shinyhappyrainbows

So, another of my kind of effectsy projects is the rather complicated, DINsync "Swiss army knife," AKA, "the one din to rule them all." Based on an Arduino Uno, a defunct display from one of my 3D printers and a TONNE of original code to wrap the LCD.h and MIDI.h libraries, the aim is to sync MIDI old school and USB) to DIN24 and DIN48 standards, to my Zoom L-12's raw clicktrack, to tap-tempo and to output all of the above, including striping DINsync to the L-12 and driving both quarternote tap out as well as bar tap out. Yeah, Swiss army knife. All to run a drum machine and a few FX pedals in sync with the L-12, allowing for post production that doesn't (always) involve re-recording everything. It should even do the same with Logic Pro if it works for everything else. Here's some "ropey" prototype, featuring display bugs and yet no USB. It's doing most else, but it's not plugged into anything yet.

The Tradewinds concept! While not strictly to scale , it is kind of the scale I'm aiming for, a 3x20" tadpole trike for a 182cm tall guy, onroad and offroad, with a collapsable mast and bow-boomed, loose footed rig of recycled coffee bean bag reflective mylar. Gunna defs build the trike part first, though. No point hitching a horse when their's no cart. (Trike image credit: KMX Karts, with mods by Crunchy.) The primary design consideration here is "wind assist", not monstrously wind propelled to the point of dangerous. The Whike ( whike.com ) , for instance, has a "storm rig" option for higher winds. I figure I'll start with a storm rig first, and see what the thrust and tipping forces are like. Also, my primary concern for adding a sail is as much urban visibility, as it is for transport. Might cause some bailful looks from "Mr Plod", though, so even that may not be a common use for it. For offroad exploring, through the bike sections o

Hmm, the test hub I bought is a 130mm. However, I may be able to reduce the spacing on the non drive side to shrink it enough to fit. And probably relax the bearings a little, which are way too tight! It's not QR, so that won't be a problem, it's bolt one, so there'll be a tad more protrusion, is all, and that'll be handy for mounting the derailler hanger. Will need to dish the wheel a tad more, though, as a result.

I've been bulding up a new guitar pedal board that incorporates my old AX5G multi FX, a new "retro" drive stage, consisting of a Joyo British Sound Marshall emulator driving a Behinger DR200 reverb (spring setting), and gtr synth chain, consisting of a Boss SY-1, a Beringer Ultra Harmoniser, and an Ultra Chorus. As these are vastly different sound streams, and as they are destined to be fed through a Boss RC-5 stereo looper, I need some fancy switching, but no single box seems to quite do the right paths. Enter the A/B-Y-S, a switch box that clicks between guitar and synth, guitar sound A and guitar sound B and sometimes parallels the selcted guitar with the synth for doubled leads... This has not been an easy project to lay out on my pedal board, or to find a suitable diecast zippy box for. It is coming together, though. Three footswitches do heavy lifting, the first in the box (bottom in the circuit diagram) selects which between "amp channels," the second p

My shoe is off, my foot is cold, I have an L-12 I like to record on. (Bygones.) So, MIDI has a Baud rate of 31250 bps, and my L-12 can record at 48000 sps and at 96000 sps. Not quite enough to keep Harry Nyquist and Claude Shannon happy, but I may just have to give it a try. I'm sure many have and failed, but I consider it worth an attempt, at least at 96k samplerate, which well may satisfy mssrs. N and S. You see, I also have an Alesis SR18 drum machine and, rather than record the 4 output tracks, forever fixing them in stone as recordings, requireing a complete new take on every instrument to change the rhythms. Kind of locks in rhythm perfect first approaches, and I don't work that way. I'd like to record MIDI, or sync it, so that all that gets locked in are beats, and I do like to have my patterns right, if not my tones or mixes The usual way to do this is DIN24 sync or DIN48 sync, which outputs a 48 pulse per quaternote square wave to the left channel of a stereo tra

This is Rosie and yes, she is riding me. She's my fixie. Rose gold, chromed, chromoly frame, manipulated seatpost, tight geometry Potential of Hydrogen PH01 Sulphuric Acid. A discontinued brand and, by extension, model. She was a bit of an impulse buy. She's riding me because this is the 2012 Melburn Roobaix and riding a fixie up that year's "Koperberg" was a fool's errand. (Some did, many of them fell, some hard.) And no, the fixed cog hasn't had any wear, I run her "flipped" - freewheelin'. (Photo credit: Creux Cycling.) Right now, she needs tyres, new bar tape and, if I can find an affordable solution, 2x5 derailleur gears. Melbourne doesn't have many really steep hills, but when you hit one of the ones that passes for a minor Tasmanian or Blue Mountains grade, an 80 inch gear breaks the spirit. If it's pavé, and cat 3, you'll suffer more than groin omlette, you'll suffer defeat, especially if you're a commuter hack, l

A black CRO.

Six years ago, I invented a thing called Dryline . My back brake, a mechanical disk, had shat itself. It wouldn't operate from handlebar, but could be operated at the brake caliper, itself. Had to be the line. It was, after a few hours of googling, I discovered this is a problem with mechanical disk brakes mounted inside the rear triangle. The cable fills up with water and road grime in winter and, unlike the old days, when bikes were designed with sheath sockets and open cabling, but disk brake frames have to make way for hydraulic lines, so by extension, mechanical cables have to be sheathed all the way, too. The problem is solved by installing a "cable vent" below the caliper, but above the bottom bracket. I couldn't find such a thing, so I invented one. I designed it, boaught a 3D printer, and made several, before settling on this design. (I'd forgotton the old cable runners that used to be under bottom brackets, BTW, that's another possible solution, if

There are these little "caliper to cantilever" brake adapter things that increase the cable pull by roughly 33% length, and they can also be used to addapt 6 speed friction thumb shifters to pull a derailleur accurately over a Shimano 10 speed MTB cassette. They say, "You can't friction shift reliably above 9 speed." Yeah, right. It's just about pull length and cog pitch, so there are always ways. These little adapters can be had for AU$17 on eBay and will change 1.2mm pull per cog thumb shifter to modern Shimano 1.6mm mountain cog pitch. The way they work is, the cable enters the pulley on a small diameter section, where a small movement results in a particular angular change. The cable then wraps around that small pulley and transfers to a larger pulley, fixed to the smaller one, such that the angular change results in a longer travel around the larger pulley so, as the cable exits the larger pulley, it creates a larger travel on a brake lever... or on a

Clunkerbike is a place to read, or submit for sharing, all things bike hack and "mullet mod." I'll discuss topics like how I converted my cargobike from hub gearing and rear brake to 1 x 9 speed derailleur gearing and a diacomp style centrepull rear brake, and many other hacks besides. So, sit back, subscribe and submit, and lets build a community of mullety weirdness on 2, 3 or 4 pedalled wheels.