new crazy toy - Wheely king

setup:
-hpi wheely king
-7700kv brushless motor + Mamba max pro castle creations ESC.
-5000 mAh Lipo battery 20C (100 A max continuous)
- stock pinion is 21 teeth gear (not optimal) but the motor heats up considerably (so i ordered some 15-14 teeth pinion to see how it behaves)
it does wheelies all the time on grass and rocks and really goes fast! i don t think i dared to use maximum power yet.
the runtime varies a lot depending on the surface: 19 min on grass and 28 min or rocks only. with the lowest motor timing setting on the ESC (electonic variator, supposedly to decrease motor heating and increase run time)

onboard measured GPS speed (brushless):

it does not look very fast but it is. i could not even push the power to the maximum cause it was bouncing too much already at 1/2 throttle power. The max. speed measured on grass by onboard GPS is 35 km/h (not maximum speed on the throttle).

other setup:
i tried also the 27Turn high torque brushed motor given with the truck but it goes very slow and is quite noisy with my old 40 Amp electronic variator from 2002.

WATCH OUT
if you have the Mamba max pro esc: the stick programming in brushed mode does not work on the version below 1.25 firmware! it needs an update:
http://www.castlecreations.com/downloads/frh-mamba_max.html
and i discovered it at my own expenses: i tried to program it with the stick and it stayed in brushless mode with a high torque brushed motor on... at the end of the programming, the ESC initialised and gave strong pulses to the motor that probably damaged the transmission's gear set!!! cause it broke dead when i replaced the brushless motor later on.

----------------old post:---------------------

here s a comment from a guy who baugh a similar setup than me.

"bought the 6900 system..............WOW. It goes 30+ (mph) with 6 cells at 22/93 and is totaly controlable. Not to many wheelies, as you guys mentioned, but lots of intense power and speed. I got 40+ minutes of runtime with a 3900 mAh battery pack and the motor didn't even brake a sweat. Great investment."

"The 7700Kv motor lets it all hang out for 6 cell or 2s lipo bashing and racing. On 6 cell NiMH the 7700Kv motor turns an easy 45mph in standard 10th scale buggies and trucks with standard gearing. With 2s lipo packs, you can expect 50mph for very large tracks or high speed runs."

i ll have a 5000mAh battery and a 7700 rpm/volt brushless motor (equivalent to 5 Turn loops, 100A current consumption max., +/- 390watt max. @ 7.4 volts (power's law not totally respected here (V . A = W).
it will get my hair disordered!
i can't wait to receive it this spring!

how i fixed the cd on mini stereo sony MHC-C50

Sony MHC-C50
After 15 years i received it, the cassette deck A stopped working and i had more and more trouble getting the 5 CD trays to load a cd and read it without giving it a kick on the side to load.

The big problem with those old machines that have a lot of mechanics is that the electric motors are linked with the gears with a rubber. The latter really suffering with time.

i had to completely dismantle the 50 or more screws to disassemble the rack containing the cd tray system.

In the middle:
the huge big terrific cause of the problem: the rubber which obviously slid and did not transfer the movement to the mechanism loading the cd on the laser trolley and rotation motor. I simply added a cheap rubber to it. It is a cheap solution and i have no idea how long the rubber "caoutchouc" is going to stay intact with the ozone in the air.
of course the location of the problem was hard to reach. i had to remove the cd rack and connectore and so on and it involved removing and replacing more than 50 screws.



the cassette deck A is more difficult to fix cause the rubber got itself wrapped on itself and got stuck. trying to rotate it i broke it. i did not fix it now cause the rubber is a special band.

the cd player works now :)

train modelling - HO scale- electrically controlled cabin doors (a new invention - Copyright mczouav)

i had an idea... accidentally, when i had the mechanical pieces of a "broken" machine in my hands. I always liked to have a look at mechanical pieces patially dismantled de visu because it is sometimes quite ingeniously designed. Suddenly BANG! light turned on. that was the beginning of several hours of "pure adaptative creativity" :)

Here is the final result.
Try to guess what is the mechanical part i used to command the motion of the doors of the steam engines models cabin (obvious even if you are not a geek... a clue? it used to read dvds).



The motor is linked to a 1/2 W resistor of 470 Ohm (+/-) and a stabilised 12VDC power source with a simple polarity inverter switch (with neutral position stable).
the connection to the doors is made by nylon fishing wire. Each door is pushed open by a pen spring. The spring was stuck into a piece of polypropylene or polystyrene pushing the spring into the plastic with a hot iron.

- rotating bridge with an engine house with moving parts video -



Homemade automagic electric door opening of model train anger - rotating bridge for model train in action with 4 steam engines moving. movement of the machines is not perfectly smooth because track were oxydated.

ATI proprietary linux video drivers are buggy with coot!

ATI now belongs to AMD. Download the proprietary driver from http://ati.amd.com . Recently the (open source) radeon driver shipped with Xorg has improved DRI capabilities that are sufficient for crystallographic purposes.

using Xorg ATI driver on Mandriva 2010, coot works without the error:

'The error was 'BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)'.
(Details: serial 661 error_code 1 request_code 143 minor_code 19)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)'

Disable 3D desktop effects is recommanded (which did not work anyway on mandriva 2010 wit ATI card), otherwise you get a blank screen and have to undo the settings via terminal. Furthermore, do not try to use the proprietary ATI 'fglrx' drivers, since they made things even worse, at least in my personal experience (with an ATI Radeon X1650).

edit from:
http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de/ccp4wiki/index.php/Visualization:_graphics_cards_and_3D#ATI

seyssins s car park & Chamrousse 9-1-0 with Ana and Stu

Back from hollidays on 4th jan

the next friday moring we woke up with a thick layer of snow everywhere!



before shoveling:



getting the car out:



i had some help from Alexis to shovel


the car park




the fun in Chamrousse:






some frozen friends:


getting back home, i was amazed the hill road leading home was still covered with a few cm of snow but still i tried to get the car up.
look at the top part of the hill road!


it worked: the trick is not to be too rude with the throttle and keep speed. i could feel the car slide sideways several times, particularly when i was passing the bumpers which made the car shake. Oufti gamin!

Noel 2009 - Be- Greece

In belgium:

Sarah arrived a bit exhausted 8 h later than scheduled because she missed her plane connection in Atlanta due to delays, and had to fly to Amsterdam instead of Brussels, which revealed to be a good solution, also brussels airport closed the next day due to large amounts of snow on the tracks. Her bag did not make it at the same time, she had to wait 6 days before getting it, just on xmas day! the day before our departure to Greece...

Snow, patinoire in front of the house



Bruxelles, grand place, ice skating, le marche de noel.





where is little jesus? ah maybe not yet born ;)



resto with Estelle, Audrey and Anton in Bruxelles.


Tournai, la cathedrale, le tresor de la cathedrale, les tapisseries.





horse sausages.. heuu bof


coin coin


les ascenceurs hydrauliques de Stépy-Thieux from 19th century on the canal du centre.


Noel! the crazy gift lottery! we had to pick cards and get the smaller number... but my sister and husband did not stop getting all the little gifts! aaahhhhh Sarah finally picked the lowest card number, she got so excited that she tried to open the package fast but she did not know it was a pot of confiture and it opened and spilled on her knees... oops

Greece trip.










Sarah! a new friend? the reconstitution of an old text, the original stone is darker.


really nice weather in there!

Corinth



Acrocorinth





the canal of corinth : 6.5 km long, at its top, the cliffs are 90m above sea water level. dug in the 30's




that s what you get for eating too much feta cheese... the bed bends with your butt s weight and you get a big belly


what is her preferred color?

the nightmare of street workers: the random discovery of ruins of houses everytime they dig !


Old Corinth





NB: contrary to what touristic guides say, the museum & archeological site of old corinth CLOSE at 15h00 and not 17h00!! we missed it because of that.

Video part 1/3: in Belgium + Greece (delphi & acrocorinth & old corinth & the canal)


Athens

you must see that video: the replacement of the guards of the Greek parlement.




the temple of xxx one of the 100 columns fell in the 19th century during a big storm... the arch of Adrian it has funny writings :)



the resto, not eating alone ;)


National greek archeological museum











oops she fell asleep after so much walking. And 2 h earlier she told me she was ready to walk more in the cute little streets of Athens ;)



video:



Cap Sounion, the temple of Poseidon





here is a picture for the touristic guides: NO the temple of poseidon is no opened everyday!! notably it is closed on 1st january. thank you Michelin.

Departure of Sarah:



after a terrorist tried to explode himself over Detroit,Mi, the security was increased in airports, only 1 bag was therefore allowed in cabin. Sarah had to pay an extra of 50 euros to get the bag checked in. funny that she saw some people with 2 bags in the plane... the airline companies are inconsistant!