A Broken Inductor As A Bike Chain Sensor

If you have ever broken the ferrite core of an inductor, you’ll probably sympathize with [Oliver Mattos]. He accidentally stood on a ferrite-cored component, breaking it and rendering it useless. But utility is in the eye of the beholder, and instead of throwing it away he’s repurposed it as a …read more

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’54 Motorcycle Saved By Electric Conversion

While it’s nice to be able to fully restore something vintage to its original glory, this is not always possible. There might not be replacement parts available, the economics of restoring it may not make sense, or the damage to parts of it might be too severe. [onyxmember] aka [Minimember …read more

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Navigating Self-Driving Cars By Looking At What’s Underneath The Road

When you put a human driver behind the wheel, they will use primarily their eyes to navigate. Both to stay on the road and to use any navigation aids, such as maps and digital navigation assistants. For self-driving cars, tackling the latter is relatively easy, as the system would use …read more

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An Open Source Shipboard Computer System

We’re not sure how many of you out there own a boat large enough to get its own integrated computer network, but it doesn’t really matter. Even if you can’t use this project personally, it’s impossible not to be impressed with the work [mgrouch] has put into the “Bareboat Necessities” …read more

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Pop A Wheelie With Your Electric Skateboard, The Hacker Way

Using a bit of tech to make up for a lack of skill is a time-honoured tradition, otherwise known as cheating among those who acquired the skill the hard way. Learning to wheelie a skateboard is usually paid for in bruises, but [blezalex] got around that by letting his electric …read more

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John Deere And Nebraska’s Right To Repair, The Aftermath Of A Failed Piece Of Legislation

For the past few years now we’ve covered a long-running battle between American farmers and the manufacturers of their farm machinery, over their right to repair, with particular focus on the agricultural giant John Deere. The manufacturer of the familiar green and yellow machinery that lies in the heart and …read more

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Homebuilt Onewheel Uses Hoverboard Parts

Since Back To The Future II first screened back in 1989, people have been waiting for hoverboards to become reality. Instead, we got a dangerous two-wheeled contraption going by the same name. Wanting something a little cooler, [Bartek Plonek] decided to convert his to a one-wheel design. (Video, embedded below.) …read more

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The High Seas are Open Source

One of the biggest problems of owning an older boat (besides being a money pit – that is common to all boats regardless of age) is the lack of parts and equipment, and the lack of support for those parts if you can find them at all. Like most things, …read more

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Parking Meters That Were a Bit Too Smart for their Own Good

A common sight in automobile-congested cities such as New York are parking meters lining the curbs next to parking spots. They’re an autonomous way for the city to charge for the space taken by cars parked along the sidewalk near high-traffic commercial areas, incentivizing people to wrap up their business …read more

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