Recently in Projects Category

What am I doing starting another project?!

Bah, I ask myself that every time I start something new.  Some projects are destined to be worked on indefinitely and some are fated for abandonment, a few even become completed.  But there will always be new ideas to be exercised and vetted out.

I've always been frustrated with the workout tracking and journaling systems out there.  They just don't track what I want to track in ways I want to track them.  (I'm very selfish, you see.)

So, my latest little coding project is to come up with a system which will allow me to track my workouts the way I want them to be tracked.

Like the wide variety of projects I work on, I also do a lot of different types of workouts:martial arts, running, hiking, skating, gym weights, kettle bells, rowing, yoga... and so like that.  I want to be able to track hiking by elevation change, hiking duration and sweat level; but I need to track gym weight work by machine weight, repetitions and sets.

My bian system should be able to handle both beautifully, gracefully, seamlessly, and flawlessly.

And if my system can do all that, it can probably track just about any kind of metric.  Thus, I am not building a workout tracker, but a metrics tracker!  Tadaaaa!

The first thing I did this weekend was check the voltage on the new batteries.  They were each between 13.33 - 13.40.  I think at full charge they should be at about 16.92 volts, and fully depleted they're at about 10.80 volts.  So these are maybe a little less than half-charged.

Next up I wired everything for the controller.  Aiyah!  What a pain!  The contactor-resistor-switch setup for this KBS Kelly Controller is just a lot of stuff to have to mess with for a scooter. 

I wanted everything to be clean, so I used "professional" connectors wherever I could.  Which maybe wasn't so professional, I don't know.

I had a problem wiring the switch in because the wires were too small (22 gauge) to fit into any of my connectors.  So I ripped apart the switch and rewired it with 18 gauge wire.

Serene took a few pictures throughout the process:
I also revisited the mounting bracket for the motor.  I added a couple bolts to go all the way across to the other side of the frame, and hooked them to the bracket with hex connectors.  I think that's much more stable now. 

You can see the new bolts on the right side of this pic (click through for a better view):
Now I'm just hoping I can get some time to finish this up in the next few days.

The folks over at ModifiedElectricScooters.com really didn't like my idea of using the casing of the old 500 watt motor as a bracket for the new little 2800 watt one.  So, I've been thinking about how to make a bracket for this thing instead.

One detail of the new motor is that almost the entire casing rotates as the motor turns.  One of the ends doesn't, and that's where the bolt holes are.  At some point I realized that I could put the sprocket on the same side as the bracket.  And that led me to the solution I'm trying out now.

I went down to the hardware store with my wife this morning and grabbed a metal electrical box cover.  The biggest they had was 4" diameter, and I paid an extra 43 cents to get one with a knock-out in the middle.  Of course, then, my lovely wife wanted to pick out and buy a bunch of plants and pots, so 2 hours and something north of $100 later I finally got home.  Yes, I do love that woman.

Anyhow, back to my bracket:  When I got home, I used a little jig that came with the motor to draw the hole positions onto the metal cover.  I took a hammer and nail and tapped a little starter indent as close to the middle of each of those positions as I could.  Then I drilled them and punched out the knock-out hole in the middle.  That got me an almost perfectly sized bracket, like this.
The motor bolted on perfectly, and I rewarded myself with a can of Pepsi.  Mmmm, carbonated high fructose corn syrup.
I had ordered a 6mm sprocket when I ordered the motor, so I put that on.  I had to spray both the sprocket and the shaft with WD-40 and tap it with a mallet (ever so gently) to get it on.
When I was at the hardware store I had also picked up some bolts, nuts, washers and a few spacers.  I was trying to line things up so that the sprocket on the motor would line up with the sprocket on the wheel.  I had measured everything before-hand, but I forgot to account for the motor shaft... So, everything is off by about 1/2 an inch.  Heh heh.

I'll have to pick up some longer bolts and see how it all fits.
Since the bracket is just kind of sitting out there in space with a motor on it, I'm a bit concerned that the torque from turning the chain is going to make it flop around.  I added some big fender washers and extra nuts to try to brace everything.  But that might not be enough.  We'll see when I get the electronics working.
My final little exercise of the day was to plunk all the components in the frame and see how they fit space-wise.  I wasn't expecting it to be such a tight fit!  The controller and contactor take up quite a lot of space, and those batteries really aren't much smaller than the originals (though they are a lot lighter).
Next up will be wiring it all together.

I rather expected the new LiFePo batteries to be significantly smaller than the same capacity SLAs.  But they were only a little smaller.
The charger, however, was significantly larger.  Heh heh.
I didn't expect the new Brushless motor to be much smaller, but it's positively tiny.
The motor has me a bit worried.  For one I'm concerned that it won't be able to produce the amount of torque I'll need to propel myself.  But I guess I'll find that out soon enough.

My my biggest concern is that I can't figure out how to mount that little thing.  It's just too small.  It's like one of those little cell phones that were trendy back in the late '90's that you could barely hold on to.

So far my only idea is take apart the old 500 watter and see if I can mount this motor inside the case of that motor some how, some way.  Maybe I'll come up with a better plan...

It's been a bit over two weeks now since I ordered all the parts for my 1300 watt stand-up scooter project. 

Most of the parts arrived within a few days of the initial order.  I have a nice little cache building up in the den of all the shiny new parts.

But the motor... the motor did not show up.  I checked my order confirmation emails and found that I had received an email about the motor saying, "Your order has been sent to the warehouse for processing." 

I waited, each day watching as delivery trucks drove past my house without stopping.  I waited, each evening pulling up the web site showing the motor just so I could gaze at it wistfully.  The weekend came, but the motor didn't.

One day, midway through the second week, I forgot to watch vigilantly.  It was a busy day, I was preoccupied, I was distracted.  Suddenly, I realized I hadn't been watching for the delivery trucks.  My motor could be here, out on my porch, just waiting for me to open the door and pick it up!  I gasped and ran to the door swinging it wide... but there was no motor on the porch waiting for me to pick it up.  The porch was empty.  The porch was empty.

Another weekend came, and the motor still didn't.

Finally, I went back to the web site from which I'd ordered the motor.  I found that there was a status next to my order that said, "Processing."  I then found a note that said that the motor was on back-order and there was no expected date of delivery.

WHAT?!

I turned red in the face all the way up to the top of my bald head.  I got up and walked to the living room then marched back and sat down in front of my computer again. 

Amidst a flood of good old American self-righteous indignation, I canceled that order.  And it felt good!

It took a few minutes for me to realize that I had no motor, that no motor would be showing up, that I had to find another motor for this project.  (sigh)  Asearching I went, to find me a motor that would fit my needs. 

I never did find one that had the shaft-size I needed.  And I couldn't find a 6000 watt beastie either, at least not for a reasonable price.  So, I ordered a 2800 watt one; since I'm only planning to push 1300 watts anyhow, it's still way overkill.  And I ordered a new front sprocket to fit the shaft of the new motor I ordered.  Great.

Now imagine my surprise when the motor showed up on my porch The Next Day.

Right.  So, I got the parts, I'll take some pictures and throw them up.

I put together an architecture diagram to show the components, the data stores, and how they interact.

The Xenia project has been officially launched this weekend.

Several months ago I picked up an old beat up and broken down X-Treme X-500 scooter.  It was in pretty bad shape.  The throttle had been smashed, the controller was fried, the front brake was missing some parts, and, just to top it off, the front tire was flat.

That scooter, had it been in good working order, is one of the more powerful stand-up scooters you can buy.  It comes with a 500 watt motor, running on 48 volts.  That gives it great acceleration, and allows it to carry a good 200 pound load up a hill.

My plan is to put a 6000 watt brushless motor in it.  Yeah, that's not a typo.  It really is a six thousand watt motor.  But I'll be running it at 51.2 volts at a max of 25 amps, which will put it at roughly 1280 watts.

I'm putting in 4 12.8 volt 6.8 amp hour Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo) batteries, which should give me a range of around 5-8 miles, depending on weight, speed, surface conditions, tire pressure, moon phase, bean leach efficiency, proximity of hummingbirds, etc.

So, this weekend, I finally took the old beastie all apart, cleaned everything, remeasured everything, and ordered all the parts.

And so it begins...



The parts laying around are all the old parts I took out.  And that old 500 watt motor is heavier than it looks.

Now I get to wait for all the new parts to come in.

After running version 1 of my ABuddy through a few test cycles, I figured there was enough potential to rework it into a more viable project.  I already had several improvements I wanted to make, and as I started thinking about it seriously, came up with several more.

In the 1st version everything happened at once: the quotes were harvested, the analysis was made and the static report file was generated for that day.  If anything failed along the way, the whole thing just horked.

Fixing all that was pretty much the motivation for reworking it into version 2.  I wanted these key features:

• Tolerance of network issues.
• Separation of data and presentation.
• Self-maintained reference database of analyst recommendation scores.
• Flexible rule engine.

First up, I separated everything out to distinct components.  Like so:

Klepto: The sole responsibility of the klepto is to acquire the raw quote data.

Duke: The duke is the keeper of all the analyst recommendations.

Professor: The professor's job is to perform the needed analysis and report the final scores.

I probably could have made the Professor into two components rather than one, but I didn't want to be breeding rabbits.  The analysis step is actually just a matter of collating all the gathered stuff into the report itself, so those two tasks fit nicely together.

So that's it.  ;)

Over the holidays I spent an afternoon trying to get Jack to walk.

Jack, he's the guy who is the main character in some little game I'm thinking to write up.  I scribbled up some animation frames of him walking, then loaded them up into a little program I cobbled together to show animations.

It looked like some Junior High kid drew a little frame at the bottom of each page in his Chemistry book and then flipped the pages with his thumb.  Horrible!  Blech!

I'm not really sure why I was surprised at the results.  I basically did exactly that, except I scanned the pages into a computer and had the computer flip the pages for me.  Same difference, neh?!

So, I guess I need to come up with a better way to get the animation frames built.

I've been mulling over the prospect of putting together a game over the past month or so.  I do this every once in a while.  I ponder and consider and think and plan.  Sometimes I actually do something about it.

Anyhow, I have this vision in my head for the game, how it will look and feel, ways to make each level feel unique yet still feel like a cohesive part of the game, etc.

So, a few days ago I did a couple sketches to start defining what the main player might look like.

I wanted a chubby, curly-headed, round-faced farmer type guy.  This was my first pass:

I wasn't very happy with this one.  He looks retarded, and of an undetermined gender.  Also, his fingers are... wrong.

So, I swung around and made another pass.  Here's the 2nd round:

I was much happier with this one.  He looks confident, yet lovable.  Cheerful, yet determined.  Just the sort of character a game might need.  I think I'll play around with him some more and see what comes out of it.