Ion Motor

Ion motors are very cool stuff. So cool that Nasa decided to invest research effort in this subject since the early 1960's when the physicist Harold R. Kaufman achieved the first design. In spite of the small ammount of thrust (when compared to conventional rockets), ion motors are capable of a very large exhaust speed, being equivalent to ten times the exhaust speed of a high quality rocket (the later can only achieve between 3-4 km/s). This means that ion motors are capable of continuously accellerating an object up to the exhaust speed (considering the space environment, where drag is practically absent). The time for exhaust speed to be reached depend of the mass being moved.

Home Built Hovercraft

While not being the most efficient means of transportation, hovercrafts impress by the ability to operate both in land and water.The inherent maneuverability is also an interesting characteristic. While the driving is entirely different from a vehicle with wheels, hovercrafts are able to change direction very quickly, given the fast rudder response (usually located in the rear, and close to the propulsion source).

Remote controlled flight

In my adventurous quest at being able to fly with my feet on the ground, I begin to understand the true fun of this hobby and how it stimulates the mind to understand the physics behind flight, and in the particular case of the helicopter how stable hovering and forward flight is possible.

Getting airborne (on a scale sort of way)

The ability to fly have been a long envied feature of birds. Since the early days of the history of mankind, there have been the ambition to fly like a bird. The same way the conquest for new lands and the seas have been seeked and achieved by people (both for political reasons and for the bare survival), the skies have also been one of the goals of humanity. While many have envisioned and prototyped flying machines (going back to the time of Leonardo Da Vinci), only during the the 20'th century this dream was fully achieved, with the Wright Brothers having created in 1903 the first controlled powered flight. The war effort strongly stimulated the development of this new, efficient way for people to move, control, watch and dominate the territories.

Carjacking - shortening the path for justice

As automobiles become more sophisticated, direct theft by tampering with the ignition system becomes a nearly impossible task. This narrows down the choices left for the criminals, who end up adopting the only choice where successful access to the vehicle is guaranteed: threatening the occupant(s) with a weapon in exchange for the car.

In general the criminals can get away with this type of crime if they are efficient and careful, leaving the victim with few evidence to help in the investigation and tracking of the vehicle.

However, once again we can put technology on our side, and in an attempt to be resourceful enough, take advantage of two broadly available devices: a cell phone and a GPS module. These devices
are becoming cheap enough to have dedicated in a discrete location inside the car for a single purpose: on demand location.

By being able to query the location of the car just by sending an SMS message to it and get a reply with the corresponding GPS coordinates, this could be a useful tool in the police work, as real time location would always be possible.

Following this idea, I've decided to attempt a simple implementation of one such system which I have designated "Vechicle Finder". Having as a platform a Nokia smartphone and a Bluetooth GPS device (both sitting on a board for convenient fixation of the apparatus), I have developed a Java application which reads the GPS coordinates and sends it as an SMS to the originator of the request SMS:



Upon receiving an SMS containing a special command and some optional parameters, this onboard device will reply with another SMS containing the following data:

The meanders of OBD-II protocols

As we travel through the history of automotive technology back and forth, we realize that at the heart of the machines that enable us to go from point A to point B faster than our legs, are a number of components that essentially haven't changed too much: engines still burn fossil fuels and the vast majority are based on pistons that transform the explosive energy of the fuel combustion into movement.

Decoding ACARS transmissions

Just as with other radio related hobbies, this is quite an interesting one: