…code, cg, electronics, 3d printing…

I’d done a few experiments in the past with the Kinect / Skanect software (here, here).  The biggest issue (other than my underpowered Macbook Air) was that you’re tied via the USB cables to both the computer, and the electrical socket in the wall:  Hard to walk around things to scan them.

After looking at the wall-wart for the Kinect, I saw that it works off 12v DC:  Based on that, I picked up a small 12v Tysonic battery from Jameco, cut off the wall-wart, and soldered in some alligator clips to the power-cord.  Now the Kinect clips directly to the battery (which fits in my pocket), allowing me to hold the Kinect in one hand (based on this sweet 3d-printed grip), my laptop in the other, for completely untethered scanning.

So while it is still way more clunky than an iSense/iPad combo, that battery only cost me $15, and I got the Kinect used for $50:  A slightly lower price-point than a iSense/iPad purchase 😉

Continuing from  my previous post, I’ve (with the help of my visiting father) got the majority of everything assembled on my eBike conversion.  Again, the motor was purchased from AmpedBikes.com,  the SLA batteries from Gruber Power Services, and all other bags and whatnot from my local REI.

You can see more pics on Flickr here.

Took a bit longer than the “one hour” the web site described, but we got it done in the end.  Taking it out for it’s first run, it’s a truly eerie feeling hitting the thumb-throttle, and having the bike pull away with you on it.  A few things about its performance:

• It won’t win any speed awards 😛  But I have no doubt you can get up to 20-mph with little effort on your own.
• It will take you up hills without any peddling, but it is slow.  However, peddling with almost no effort will shoot you right up the hill.
• Those three batteries are quite heavy.  The bike, with the motor, is now much heavier than stock.  You could ride it on the level if you had to unassisted, but I wouldn’t want to go up any hills.  It is top heavy… going to look at methods for moving the batteries down off the rear-rack, into the middle of the lower frame.

Things left to do:

• Adjust front brakes:  Need to be made stronger.
• Clean\replace rear brakes.  With that much weight, are almost useless.
• Maye think about rear disk-brakes.
• Other standard maintenance.

The only main goof up was with the charging system:  The instructions give you no info on how to wire in the wires for the battery charger that are provided.  I emailed AmpedBikes, and they didn’t give much of an answer other than “people disconnect the battery from the controller and plug it into the charger”.  So we went out, got a quick-disconnect that would mate with the battery line, and wired that into the controller.  However, the positive and negative on the quick disconnect were opposite from what was on the battery lines, and we didn’t realize it until a day later.  But after swapping the connections, the charger is now happily running.  Hopefully I can ride it more tomorrow!

I’ll report more after I’ve ridden it around for a while