Archive for April, 2009

bike charge controller – Mexico version!

Published by matthew venn on April 27, 2009 in news and projects. 0 Comments

I met Gustavo at the HCF bike day last week. He wanted a similar system to the bike cinema I’m making for HCF.

I made a modified version of the charge controller in a tiny box. It took about 4 hours to build and test, and then another 4 hours to modify the software.

During stress testing I found that the mosfet I used for low voltage cutout was getting too hot. I had to remove that element of the design because of the short time available.

  • The box monitors voltage and current coming in and out of the battery,
  • Protects generator with a 60A diode,
  • Shows battery high/med/low status lights,
  • Shows power generation vs power consumption,
  • Broken – Low voltage cut out battery protection.

HCF bike cinema code release at v1

Published by matthew venn on April 24, 2009 in news and projects. 1 Comment

For anyone interested, I’m releasing my charge controller and automation code for the Hackney City Farm bike cinema. Features include:

  • software simulated virtual battery (virtual battery makes the lead/acid chemistry more “intuitive” for the user)
  • charge controller protects battery from over charge and low voltage
  • voltage and current measured on load and charging circuits 20 times per second
  • 16 LEDs showing rate of power in, rate of power out, and charge in the virtual battery
  • automation of 2 circuits (LCD&Sounds, DVD)
  • infra red remote control of the DVD (NEC pulse system)

Get it here release1.0.tar.gz. The code is released under the GPL license.

video editor found!

Published by matthew venn on April 9, 2009 in news. 2 Comments

Thanks to Emma for editing the guerilla graffiti video! Her work is here.


Loved Video from Emma Richards on Vimeo.

live looping setup

Published by matthew venn on April 5, 2009 in news. 1 Comment

I’ve recently updated my live looping setup. The biggest improvement is made by using the looper instrument in live8. This finally allows me to create loops around my patterns, rather than having to fit my patterns around a prefixed tempo.

My system uses a few puredata patches to manage the user interface. The wiimote and the bcr2000 handle all control and feedback requirements via puredata.

If you’re interested, here is an archive of all the config files.