Interbike 2011 Bike Show and the E-Moto Monterrey Bike that I designed

The Las Vegas Interbike trade show happened on September 14-16 at the Sands Expo and Convention center. One of the (best) electric bikes shown there was the e-Moto Monterey electric bike that I co-designed in SolidWorks with a friend of mine. Although I wasn't able to go to the show I thought that I would write a blog post about the bike since I had a hand in creating it. Have a look at the pictures below of the Interbike show bike and the CAD model that I made to design the bike.

    

e-Moto Monterrey at the Interbike 2011 show
      

SolidWorks CAD model of the e-Moto Monterey bike

Details of the bike and all it's features are below. I did the entire design in SolidWorks 2009. A friend of mine who is familiar with the bike industry and trends was advising and critiquing along the way.

    

Bladeless fan construction

Yes I am building a wind tunnel... and the biggest problem in doing so is getting rid of turbulence from the air source, in this case a fan. So to do that I am building a fan (air source) that should have a limited amount of disturbed air. What I want is a smooth airflow into the test area and a bladeless fan seems to be the obvious choice..

      

I built a fan like this before HERE but didn't provide too many details of the construction. This time I built a slightly bigger fan and have provided all the details in a neat video.

   

Enjoy!

      

        

Email me with questions or leave a comment... There is a lot more to come on this topic so stay tuned...

Latest project, wind tunnel and a plasma actuator

I'm building a wind tunnel in my garage. Doesn't that sound neat? My interest in this is probably obvious because of several posts that I have dome thus far related to Plasma Actuators. The experiments that I was doing with my homemade Schlieren setup and specifically the high voltage experiments HERE and HERE among others.

   

The idea is to build a wind tunnel and place a plasma actuator inside it and watch what happens as the air is passing over the actuator. Comparing it in the 'on' and 'off ' states and various voltages. The wind tunnel has two windows so I can put the Schlieren setup on each side. Additionally I want to use a smoke generator and lasers to visualize the airflow. Check out THIS video to see what I mean about the lasers and smoke.

   

What does all this mean? I ask myself that question frequently, hourly sometimes but the answer is "I don't know!" That is why I am taking the time to build this setup and because it's a rather complicated project I don't have any neat pictures and videos to post yet but stay tuned they are on their way. The wind tunnel by itself is a significant amount of work and of course the plasma actuators are too. A lot of work and the devil is in the details so I'm paying attention to them (more or less).

    

After having read everything that I can about both wind tunnels and plasma actuators I have some specific things that I want to try. I'll detail each of those in the next week or two and post some neat pictures and videos.

    

    

My New Phone a Samsung Replenish

This week has been busy for me and I haven't had a lot of time to play in the garage. One thing that I did manage to do was get a new phone, a Samsung Replenish and mess around with it and the Google App Inventor for Android. My old phone was a Palm and I loved it but it was really old and time to retire it to the box of phones and chargers that I have in the closet. I'm new to the Smart Phone craze and having a phone that is smarter than I am is a new experience for me. Should we really even call these things phones? It's interesting that it is called a phone but when you start to type a phone number it immediately does a web search for the number and not dial the person who you are trying to call. I think this is more like a hand held computer that also makes phone calls.

 

My Samsung Replenish

My first impression of the phone was how tricky the touch screen is to operate. As I mentioned I'm new to this but having to 'flick' my finger on the screen to move around isn't easy. I find myself selecting things rather than moving them especially when the screen is listing a bunch of options. I want to scroll down to see more options but instead I select one of them while trying to move. I'm getting better at it but it isn't intuitive and requires a lot of practice. The good think about the Replenish is there are arrow keys on the keyboard that let you move around without having to touch the screen. I can't imaging having to operate the phone without a keyboard.