Beyond Unboxing: One Thousand and One Hobbyking Amps

chorl2 Comments

And we’re back!

After passing the mother of all blogstones, I hope it’s had time to sink in with everyone, because it’s time to replace it on the front page. Just because I wander away from this site for a week doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything siteworthy. In fact now I’m once again in a situation where I need to backpost like 3 weeks after the fact. Luckily, this time, it’s all loopy engineering content! That doesn’t mean I’m done with the 2.00gokart coverage – it will hopefully appear on Make soon, and I might actually be wrapping it up in a more presentable style for a conference next year. We shall see.

Beyond Unboxing began with me taking apart a derpy Hobbyking controller. While it will not end with me taking apart a different Hobbyking controller (at least, I hope not…), if you haven’t gleaned from the title yet, this is once again about them!

No, Hobbyking hasn’t come out with a 1000 amp controller yet. That will be the day. What I got instead is five different “200 amp” controllers!

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On 2.00Gokart; Or, Designing a Design Class to Disrupt Design Classes as We Know It; Or, How to Make MIT Undergraduates Build Silly Go-Karts so You Don’t Have To

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I think I’ve promised a 2.00gokart “total recap post” after every session of it so far. This is a piece that is long overdue on this site, and in all honesty, probably also way past its time to present in a more formal venue. Edit: It’s now on Make Blog! Thanks Make! For the past now 2 years and four sessions, what I consider to be my most long and extensive project has been developing quietly in the halls here at MIT – that is, as quiet as the high-pitched whine of square-wave commutated brushless airplane motors can get you, anyway, interrupted periodically by the interdiction of concrete-backed drywall upon metal; facilities and my space directors will never let me live that down.

I’m two months late and running from when I first said to expect a wrapup of the summer SUTD special session I ran for their visiting students.  What this post will be is a ton of writing. Interspersed with as many photos and references as I can manage, of course, in my usual style of discourse, but most of it will be me waxing poetic – and perhaps polemic at times – regarding my own motivations to start this course, experiences in running it, and ultimately what my end goals are and where I want to see this class end up.

I anticipate this post being extremely long. In fact, so long that I’m going to split it into multiple sections ahead of time. What will be presented from here on is basically a much more concise, casual, and perhaps more profane and offensive version of my original Master’s Thesis, minus most of the the graphs and tables (because every Master’s Thesis in engineering needs graphs and tables, for whatever reason), and with more pictures and videos. The first two parts essentially amounts to me ranting, and the second half is the productive info, followed by more despotic proselytizing.

Here’s the table of contents: First, a summary of my motivation for making the class. Next,

  1. A brief rundown of my own history with engineering projects and how that both aided and hindered my academic performance at MIT
  2. How I took an interest in teaching and why I saw issues with the current system of design classes
  3. A history of my involvement and leadership in the electric vehicle design realm
  4. Recap of the 2012 class “2.00scooter”
  5. The changes made for the 2013 class “2.00gokart”
  6. The 2013 summer special session and the changes made for it
  7. Where the class stands now; content, procedural, and logistics.
  8. What I think the class brings to the world of design classes that is different or novel.
  9. More about the resource base of the class and the cost of running
  10. An SAE Asston (like an ISO/DIN Arsetonne) of lecture notes, resources, and links I have built up so you can run your own silly go-kart class

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