[Hackability] Hello and welcome!

[Zach]

Hey all!
  Don't forget to click "reply all" or copy and paste "hackability at lists.noisebridge.net"  otherwise the email will just go to the one sender and it won't be a real list ;)

Can't wait to see your blog with all those pics and to start documenting on the internets some real scooter hacks!  Can you believe no one is doing this stuff ANYWHERE and putting it online??  It's hard to believe, but I guess we will have to pioneer this important step in making life easier for our bretheren!  I think mobility scooters and chairs are one of the highest achievements of technology today-- it's something so incredibly useful for people.  It's about time we document and reverse engineer stuff!

Liz, Susan, and myself were scooter hacking a bit yesterday and I'm very excited about this:

http://www.ti.com/product/bq2013h

A *very* sexy gas gauge all-in-one IC that incorporates current, voltage, temperature, and I think even some kind of charge state and/or cycling use ot determine the health of batteries.  All in a 14-pin SOIC!  It's nutty.  I think we could design a board for real cheap with this and make it plug into the charging port of scooters to give everyone a much needed battery life indicator (that doesnt suck like the ones on there).

Anyways, I'm down for the hackmeet of course, and I think the classroom sounds fine as long as we remove the tables and chairs so everyone has access.  Looking forward to meeting more like minded scooter hackers!

Zach





----- Original Message -----
From: Liz Henry <liz at bookmaniac.org>
To: hackability at lists.noisebridge.net
Cc: 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 4:20 PM
Subject: [Hackability] Hello and welcome!


Hello, accessibility hackers!   Thanks for joining the list!

Please feel free to invite people to it - it is an open list. Though
everyone on it so far is in the SF Bay Area I expect more people will join.

I'd love to see us have a meetup and fix or hack something in the next
month, maybe on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  I'd set up the middle
classroom (Turing) at Noisebridge to do this.  If someone had a good
idea to do something we could all give feedback and help out or just
watch and take notes.  I am interested in documenting any sort of mods
just so that there can be that much more public information on
wc/powerchair/scooter hacking.

Part of my motivation in starting this list (and hack days in person)
comes from the thoughts I talked about a couple of years ago at various
technical and open source conferences.  Here is the short version of one
of those talks (slides and a transcript)

http://www.slideshare.net/lizhenry/ignite-oscon-your-flying-jetpack-1802527

Other plans: I'm going to write up a blog post with photos of the cool
scooter hack that Zach helped me with last weekend. We bypassed the
safety cut-off mechanism and added a switch, so that I can turn on the
switch to go forward.  Or, I can turn off the switch and use the already
existing control lever to go forward.  The lever and the switch both
respond to the speed controls.  So, basically I now have cruise control
on my mobility scooter.

I have more to do to add a usb charger to my scooter (which I'm hoping
Zach will help me with)  I'm also thinking of putting some LEDs and an
arduino (with mini-USB interface to program it) in the dashboard as well
(which I feel fairly confident to do myself.)

This week I talked with the electric bike shop folks on Cortland to ask
them if they had any thoughts on regenerative braking on scooters and
wheelchairs -- so that our batteries would recharge while we go
downhill.  They gave me a super nice overview of how the regenerative
brakes work and who makes them.  Apparently Bionix is the  main
manufacturer of regenerative brakes for direct drive motors, but they
are kind of the Apple of the bike motor world in that they are
secretive/proprietary about their technology.  Rabbit Tool was suggested
as a company that may be more open to information sharing and they make,
or used to make, geared hub motors with regeneration capability. They
suggested talking to a guy named Lyen who is in SF and also Terry at
hitekbikes.  While I don't know much about motors myself, I like the
idea of connecting with some knowledgeable bike people to talk about
possibilities and see if anyone wants to experiment in this area.



Best,

Liz






-- 

------------------------
Liz Henry
liz at bookmaniac.org
http://bookmaniac.org

"Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to
evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." -- Joanna Russ
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