Electric Go Kart

A complete conversion from a gasoline powered go kart into an electric go kart featuring a full control system with feedback.

Pictured here are the four motors powering the vehicle, motorcycle batteries, brake lights, electronic speed controllers, and various other components of the control system.

The dashboard of the vehicle is outfitted with an LCD screen that displays current power being sent to the left and right drives. A potentiometer inserted into the steering shaft allows the system to dynamically alter motor speed based on turning.

Reprogramming the software running onboard the system.

The system uses a modified set of steering wheel/pedals from a racing video game. The system has variable speed control by use of this method.

The electronic bits that make everything actually work.

Mini GPS Autonomous Car for Under $100

First off, if you haven’t watched episode #5 of The Tech Junkies, I’d have to insist you do that now:

Okay, so let’s get onto the details. As seen in the video, we hacked apart a $15 Radioshack R/C car for the purpose of outfitting it with a GPS chip. We ripped out the motor that was being used for steering and replaced it with a low-cost $10 servo. We also cut out the existing electronics so that only the wires coming from the battery and running to the drive motor we’re left. From here we took a breadboard and connected up our H-Bridge drive chip.

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Project: Ethernet Enabled Twitter Client

For my latest project I wanted to build a microcontroller powered device I could hang on my wall (or pin to at the time of writing this). I decided to build a Twitter reader, but not just any old “LCD connected to a PC” setup. No, I wanted this thing to be computer independent.

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