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64 Articles

Electric Jeep With Modified Prius Hardware

February 20, 2026 by 13 Comments

On the list of cars widely regarded as the most reliable vehicles ever built, up there with the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Honda Civic, and the Mercedes W123 diesels, is the unassuming Toyota Prius. Although it adds a bit of complexity with its hybrid drivetrain, its design eliminates a number of common wear items and also tunes it for extreme efficiency, lengthening its life and causing minimal mechanical stress. The Prius has a number of other tricks up its sleeve as well, which is why parts of its hybrid systems are often used in EV conversions like [Jeremy]’s electric CJ-5 Jeep.

Inside the Prius inverter is a buck/boost converter used for stepping up the battery voltage to power the inverter and supply power to the electric motor. [Jeremy]’s battery is much higher voltage than the stock Prius battery pack, though, which means he can bypass the converter and supply energy from his battery directly to the inverter. Since the buck/boost converter isn’t being used, he can put it to work doing other things. In this case, he’s using it as a charger. Sending the AC from a standard EV charging cord through a rectifier and then to this converter allows the Prius hardware to charge the Jeep’s battery, without adding much in the way of extra expensive electronics.

There are some other modifications to the Prius equipment in this Jeep, though, namely that [Jeremy] is using an open-source controller as the brain of this conversion. Although this video only goes into detail on some of the quirks of the Prius hardware, he has a number of other videos documenting his journey to convert this antique Jeep over to a useful electric farm vehicle which are worth checking out as well. There are plenty of other useful things that equipment from hybrid and electric vehicles can do beyond EV conversions as well, like being used for DIY powerwalls.

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Teardown Of A 5th Generation Prius Inverter

December 14, 2025 by 5 Comments

The best part about BEV and hybrid cars is probably the bit where their electronics are taken out for a good teardown and comparison with previous generations and competing designs. Case in point: This [Denki Otaku] teardown of a fifth-generation Prius inverter and motor controller, which you can see in the video below. First released in 2022, this remains the current platform used in modern Prius hybrid cars.

Compared to the fourth-generation design from 2015, the fifth generation saw about half of its design changed or updated, including the stack-up and liquid cooling layout. Once [Otaku] popped open the big aluminium box containing the dual motor controller and inverters, we could see the controller card, which connects to the power cards that handle the heavy power conversion. These are directly coupled to a serious aluminium liquid-cooled heatsink.

At the bottom of the Prius sandwich is the 12VDC inverter board, which does pretty much what it says on the tin. With less severe cooling requirements, it couples its heat-producing parts into the aluminium enclosure from where the liquid cooling loop can pick up that bit of thermal waste. Overall, it looks like a very clean and modular design, which, as noted in the video, still leaves plenty of room inside the housing.

Regardless of what you think of the Prius on the road, you have to admit it’s fun to hack.

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Arduino Saves Heat Pump

July 16, 2025 by 28 Comments

For home HVAC systems, heat pumps seem to be the way of the future. When compared to electric heating they can be three to four times more efficient, and they don’t directly burn fossil fuels. They also have a leg up over standard air conditioning systems since they can provide both cooling and heating, and they can even be used on water heating systems. Their versatility seems unmatched, but it does come at a slight cost of complexity as [Janne] learned while trying to bring one back to life.

The heat pump here is a Samsung with some physical damage, as well as missing the indoor half of the system. Once the damage to the unit was repaired and refilled with refrigerant, [Janne] used an Optidrive E3 inverter controlled by an Arduino Mega to get the system functional since the original setup wouldn’t run the compressor without the indoor unit attached. The Arduino manages everything else on the system as well including all of the temperature sensors and fan motor control.

With everything up and running [Janne] connected the system to a swimming pool, which was able to heat the pool in about three hours using 60 kWh of energy. The system is surprisingly efficient especially compared to more traditional means of heating water, and repairing an old or damaged unit rather than buying a new one likely saves a significant amount of money as well. Heat pump projects are getting more common around here as well, and if you have one in your home take a look at this project which adds better climate control capabilities. to a wall mount unit.

Satisfy Your High-Voltage Urges With This Printable Flyback Transformer

April 13, 2025 by 11 Comments

Sick of raiding old TVs and CRT monitors for flyback transformers to feed your high-voltage addiction? Never fear; if you’re careful, a 3D-printed flyback might be just the thing you’re looking for.

To be fair, it’s pretty easy to come by new flyback transformers, so building your own isn’t strictly necessary. But [SciTubeHD] was in the market for a particularly large flyback, in a good-natured effort to displace [Jay Bowles] from his lofty perch atop the flyback heap. And it’s also true that this project isn’t entirely 3D-printed, as the split core of the transformer was sourced commercially. The secondary coil, though, was where most of the effort went, with a secondary form made from multiple snap-together discs epoxied together for good measure. The secondary has about a kilometer of 30-gauge magnet wire while the primary holds just ten turns of 8-gauge wire covered with silicone high-voltage insulation.

To decrease the likelihood of arcing, the transformer was placed in a plastic container filled with enough mineral oil liquid dielectric to cover the secondary. After degassing in a vacuum chamber for a day, [SciTubeHD] hooked the primary to a couple of different but equally formidable-looking full-bridge inverters for testing. The coil was capable of some pretty spicy arcs — [SciTubeHD] measured 20 amps draw at 35 volts AC input, so this thing isn’t to be trifled with. STL files for the core parts are coming up soon; we trust schematics for the power supply will be available, too.

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The Trashiest Of Mains Inverters

August 31, 2024 by 23 Comments

Switch-mode technology has made inverters which take a low DC voltage and turn it into a usable mains voltage within the reach of everybody. But still, there might be moments when a mains supply is needed and you’re not lucky enough to have AliExpress at your fingertips, and for that, here’s [Rulof] with a mains inverter that is simultaneously awful and awesome. He’s made a rotary converter, from trash and off the shelf parts.

While a switch-mode converter operates using PWM at many times the output frequency for efficiency, we’re guessing that most readers will be familiar enough with how AC works to see how a low frequency converter turns DC into AC. A set of switches repeatedly flip the polarity, and the resulting square wave is fed into a transformer to step up to the final voltage. The switches can be mechanical as with old-style converters that used vibrating reeds or rotary armatures, or they can be electronic using power transistors. In this case they are a set of microswitches actuated by a set of cams on a shaft driven by a small motor, and the transformer comes from a surplus UPS.

We’re guessing that the frequency will be only a few Hz and the microswitches will suffer from switching such an inductive load, but as you can see in the video below the break it does light a mains bulb, and we’re guessing it would be enough to activate most wall-wart switching power supplies. We’re not so sure though about his use of the IEC sockets from the UPS to carry 12 volts, as the current may be a little much for them.

Meanwhile if you thirst for more of this kind of thing, we have you covered.

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A man's hand with a black ring touches a white box. It is square on the bottom and has a sloped top. Various AC, 12V, and USB ports adorn its surface. It's approximately the size of a human head.

DIY Off Grid Battery Pack From EV Battery

July 31, 2024 by 15 Comments

Car camping gets you out in the great outdoors, but sometimes it’s nice to bring a few comforts from home. [Ed’s Garage] has taken a module from a salvaged EV and turned it into a handy portable power station.

With 2.3 kWh of storage from the single Spark EV module, the battery pack can power [Ed]’s hotplate, lights, fridge, and other electric accessories while camping away from shore power. The inverter he selected can provide up to 1500W of AC power and his 12V converter can do 150W. Several USB ports and a wireless charging pad adorn the outside next to the waterproof AC ports. He even printed a small magnetic flashlight to reuse the light from the inverter which uses an 18650 cell that can be charged from the big battery in a charger built into the exterior of the pack.

The battery management system (BMS) has a Bluetooth module allowing for remote monitoring of state of charge and setting the maximum and minimum charge points for the pack. The whole thing comes in at 73 pounds (33 kg), and while he had originally thought to give it wheels to roll, he changed his mind once he thought more about what sort of wheels he’d need to maneuver the thing in the backcountry.

If you’re thinking of building your own power pack, why not checkout a few other builds for inspiration like this one from tool batteries or one designed to charge directly from a solar panel. Be sure you checkout our guide on how to select a BMS if you’re going to use a lithium-based chemistry.

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Robotic Platform Turns Shop Vac Into Roomba

May 8, 2024 by 11 Comments

The robotic revolution is currently happening, although for the time being it seems as though most of the robots are still being generally helpful to humanity, whether that help is on an assembly line, help growing food, or help transporting us from place to place. They’ve even showed up in our homes, although it’s not quite the Jetsons-like future yet as they mostly help do cleaning tasks. There are companies that will sell things like robotic vacuum cleaners but [Clay Builds] wanted one of his own so he converted a shop vac instead.

The shop vac sits in a laser-cut plywood frame and rolls on an axle powered by windshield wiper motors. Power is provided from a questionable e-bike battery which drives the motors and control electronics. A beefy inverter is also added to power the four horsepower vacuum cleaner motor. The robot has the ability to sense collisions with walls and other obstacles, and changes its path in a semi-random way in order to provide the most amount of cleaning coverage for whatever floor it happens to be rolling on.

There are a few things keeping this build from replacing anyone’s Roomba, though. Due to the less-than-reputable battery, [Clay Builds] doesn’t want to leave the robot unattended and this turned out to be a good practice when he found another part of the build, a set of power resistors meant to limit current going to the vacuum, starting to smoke and melt some of the project enclosure. We can always think of more dangerous tools to attach a robotic platform to, though.

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