electric

Row Your Bike To China

July 16, 2018 by 8 Comments

If you’re a fan of endurance racing motor vehicles, there’s one that puts the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Dakar Rally, and the Baja 1000 to shame, and the race doesn’t even involve cars. Indeed, the vehicles used for this massive trek from France to China are electric bicycles, powered only by solar panels. This is the epic Sun Trip endurance race, and one of its competitors built a unique tandem bike that is powered both by pedaling, rowing, and the solar panels.

The tandem bike is interesting on its own since the atypical design uses a back-to-back layout which means one person is facing backward, but the storage space is dramatically increased over the normal forward-facing layout. The person in the rear doesn’t pedal, though. [Justin_le] built an upper-body-powered rowing station for that spot so that the person riding back there can rest their legs but still help propel the vehicle. Of course, there’s also a solar panel roof so the two riders can pedal and row in the shade, which includes MPPT and solar tracking which drives a small electric motor on board as well.

This race started in June but is still going on. There’s a live GPS feed so you can keep up with the teams, and if you get really inspired you can go ahead and sign up for the 2019 race as well. This particular bike was also featured on Radio Canada as well if you’d like to learn more about it.

Thanks to [Arthur] for the tip!

On The Right Tracks: Electric Wheelchair Guts Find New Life As Tank

July 9, 2018 by 10 Comments

Every hacker has dreamt of building their own tank at some point. Or maybe that’s just us. [Peter Sripol] and [Sam Foskuhl] have built one at a scale which is big enough to be rideable, but small enough that neighbors don’t get concerned.

An electric wheelchair is at the heart of the build. After ripping out its internals, the two motors with gearboxes are directly connected to the two tracks, allowing differential steering. Holding everything together is a solid welded steel frame – essential for years of reliable sieging.

The tracks themselves are simple strips of wood, cut and assembled by hand onto a nylon belt. Meanwhile the track wheels and drive assembly are designed in CAD and cut with a CNC router from some plywood, a great choice for adding some precision to the most mechanically challenging part of the build. As always in [Peter]’s videos, a large portion is dedicated to testing – in this case with a rather large array of fireworks. We certainly wouldn’t want to be in his bad books considering his other souped-up weapons.

A small, hacked, novelty electric vehicle? Sounds like it would find some good friends at EMF Camp, especially at the Hacky Racers event.

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Car Revival According to Tesla

March 28, 2018 by 44 Comments

Frankencars are built from the parts of several cars to make one usable vehicle. [Jim Belosic] has crossed the (finish) line with his Teslonda. In the most basic sense, it is the body of a Honda Accord on top of the drive train of a Tesla Model S. The 1981 Honda was the make and model of his first car, but it wasn’t getting driven. Rather than sell it, he decided to give it a new life with electricity, just like Victor Frankenstein.

In accord with Frankenstein’s monster, this car has unbelievable strength. [Jim] estimates the horsepower increases by a factor of ten over the gas engine. The California-emissions original generates between forty and fifty horsepower while his best guess places the horsepower over five-hundred. At this point, the Honda body is just holding on for dear life. Once all the safety items, like seatbelts, are installed, the driver and passengers will be holding on for the same reason.

This kind of build excites us because it takes something old, and something modern, and marries the two to make something in a class of its own. And we hate to see usable parts sitting idle.

Without a body, this electric car scoots around with its driver all day, and this Honda doesn’t even need the driver inside.

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Digital Kiln

December 16, 2017 by 31 Comments

A kiln or foundry is too often seen as a piece of equipment which is only available if a hackspace is lucky enough to have one or individuals are dedicated enough to drop the cash for one of their own. [The Thought Emporium] thought that way until he sourced materials to make his own kiln which can also be seen after the break. It costs half the price of a commercial model not including a failed—and exploded—paint can version.

As described in the video, these furnaces are tools capable of more than just pottery and soft metal baubles. Sure, a clay chess set would be cool but what about carbon fiber, graphene, aerogel, and glass? Some pretty hot science happens at high temperatures.

We get a nice walk-through of each part of the furnace starting with the container, an eleven-gallon metal tub which should set the bar for the level of kiln being built. Some of the hardware arrangements could be tweaked for safety and we insist that any current-carrying screw is safely mounted inside an enclosure which can’t be opened without tools. There’s good advice about grounding the container if metal is used. The explanation of PID loops can be ignored.

What else can you do with a kiln? How about jewelry, heat treating metal, or recycle your beer cans into an engine.

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Printed Parts Make DIY Electric Longboard Possible

November 4, 2017 by 13 Comments

Appalled by expensive electric longboards, [Conor Patrick] still wanted one, and wanted it now. So — naturally — he converted an existing board into a sprightly electric version at a fraction of the cost.

[Patrick] is using a capable 380KV Propdrive motor, capable of pushing him up to 30mp/h! A waterproof 120A speed controller and 6000mAh, 22.2V LiPo battery slim enough to fit under the board give the motor the needed juice. He ended up buying the cheapest RF receiver and remote combo to control the board, but it fit the all-important “want electric long board now” criterion.

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Sparky, the Electric Boat

September 15, 2017 by 13 Comments

They say the two best days of a boat owner’s life are the day that they buy the boat and the day they sell it. If you built your boat from scratch though, you might have a few more good days than that. [Paul] at [ElkinsDIY] is no stranger to building boats, but his other creations are a little too heavy for him to easily lift, so his latest is a fully electric, handmade boat that comes in at under 30 pounds and is sure to provide him with many more great days.

While the weight of the boat itself is an improvement over his older designs, this doesn’t include the weight of the batteries and the motor. To increase buoyancy to float this extra weight he made the boat slightly longer. A tiller provides steering and a trolling motor is used for propulsion. As of this video, the boat has a slight leak, but [Paul] plans to shore this up as he hammers out the kinks.

The boat is very manageable for one person and looks like a blast for cruising around the local lakes. Since it’s built with common tools and materials virtually anyone should be able to build something similar, even if you don’t have this specific type of plastic on hand.  And, while this one might not do well in heavy wind or seas, it’s possible to build a small one-person boat that can cross entire oceans.

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Knowing What’s Below: Buried Utility Location

September 7, 2017 by 53 Comments

We humans have put an awful lot of effort into our infrastructure for the last few centuries, and even more effort into burying most of it. And with good reason — not only are above ground cables and pipes unsightly, they’re also vulnerable to damage from exposure to the elements. Some utilities, like natural gas and sanitary sewer lines, are also dangerous, or at least perceived to be so, and so end up buried. Out of sight, out of mind.

But humans love to dig, too, and it seems like no sooner is a paving project completed than some joker with a jackhammer is out there wrecking the pristine roadway. Before the construction starts, though, cryptic markings will appear on the pavement courtesy of your local buried utility locating service, who apply their rainbow markings to the ground so that nothing bad happens to the often fragile infrastructure below our feet.

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