Here it is:

Yes I also got this ZAP electric belt driven scooter. It has inflatable wheels.

It looks like an Altered electric skate board http://www.alteredelectricskateboards.com/boards.htm. A cheaper version.

It’s probably a 200 to 300W motor. Or it could be 600W, I am pretty sure it’s 600W.  Here is the china version of it 
http://fangda.en.hisupplier.com/product-6295-Electric-Skateboards.html

Like you probably imagine, I already started to make it apart.

It is in a very good shape. The problem is, the remote control. It use a wireless remote control! I don’t have it and Rudy was not able to find it.  No a problem right. I did try some reverse engineering to see if I could directly send signal to the motor controller. Not really. The controller does not receive a simple analog signal. I took the controller apart and saw a microcontroller under the thick black epoxy. I guest it receive serial data from the RF receiver. OR it’s simply broken!
My first idea is to design and build my own electronics using a Wii remote control! It’s a DC motor, should not be that hard!

After some searching, there is a couple of skateboard company

http://www.e-glide.com/
http://www.rokitscience.co.uk/
http://www.alteredelectricskateboards.com/
http://www.2c-boards.de/
http://www.elektroskate.co.uk/ (My antivirus tells me not to go there)
http://www.mo-bo.de/

I don’t know if you guys recall hackaday post entitle “1480W scooter motor guarantees head trauma“?  There was a pretty intense debate on helmet use! 79 comments in total! Charles from MIT also had is word on the use of helmet. He also has more crazy rolling device but does not wear a helmet.

I was able to stick my GoPRO on it. I had my GoPRO for more then 1 year now. Very useful and great video quality.  I do have a lot of videos of the scooter but did not edit them. Working on it. I am right now working on something else… look at the picture and tell me what you see…

Here is a clue.

Yes, that’s me doing the robot in the middle!

Btw, my last internship day is friday!! After that it’s scooter and robot sumo time! I also have an important final years engineering project that has to be done before class start at the end of this month. Well, the project ends in December but we did I work hard this summer. There is one last important thing to be done. No worries, I will have tons of info coming in a few months.

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAoI78p2p1M

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.

I was blown away by the design until I read a comment that linked to this:

This is NC one V2

In my personal opinion, I think that the bolt holding the motor should be replace by something else. There is 4 of them, it’s heavy! When I worked in Hong Kong, on RC toys helicopters they use to remove every single grams of weight they could! 1 grams can change everything on very small craft like this one. I would of tried a press fit plastic adapter. The plastic adapter clips in the PCB and the motors is the press fit.

Look at that sexy components layout! Very well done!

They get a normal squared PCB and they cut with the CNC.

Here is NC one v1

Very small!

You can visit there website here : http://www.nanokopter.at/tiki_v6/ ( in German). They are working on V3! It should be ready this summer… June 2011.

Here is the link of the first quadracopter: http://www.daedalus.nu/category/crazycopter/

If you like flying things, check this other amazing German builder: http://www.smartflyer.de/index.html (In German) He has been building quadracopter for years!

If you know about other small quadracopter, please leave a comment!

I then send it back to Hobbyking to get a new one. Took a while until I had to send them a email go get feedback on this return. They explain that they tried it and it was working. Here is is 1 out of 3 pictures they took.

Ok fair. I have proof it does not works and they have proof it works. What happen next?

This mean that the charger has some intermittent problem. I tried to explain that to hobbyking customer service and they told me that I need to pay $23.59  for shipping to get it back or they can send it with my next order. I said no, your product is defective, send me a new one!

But check this out, I when in the reviews of the items and found this:

Thought I found the perfect charger.. Worked great for 2 days charging 4x 7 cell nimh packs at 5.3 amps each! Fan was quiet, temps were good, then port#1 failed for no apparant reason. Waiting on HK’s response. Hoping I can return to US warehouse.

First, within a day of receiving one of these chargers, one of the LCD readouts went bad (Port 4). I have confirmed that the problem is with the LCD unit and it needs to be replaced. Contacted HK to see if hey could send me a LCD module but they said no I would have to return the unit. By the time I get done with shipping both ways, this unit is no longer a good deal.

I also had problems with output 4. If I started charging the display shows error messages, unknown characters or nothing, and it stops immediately charging.

This charger works. It’s not the best balancer, but it works. I did have a temporary glitch with the 4th port display, which seems to have sorted itself out somehow.

I have had this charger for several months. It worked perfectly for quite a while, now charger port 4 does not function correctly.

You can clearly see that there is a problem. That problem is intermittent. I did mention those review but they said nothing back in return.

Who is going to win?

I just send one last email explaining all that in a very simple way… Let’s wait and see!

It’s been a while! I just finish my semester and going my last intern in Québec. I will be working all summer long until September.

Here is my latest research on fingernail growth rate.

This is serious experimentation! I was watching TV with my dad and they where talking about this woman who died in the woods and explained how long and where she been before she died by analyzing her hair.

An university in Ontario have developed this technique where they analyse hair to see what type mineral is found in it. They explained that she was a traveling along the west of Canada because certain mineral are found more in Alberta. (Something along those lines)

So anyway, my dad and I where wondering how long does the hair growth after death. Then we start talking about other stuff that still growth when you are dead, like fingernail. We then both made a marking on our thumbs with a razor blade and start forgetting about it… till one day (may 5th) I took a last picture.

There you go! 96 days!

So what about the electric scooter you ask? Well, I am waiting on my broken charger from hobbyking to ride it soon! I will explain tomorrow in my next post.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Fart-O-Meter/

Yes you read “arduino” and “fart” in the same sentence!

It’s already featured on:

• Hackaday.com http://hackaday.com/2011/02/16/arduino-fart-o-meter/
• Hackedgadget.com http://hackedgadgets.com/2011/02/16/fart-meter-project-build/
• and Solarbotics.com http://www.solarbotics.com/news/2011/02/ex-interns-and-their-projects/!

This video will explain everything!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv8-mPuJaQ0

Here it is mounted on the chair directly. It is wireless!

This is the emitter on the chair. That is a barebone arduino.

And here is the receiver. The servo motor simply points to the fart intensity on the white sheet of paper.

Those are nRF2401A Transceiver with Chip Antenna (Sparkfun sku: WRL-00152). Pretty small and easy to use with the Arduino. There is a library for those modules.

I had a lot of fun playing with the MQ-4 methane sensor. The black thing around it is a protective sleeve that I ended up not using. Those suckers heat up and consume 175mA! There is a little heater inside. The moment gas is present, it evaporates and change the output voltages! Fun to use but hard to test… I always had a hard time to try to fart on that thing, I could not fart on command. It’s only when I disconnected the sensor and Arduino from my computer that I started farting like hell! I was piss because it takes up to a minute to heat up and be ready to use. (btw, you can use the butane from a lighter to test it. There is less joy)

But my good old friend Manuel Grégoire save the day by fixing everything like a pro! He also study EE with me at school  and he is a very good webmaster!

Thanks Manu!

Check his website  Agence Web Sherbrooke !
http://www.ivizion.ca/

I was lucky enough to be in HK for Halloween! It was insane!

Why am I wearing this costume of “NO PICTURES”?  Here is a hint:

They are everywhere! They made me fell like a STAR!

Check out this awesome panoramic pictures taking with my Sony camera! It is photoshop to make it clear and nice (ok not really).

I have uploaded all those pictures on my flickr account. You can see the set here http://bit.ly/brtmqC

I also made a instructables for fun on how I made my costume. You can vote for it too.
http://www.instructables.com/id/No-pictures-costume-for-Hong-Kong-Halloween/

I explain everything about my story on how I got the idea.

I also meet those awesome yoyo player from Hong Kong!  Yeah, I use to play yoyo like a maniac back in the days. Here is a pictures with the gang. It’s because of them that I when to that crazy Halloween party (twice)!

If they look good, it’s because the guy who took the pictures is a good photograph!!