Comments (1)

By Jerome, June 13, 2011 9:56 pm

I first saw this electric bike here.

What I love about this design is the way it folds up into this very small footprint. Have a look at the video:

It’s about 20kg (44pounds) and the max speed is 25kph (16mph).

I like the very simple graphic interface.

There website is here: http://www.voltitude.com/ and they have this neat video in french: http://www.voltitude.com/news/voltitude-on-swiss-national-tv.html
They say, they spend a lot of personal money on the project.  They have 800 pre-order and the Chinese are interested!

In the video they talk about the price and it should be between 4000 to 5000 Swiss Franc (CHF) so that is $4782 to $5980 US.

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By Jerome, August 16, 2010 10:48 am

I was surfing the web and saw this neat balancing electric scooter. It is created by Ryno motors. Here are some videos:

Here are the specs of the prototype
Range Up to 30 miles
Max Speed 25 mph
Recharge Time LiFePo4 1 ½ hours
Tire Diameter 25”
Weight of Bike 125 lbs.
Footprint 16” x 34”
Max Hill Incline 30%
Max Rider Weight 250lbs
Turning Radius Zero to 3 ft.
Estimated Retail Cost $3,500

You can find more informations on there website
http://rynomotors.wordpress.com

This looks like the Bombardier Embrio concept. The Embrio has smaller front wheel that acts like a stability control when the Embrio is stopped or traveling below 12mph.

Or the Canadian Benjamin Poss Gulak, with his one unicycle with two wheels.

Here is the new U2 version. It is a hybrid between a motorcycle and what you see there. I opens like scissors and unfolds into a motorcycle. (Not really like scissors, more of a  linear motion)

I just notice that Ben has a blog! http://bpgulak.com/

He his working on this neat track scooter call DTV.

Thanks to Hung Chang for is cool blog wackyboards where I learn about Ryno motors. http://wackyboards.blogspot.com/2010/08/ryno.html

PS- It is RYNO motors and not Rhino like the url

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By Jerome, May 15, 2010 9:47 am

On one of my favorite blog, hackaday, they had a post about MakerFaire 2009 business card back in 2009 http://hackaday.com/2009/05/30/business-cards-at-maker-faire/ In the article it say “We’ve also heard rumors that [Jérôme Demers] has bunch of resistor bending cards.”

I can tell you that this is not a rumor, here is the proof!

It is time for me to present to you my business card. During my internship at www.Solarbotics.com I was fortunate to get and design my own business card for the MakerFaire 2009. I had some crazy ideas and took effort to get this one accepted! It was finally accepted by my boss.

The idea is to make this resistor bender so it can be useful to you when you assemble a kit. On one of  my semester project at University, we had this huge PCB that was a amplifier and we had to solder a bunch for 1/4W resistor. I then decided to make a little quick and dirty resistor bender out of alumiun to help me in assembling my PCB.  It turn out to be really usefull.

Here is the picture of alumium version.

Then the prototyping started using my printer. I started with normal business card and cut holes in it then I use CorelDRAW to make the final version.

These one came from CorelDRAW and then printed on a normal printer. I used cardboard paper.

The plan of my original idea was to able to bend two type of resistor leg width.

A other idea, was  when the card was finish, it could also rest like a mini name plate on your desk my desk.

At maker faire, I meet a lot of nice people and here is some cool business card I got.

This one is a sticker!

Limor had those limited aluminium card. I got the last one I also got her Laser cut SPIROGRAPH cards!

Here are some tips if you ever get other people business card. The first one was a tip that I learned from Dave (my boss at Solarbotics) when we went to this really nice electronics expo.

1. Take notes. When you are at a faire, you see a lot of people and get a lot of business card. So write down immediately on the back of the card what you where talking with that person. In my case, I had sponsorship proposal, website link, product samples, etc.  We once help a mechanical engineer from 3M and he gave us his buisness card and he told us “if you need anything from 3M, you tell me and I will make it happen.” So I wrote down the time and every detail about the problem/project we help him solved. We never know what will happen next! 3M is one huge company!

   Here is a example of stuff I wrote on a card after talking to Collin Cunningham we where talking about this website that provide a single place to uploads to major video sharing sites. I have no clue why I did not write that link on his buisness card…
   

   

2. Make a backup. After MakerFaire, I had a lot of card. I then got this idea to make a backup and took pictures of all my business card just in case I lost them.
3. Get in touch. After a few days, send some email to thanks people you meet and get the first inital contact. That will help in the futur when you will need there expertise.

I hope you enjoyed, if you want my card, please come and see me at the solarbotics booth at MakerFaire 2010! See you there!

ps- I will also have my new Beetle bot kit!!

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By Jerome, April 11, 2010 12:02 am

I found this amazing render of 3 wheels scooter. When you go fast, you are sometime non stable on your scooter. I sort of know this with my crazy electric scooter. This concept of using 3 wheels and this steering makes it really attractive. It is call the Triton by Cikaric Dragan.

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By Jerome, April 4, 2010 12:02 am

I was surfing some great design blog like Yankodesign and found this cool scooter concept by Daniel Dayag.

That looks completely insane! I then when googling and found those other great concepts of scooters. Design boom

“city bug” by omer menashri

“trekrider” by boaz zucker

“armadilo scooter” by ravit biton

I like that design because it folds really small. The hard part if you ever build something like that, would be having this latch system to unlock each segments.

“twister” by asaf koren

I like this system, you pivot the middle part to make a little chopper and sit down or ride it like a scooter upward. One of my design idea is a mix between gokart and scooter. I have some drawings I will share one day.