Category Archives: Projects

Craft, Hardware, or Software projects I’ve done

Traction Battery Volt Meter

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A red LED volt meter mounted in the dash

The S-10 electric pickup has an analog voltage gauge in the instrument cluster which is useful to get a general picture of how the battery voltage is changing while you drive, but hard to read with any real accuracy. The previous owner had also wired 12v and 120v wires into the center of the dash in an attempt to set up a digital volt meter on the traction batteries. But the 12v supply burnt out his volt meter, and when I purchased the truck it was dead. I bought a 200 volt LED panel display from a surplus supply house for $12 to replace it. I also added a 1A fuse on the 120v supply line in the engine compartment as a safety feature.
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S-10 Electric Pickup

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Side view of the Electric S-10 Pickup
Our new commuter vehicle (and my new toy) is a second-hand electric conversion S-10 pickup. We purchased it from the original converter after he had upgraded to a Ford Ranger EV.

It is powered by 20 six-volt lead acid (PbA) golf cart batteries wired in series, giving a nominal 120 volt system. Sixteen of the batteries are stored in boxes under the tilt-up pickup bed. The remaining four batteries are under the hood, where the radiator would be on an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. It can be charged via either the QuickCharge 120V charger plugged into a standard 15Amp outlet (which takes 13 hours) or the Zivan NG3 high frequency 240V charger (which takes 7 hours and a 240 volt outlet).

16 six volt batteries under the tilt-bed of the pickup
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Building an OTA HDTV Antenna

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Screws and Washers holding coat hanger parts to the board
This week I built a TV antenna. Previously, we had been using a commercially purchased Radio Shack antenna with a built in pre-amplifier, but we left it mounted on the (tall, exterior) wall of our previous house. We had planned on purchasing a new antenna to place in our attic when I found plans on the Internet for how to make your own out of coat hangers and scrap wood. (Really, what CAN’T you find plans for on the Internet?) Continue reading →

DragonCon 2010 Mysterio Pictures

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In the Parade, I was wearing the plastic “safety” globe. Visibility out of it was about 2%. I basically followed a succession of brightly colored costumes (Storm’s white hair, wonder woman’s bright red cape, Zoo Hercules’ gold reflective bandoleer, etc).
Mysterio in DragonCon2010 parade

mysterio in DragonCon 2010 parade

Photo by Kirk Damato.

Mysterio in DragonCon 2010 parade - photo by Amber Croxall

Photo by Amber Croxall

The photos below show the glass sphere which I wore in more static settings indoors and for photo-shoots. Thanks to Chris, Becky and the photographers named in the captions for sending me photos from Saturday and Sunday! Continue reading →

Backflip wifi tether with Ubuntu Linux

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After gaining root access on my Motorola Backflip phone, I was (eventually) able to get wifi tethering working using the Barnacle application (version 0.5.1).

In Barnacle, I have “skip wpa_supplicant” checked, the channel set to six (6), and DHCP set up to use the OpenDNS DNS server (208.67.222.222) although the DNS server option may not be needed. (I had to also manually specify the DNS server IP on my client anyways.)

I had to pull some tricks on the client side (Ubuntu Linux) to make everything work. Specifically, setting MTU size to 1250 and setting up my own DNS name server IP.
The script I use to make this all work with ad-hoc networking on Ubuntu is as follows: Continue reading →

Mysterio Costume Update

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Front view of costume with plastic sphere
Front view of the costume with glass globe
I have been working on the cloth portions of my costume, as well as purchasing an alternate (plastic) globe from a reader comment. Above are two photos of the jumpsuit, boot covers, bracers, gloves, cape, and sphere (glass and plastic) being worn together. The first picture is the plastic globe (harder to see out of, safer, more gray than silver) and the second picture is the glass sphere (very reflective, easier to see out of, made of glass).

PBS Wishing – Android App to find out if a book is popular!

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Main application screen, showing the book "Postmistress" having 610 people wishing for it. I have developed an application for Android Phones (OS version 1.5 or higher) that allows you to enter an ISBN from a book (or scan the barcode if your phone has a camera) and find out how many people are wishing for the book on PaperbackSwap.com. If a lot of people are wishing for a book, it’s a good indication that the book is popular, which may mean it is worth reading. (Or at least, if you decide you don’t like it, it will be easy to get a book credit for it on paperbackswap.com.)
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