Hackszine.com: Transportation Archives

Archive: Transportation

June 18, 2008

Ugly your bike

I've never been able to get comfortable with locking my bike to a rack and leaving it unattended. If you have a nice ride, no matter how nice of a lock you have, it always seems like you're just asking for someone to rip it off or monkey with it. A bike securely-locked but stripped naked to the frame is someone's really bad day.

The latest trend among bike aficionados here in Minneapolis is camouflage. The tactic is to try and out-ugly everything in sight, making other rides more appealing to the predator. It has the anti-theft advantage of riding a super-crappy, completely undesirable bike, but it's just a facade. In many instances, layers of duct tape, rust stickers, a nasty fender, and crackled paint are hiding a couple thousand dollars worth of high-performance machine.

MAKE Volume 11 had a comprehensive article on the subject, which is available in an online format. The photo above is from the bikehacks site. They've written on the subject a couple of times and have a few useful tips, including an "undo" feature: wrapping the frame in saran wrap before applying stickers and paint.

MAKE V11 - UGLY Your Bike
Ways To Ugly Your Bike
Ugly Your Bike #2: A Case Study

June 14, 2008

GasPriceWatch - find cheaper pumps

I really don't drive that much, so when I fill up every month or two, the experience is normally accompanied by equal parts shock and foul language. The strange thing is that the price of gas is always significantly more expensive in the city, and every once in a while, you can happen across a random station that is selling fuel for more than 10 cents a gallon less than everyone else.

It's counter productive to drive all over looking for the cheapest pump, so instead you can use the GasPriceWatch Google Maps mashup to surf pump prices from home. Site visitors report in with updated pump prices, and hopefully there will be a good find along your normal commute route.

Google Maps Mania has a few links to some other maps-related gas tools that you may also be interested in. As for me, I'm sticking to pedaling.

GasPriceWatch
Finding Cheap Gas on Google Maps

April 25, 2008

Simple bike computer from scratch

Here's an excellent tutorial that'll show you how to build and program a bike computer using a PIC and a homemade PCB, all from scratch using free tools:

The bulk of the article that follows is to try and take the mystique out of the many steps involved in going from an idea to a finished product.
You won't of course be ready to go into full scale industrial production, but you will now be aware of the things that have to be done, and know how to do them.
We will look at and master:

Hardware steps

Making a PCB from scratch
How to use the FREE tools
Software steps

Very basic Pic source coding

Using MPASM
Getting the HEX into the PIC

With the nice months ahead, you might as well be out riding. Why not keep track of all those miles on a computer of your own design?

Simple Bike Computer - Learn how to program a PIC

April 24, 2008

Open GPS Tracker

Now this looks like fun:

The Open GPS Tracker is a small device which plugs into a $20 prepaid mobile phone to make a GPS tracker. The Tracker responds to text message commands, detects motion, and sends you its exact position, ready for Google Maps or your mapping software. The Tracker firmware is open source and user-customizable.

From the looks of things, the total cost to build a remote-operated GPS tracking unit is on the order of $100. The design uses a prepaid cell phone to receive commands and report its position via SMS.

I'm sure there are a number of boring nefarious application for this that will freak out a lot of folks, but just think about the more interesting possibilities. You could add this to a weather balloon or autonomous flying vehicle easily track it down if there were any flight problems. A bunch of people in any city could put these in their cars on a short time delay and automatically report traffic flow conditions. You could even roll your own "lo-jack" system that would let you find your car if it was stolen, only with this your car's location is only being reported to you instead of a monitoring station, actually increasing your privacy.

Open GPS Tracker

April 21, 2008

Post your Earth Day hacks

In celebration of my favorite planet, I'd like to open the comments up to any and all Earth Day hacks, links and activities. Think of it as an opportunity to quickly catalog a list of ideas and tools that can be used for the other 364 days of the year.

Here are a few simple things that you can do tomorrow. I figure it's as good a day as any to start forming a few practical habits, so for my list, I just chose a number of things that you can easily make a regular part of your day.

Bike to work. If you need to find a route, citybikemap.com is a good user contributed resource
Compost the garbage. If you don't have a composter, here are some construction ideas from Instructables: Sinmple Pentagon Composter; Mini Wooden Portable Compost Bin; Trench Composter
Avoid the purchase of anything with excess packaging
Turn lights off when not in use. Convert remaining incandescent bulbs to CFL
Check faucets and toilets for leaky valves. For your toilets, shut off the water while you are at work and see if the water level goes down in the tank. It's a common problem that's easy to fix.
Print no emails.
Bring a mug to work and use it instead of styrofoam or paper cups.
Reconnect with nature: start a garden; go for a hike; take the kids out and identify some plants and birds.
Reclaim some of the yard for native plants and grasses.
Encourage others to do the same, and share your own Earth-friendly tips and hacks.

You may be more or less ambitious, but I think this represents something that's feasible for much of the year. It'd be cool to get a read on what the hacker community is doing to make a positive impact on the globe, so make sure to post your own Earth Day hacks and resolutions in the comments.

April 12, 2007

Bicycle Lift: Smart Urban Transportation Hack

One thing that discourages people from using a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation is that it's a little undesireable to show up to school or work sweaty. In hilly cities, riders are forced to heavily exert themselves during a typical commute, pretty much guaranteeing perspiration and discouraging bicycle use.

Jarle Wanvik, an avid bicyclist in Trondheim Norway, was able to solve this problem with his bicycle lift invention, a cable driven stepping-pad that pushes bicyclists up a steep hill that lies between Trondheim's city center and the University. Though this prototype hasn't been duplicated anywhere else, it's an awfully clever hack that addresses the very real problem of encouraging human-powered urban transportation.

The Bicycle Lift: Sustainable Urban Transport -[via] Link.