looking for large tractor tires, [Theon] found an entire crop sprayer which hadn’t been used in years. This crop sprayer was a giant tricycle wheeled monster, with huge spray arms.

The original plan was to carve out a hole for the sprayer, and essentially drop the boat on the sprayer chassis. Things never quite work out as planned though. The sprayer was a bit too short, so it’s chassis was replaced with one from a school bus. The axle wasn’t quite long enough to clear the boat’s draft, so it was extended with custom steel wheel spacers.

The build is documented in a 7 part series on YouTube. The latest episode details the boat’s first drive under its own power. We’re not sure how street legal an amphibious houseboat would be, but [Theon] doesn’t have too far to drive, as there is a large lake just behind his shop in Upstate New York. The houseboat launches on August 23. Good luck [Theon]!

If a houseboat is too big for you, how about a barrel boat. If you’re into tiny boats, you could cross the Atlantic with a 42-inch vessel.

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