Posts tagged as:

DIY

Manthini e-bike

April 6, 2019

This past Saturday, I got to meet up with a couple of local guys who have been working on a neat e-bike design. We met up at the VeloCity bike shop in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Cal, John, Avi, and two other friends, neighbors, and co-workers have designed a 2-wheel drive electric bike. It’s their prototype bike, […]

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Solar Ammo Can

March 2, 2018

With my recent work in solar, quite a few people have started asking me about designing small BATTERY-based solar systems. I thought it would be nice to work on a project demonstrating basic solar battery charging principals, and at the same time, have a handy and useful project when I was done. Thus, the Solar […]

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Snow-cover on my Solar Panels!

December 9, 2017

I woke up this morning to a gray half-light, and a blanket of snow covering everything…. including my solar panels! Hmmm. What would this do to my solar power production? To find out, I thought I would clear the snow off as many of the panels as I could and see what the difference would […]

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Gen 2 Flux Mopeds DIY Special

December 2, 2017

Recently, I’ve had a fair number of people asking me about electric scooters. Not only are scooters fun to ride, but you don’t need a motorcycle license, and they are often cheaper to insure and title. That’s why I was excited to recently hear from Matt at Flux Mopeds. A while back, they had a […]

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Electronics Project: Sophie’s 3-LED Traffic Light

November 16, 2017

Yesterday, my Crazy Circuits arrived in the mail. After dinner, the Little Girl (Sophie, just turned 7 years old) and I decided we would play with them. I thought the first thing we would do is a simple LED circuit – just a battery going to an LED. Well, we barely had that done before […]

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Solar Experimenting

April 9, 2017

Spring is Sprung! It was the first Saturday of spring with some actual nice warm sunny weather, so that means it’s time to experiment with solar! A couple of weeks ago, I got a few used Enphase micro-inverters in the mail. My buddy, Russ, (https://www.youtube.com/user/rwg42985) had found some inverters at an electronics salvage yard near […]

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Solar Proposal

February 27, 2017

This past week, I turned in my proposal for my solar electric system to the local power utility. Here’s the equipment I’ll be using and why. Please keep in mind that there’s more than one way to design a solar electric system. What is right for me may not be right for you, but I […]

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Ben’s Garage: Winter Solar Access

December 14, 2016

The rough shell of the garage is now up! We got the roof boards and felt on just before the first major winter storm of the season. Since then, a cold front has moved through. While that DOES drop the temperature (single digits F. right now,) it also means CLEAR skies! It’s cold, but sunny! […]

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Putting up the Beam

December 2, 2016

The next big step would be install a header across the south side of the garage. This wall is almost nothing but doors. In fact, there’s so little there to hold up the roof that we needed a structurally engineered beam to span the entire south side! This was done with a “micro-lam” beam. Essentially, […]

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Trusses Delivered

November 17, 2016

While I wasn’t expecting it yet, the engineered trusses that will make up the attic and roof showed up today! These trusses are HUGE! They will run north and south. The garage is 29 feet in that dimension, plus a one foot roof overhang on either side. That makes these 31 feet long each. I […]

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