skateboard

43 Articles

Stair Tricking Skateboard

June 22, 2012 by 41 Comments

This skateboard concept lets you travel down stairs almost as smoothly as gliding down a hill. This seems to be the eighth iteration in [PoChih Lai’s] attempts to add functionality to a board which will make it the ultimate ride for an urban outing. Check out the video after the break to see just how well he did.

We’ve seen hand carts that use six wheels to make stairs a breeze using a triad of wheels as a single-wheel replacement. This was actually the main concept early on in the design. But the drawback to this method is that the design takes up a lot of room and [PoChih] also made the deck much bulkier to keep you from getting a foot caught in the mechanism. The final design does away with the end-over-end concept and adopts a rocking mechanism. The board hangs from a bar which serves as the pivot between the two wheels. This way the wheels can absorb the brunt of the motions, and the base of the deck can slide across the fronts of the steps if needs be.

We were talking about this here at the Hackaday office and the point was made that this is like YT’s skateboard from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Did you hear that it’s headed to a theater near you?

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All Aluminum Longboard Shows Its Mettle

April 17, 2012 by 12 Comments

Reddit user [davvik] made an album to show off his custom all aluminum longboard.  The whole setup weighs about 12lbs, which is not exactly light for a board.  In spite of the added weight [davvik] comments that it is actually pretty responsive. The design is not uncommon but seems to have opted out of the speed holes in favor of structural rigidity, and frankly we love it.

We might not risk wearing sandals on the thing, but [davvik] says for the most part the whole setup has the feel of a wooden longboard, and the added weight makes it fun downhill.  Future plans for the board include machining out the ends, we think this would be a great opportunity for some DIY anodizing!

[via Reddit]

Double-pendulum Spray Gives This Graffiti Bot Some Style

November 17, 2011 by 16 Comments

Here’s an art exhibit that does its own painting. The Senseless Drawing Bot (translated) uses the back and forth motion of the wheeled based to get a double-pendulum arm swinging. At the end of the out-of-control appendage, a can of spray paint is let loose. We’re kind of surprised by the results as they don’t look like a machine made them.

The video after the break gives a pretty good synopsis of how the robot performs its duties. The site linked above is a bit difficult to navigate, but if you start digging you’ll find a lot of build information. For instance, it looks like this was prototyped with a small RC car along with sticks of wood as the pendulums.

We can’t help but be reminded of this robot that balances an inverted double pendulum. We wonder if it could be hacked to purposefully draw graffiti that makes a bit more sense than what we see here?

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Time-lapse Camera Dolly

November 30, 2010 by 21 Comments

[Brian Grabski] was asked by a friend to design and build a dolly that would move a camera during a time-lapse sequence. Above you can see the product of his toils, and the videos after the break show off the parts that went into the design and showcase effectiveness of the build.

The dolly is designed to ride on a pair of tubular rails. These can be bent to match any desired path and the dolly will have no problem following it thanks to two features. First, the triad of skateboard wheels on each of the three corners are mounted on a swivel bearing that allows them to rotate without binding. The other piece of the puzzle is a set of drawer slides that let the third support move perpendicular to the other two sets of rollers. A motor drives a geared wheel to move the dolly along the track with speed adjustments courtesy of the motor controller. There’s also a failsafe that will shut the system down when it runs out of track, protecting that fancy piece of hardware taking the pictures.

We’ve seen timelapse equipment that moves the camera in the past, but those hacks usually involve rotating the camera along and axis. This track-based setup is a well executed tool useful at all levels of photography. We can’t wait to see the arch-based dolly that is teased at the end of the demo video.

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Fan-powered Skateboard

March 25, 2010 by 37 Comments

[Chris Neal] is starting his hacking career young. He built this fan-powered skateboard for his fourth grade ‘Invention Convention’. The ideas were his own but he had some help with the construction from his uncle who owns a repair garage. On the back of the board there’s a motorcycle battery that powers the fan. We’re not sure where that fan came from, but apparently it can push a rider at about 3-5 MPH. [Chris] scored a free MacBook pro from this hack after being featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

For some reason this sparks the memory of the drill powered minibike.

[via Gizmo Watch]

Balancing Skateboard/segway

March 21, 2010 by 20 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UKxuVliaIA]

[XenonJon] got a lot of attention for a skateboard/segway style balancing platform he took to the Makerfaire in Newcastle. He decided to try to build it the cheapest and easiest possible way in an attempt to help others build their own. The build is documented very well, however you have to email him to request the code for the Arduino. Maybe after enough requests, he’ll just pop it online. We thought this looked familiar, so we searched the archive and found this very similar setup from back in 2005. Unfortunately, that project page appears to be gone now.