For my birthday, I got a 5.5HP 4-Stroke Engine from eBay worth $119.00 AUD + $20.95 postage. It starts easy (First pull!), runs great, has lots of power and is very fuel efficient! I plan on putting my turbocharged engine on a Go-Kart. Here are the technical specs from the book:

Type: Single-Cylinder, Four Stoke, Cylinder Inclined 25°

Bore*Stoke (mm): 68*45

Displacement (ml): 163

Ignition System: TCI (Transistorized Pointless)

Starting Method: Recoil Starter

Max. Output/speed (HP/RPM): 5.5/4000

Max. Torque (N.M/RPM): 10.8/2500

Net Weight (kg): 14

Engine Oil Capacity: 0.60L

For Christmas, I got a VZ21 Turbocharger, Shell Helix HX7 10W-40 Synthetic Oil, Grommet Oil Cooler/Transmission Hose – 3/8″ (1 Metre), Grommet Oil Cooler/Transmission Hose – 5/16″ (1 Metre) and an Oil-Extractor Pump.

This is the cylinder side of the engine with the muffler system removed.

This is the muffler system I removed from the engine.

In this picture, you can see the whole engine. On the bottom right is the oil pipe and fitting where the dip-stick used to go. I will tell you more about this in the next photo.

After dad searching around for a fitting that would screw into the dip-stick plug, he found an air compressor fittings packet. In there was a perfect fitting, it had a barb on one end (Which the oil hose is over) and on the other end it had a thread which screwed in as easy as the dip-stick! As you can see in the picture, I used the O-Ring from the dip-stick to create a seal.

Here is a picture is the VZ21 Turbocharger I purchased from eBay for $259.99 USD + $55.00 postage to Australia. I rotated the centre bit of the turbocharger so the oil feed port was on the top and the water-cooling ports were easily accessible (On the other side).

I found a little bolt in the shed with the same thread as the one on the turbocharger (Which was very lucky, but I find everything to fit stuff in the shed!), so I got dad to chop the head off with an angle-grinder and then we drilled a hole straight through the centre using some cutting compound and a cordless drill. I then got the nut to go with it (Again, found in the shed) and screwed the bolt in about 1cm, then I put some Ultra Copper High-Temp RTV Silicone Gasket maker under the nut and around the bolt, finger tightened the bolt down until the silicone came out, waited for an hour, then screwed the nut in completely.

With that done, I tried running some oil through the turbocharger using my oil extractor pump. This didn’t turn out too well, especially since the pump said “Oil Extractor” and was a vane pump So the pump come to a stop and started smoking a little from too much pressure build up. It still works perfectly fine. So I had some ideas. I tried pushing oil through the return port, then in turn it comes out the oil feed port; that didn’t work. So then I tried my third idea, pulling oil through the oil feed port. This again didn’t work because it wasn’t getting enough oil through the small hole because the pump didn’t have enough suction. I moved on to my last idea, which was pulling oil through the return port. This kind of worked, but not enough oil came through – but at least a little oil was going through the turbocharger! This still wasn’t enough oil flow, so I decided that all of my ideas would fail with that pump.

Later on, I purchased a flange kit from eBay for $41.99 USD + $16.00 postage to Australia. Each of the 7 flanges are precision high-temp laser cut mild-steel. They look really good! It is a full complete set containing 7 pieces for each port on the turbocharger: Compressor Inlet, Compressor Outlet, Oil Return, Water-Cooling, Exhaust Inlet, Exhaust Outlet which covers the waste-gate and another Exhaust Outlet which doesn’t cover the waste-gate. I also purchased a scavenge oil gear pump worth $89.95 USD + $32.25 postage. I worked out an offer for the item and instead purchased it for $50.00 USD + $27.00 postage.

I will update the post when the oil pump arrives.

Here is a gallery of the Engine:

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Here is a gallery of the Turbocharger:

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Here is a gallery of the Flanges:

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Update – Saturday, January 21st, 2012: I received the oil pump today. I hooked up all the oil hoses, wired up a switch to the pump and connected it to a battery. My first attempt was to try and pump the oil into the small oil feed hole. Well I must say I was very happy and impressed! It worked and pumped the oil through easily with no struggling. The pump works great!

I am working on a mounting bracket for the turbocharger. I will update this post again when I do that.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post! Please rate this article and leave a comment! Thanks!

Cheers,

Jamie Kugelmann

I put it in a case: http://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/MDg4OTM1OTk-/Bauelemente_Bauteile/Gehaeuse/Stahlblech_Gehaeuse_mit_Frontblende.html

With this AC Adaptor: http://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/NjUwOTQ2OTk-/Stromversorgung/Netzgeraete/Festspannungs_Netzgeraete/Schaltnetzteil_DELTA_EADP_50DF_12_V_4_16_A.html

(Never open the case when plugged in and don’t touch the AC Adaptor’s heatsink!)

I also used two Adaptors for a Serial Port and a USB Port.

With some Mainboard screws I put it together. The mainboard and the AC Adaptor perfectly fits into to box. I booted the Box: Windows CE, nice! With a keyboard an a mouse plugged into the USB Ports I could browse through files and with the IE and I had (slow) internet. I put some music files on an old HDD an built it into the Box (which didn’t perfectly fit, but there is a lot of space in the box). I could now listen to Music or even to Internet radio, thanks to Windows Media Player.

But why should I need that? I can do all this with my PC. The new adventure was Linux (Yeah, I’m a Linux fan), Luckily, others had this idea, too, and I found this forum thread: http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/210759

It’s too long and it’s difficult to find the important information. After reading for hours I found this solution:

I put flashme.exe,  flashlib.dll, wince0.bin extracted from this file: http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/109811/Pollinux.rar on a FAT32 USB-Stick, then also http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/113503/00040000_00600000__kernelfs.bin and http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/113506/00004000_00040000__loader.bin.

IMPORTANT: If you want to get boot messages from the external serial port later, change the cmdline for the kernel, so that it says console=ttyS1 instead of ttyS0. You can edit the file with GHex or another Hex Editor.

If you don’t want to edit the loader, I did it for you: http://ubuntuone.com/p/1AaQ/, just download the loader from ubuntu one.

Open the Box and turn the DIP1 OFF. I inserted the USB Stick and opened the flashme.exe in Win CE. I pressed the UP-DOWN-LEFT button on the receiver and waited between each button until it had finished. Turn DIP1 ON. Done!

I extracted  (as root, in the terminal with ‘sudo tar xf FILENAME’, it didn’t work with file-roller for me)  this file on a ext2 usb stick: http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/113385/Pollinux-NFS-root-Edition-2011.06.17-23.15.tar.bz2

Insert a RS 232 cable and the ext2 stick and boot the box. Watch the boot messages with a Serial Port Terminal at 38400 baud. It should say ‘Switch Root…’ somewhere, if it continues after that, it’s fine, Linux works!

Else: You failed to extract the Pollinux NFS root Edition correctly on the USB Stick. So how do you get into the system now? Turn off the box and put the ext2 USB Stick in your computer. on the stick, look for /etc/inittab.

Change this line:

ttyS0::respawn:/bin/sh -sc “. /etc/profile”To this:

To this

ttyS1::respawn:/bin/sh -sc “. /etc/profile”

Reboot the box with the USB Stick inserted, you should now have a shell on ttyS1, the external RS232 Port at 34800 baud. Now it would be interesting to get Connection via telnet/ssh.

You have to setup network with these commands:

ifconfig eth0 up

ifconfig eth0 IPOFBOX netmask NETMASK

route add default gw GATEWAY

(of course change IPOFBOX, NETMASK, GATEWAY to your network settings)

You can also put these command in a script or edit the files in /etc/init.d.

Now set the root password with ‘passwd’. The default one is ‘test’.

On your pc you can now connect via ssh root@IPOFBOX or telnet IPOFBOX or in your browser ftp://IPOFBOX.

Filezilla to edit the files also works with root login.

You may want to edit /etc/resolv.conf and add your provider’s DNS server addresses:

nameserver PRIMARY_DNS_ADDRESS

nameserver SECONDARY_DNS_ADDRESS

Now you can also ping website.

You want even mor than just a webserver? You can install the ELDK cross-compiler on your computer in order to compile programs for the MIPS CPU architecture:

ftp://ftp.denx.de/pub/eldk/4.1/mips-linux-x86/iso/mips-2007-01-21.iso

Any Ideas for programs on the Receiver? Leave a comment and rate this article!

well done and keep making cool stuff.

I got all of the parts for my Custom PC a couple of weeks ago on Tuesday. It works great and the water-cooling loop is spectacular with no leaks!

Only one day after I finished building it, my cheap $80 power supply blew a capacitor! Josh (My brother) heard a loud BANG so he turned around and saw 2 bright flashes of light. I was luckily out in the kitchen! I rushed in and turned off the power plug. I decided to order a much better power supply the next day, worth $171 AUD. It came the next day. It was the Zalman ZM750-HP 750W Power Supply from PC Case Gear http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_981&products_id=6231

My old power supply only had a 16A current rating! How cheap is that! No wonder it blew up, because I was using 19A. The new one is excellent, over 60A current rating (20A on all 4 12V rails), it is quiet, performs excellent and always keeps cool.

Getting the new PSU in was a task, I had to move the radiator right over next to the front fan and bend the cables a little, no problem there! Fits nice and snug!

I have been using my new custom-built PC for almost 2 weeks now, without any problems. I like how cool the liquid-cooling gets it, I am running at 49°C Full Load, instead of over 85°C! I decided to also use my old NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT for a PhysX card and also for the second monitor. The combination of the 2 works great. The CPU runs at a cool 50°C on all cores, Full Load! The Radiator stays at 38.5°C and the Reservoir stays at 33.9°C. This is very cool!

I get a 7.5 rating in the Windows Experience Index! (The maximum is 7.9!) I can play complex games, full setting very well, still keeping cool and quiet!

Speed Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Looks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Temperature Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Noise Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Tidiness Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Gaming Performance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.72 out of 5 stars

I think I have made a very good computer, and I won’t be needing a new one for a while! The total cost was around $2100.

Specs:

• Motherboard: MSI P55-GD65
• CPU: Intel Core i5-760
• RAM: Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3
• Case: Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced with Window
• GPU 1: EVGA GTX 465 (Already have this)
• GPU 2: EVGA GeForce 9500GT (For PhysX, already have this)
• Watercooling: XSPC Rasa 750 RX240 Universal CPU Water Cooling Kit
• Coolant: Swiftech HydrX (x2)
• Thermal Compound: Artic Silver 5 (x2)
• CPU Waterblock: Comes in the watercooling kit
• GPU Waterblock: EKWB EK-FC470 GTX Plexi
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
• Fan Controller: Zalman ZM-MFC3
• DVD Burner: Optiarc DVD RW AD7200S
• Power Supply: Zalman ZM750-HP 750W

I have made a gallery which you can see below.

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Thanks for reading my post, and please comment on what you think and rate the post!

Cheers,

Jamie Kugelmann

I have ordered the parts for my PC upgrade last week, and they will arrive in the mail this Friday
List of parts:

• Motherboard: MSI P55-GD65
• CPU: Intel Core i5-760
• RAM: Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3
• Case: Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced with Window
• GPU: EVGA GTX 465 (Already have this)
• Watercooling: XSPC Rasa 750 RX240 Universal CPU Water Cooling Kit
• Coolant: Swiftech HydrX (x2)
• Thermal Compound: Artic Silver 5 (x2)
• CPU Waterblock: Comes in the watercooling kit
• GPU Waterblock: EKWB EK-FC470 GTX Plexi
• HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
• Fan Controller: Zalman ZM-MFC3
• DVD Burner: Optiarc DVD RW AD7200S
• Power Supply: Corsair 625w

I will make another post with pictures and a video when it is all together.

Cheers,

Jamie Kugelmann

For Christmas 2010 I got some parts for my selfmade PC:

• Mainboard: Asus M4A88TD-M/USB3
• CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 445 (3×3.1GHz)RAM: 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
• Graphics: Onboard ATI Radeon 4250
• HDD: 1TB (Samsung)
• Optical Drive: LG DVD Burner
• Case: Techsolo MO-06 (with Cardreader, 4xUSB and Audio Frontpanel, 400W PSU included)
• Case Fan: bequiet! SilentWings
• Screen: Asus VH222H

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All together for at around 420€ from pollin.de

When the first parcel arrived, I was quite sad: It was the case, but they had sent me the wrong one:A very old and grey one. I sent it back at the same day, but I knew they won’t sent me a new one before christmas. The same day the other 2 parcels also arrived, with the correct things in. The other parcel arrived with  more than one week delay.

Building it

Building was easy, so I managed to do everything in less than 2 hours. I checked everything and then started it: Everything worked from the start! CPU, RAM, HDD and Keyboard were recognized and it told me to insert some media to install the Operating System. Less than one hour later I got a PC with Internet connection and (nearly) all I needed preinstalled.

Goals

+ Linux – The best OS ever
+ The 3-core CPU is fast enough and cheap
+ Huge 1 TB HDD
+ As the name of the chassis fan says: Silence
+ The WLAN Card was recognized without any driver installation
+ 4 Front-USB Ports
+ USB 3.0
+ Onboard graphics is enough for compiz 3D effects (see gallery) and simple 3D games
+ Good-looking case
+ Lots of experience while building

Issues

- The WLAN range isn’t very long, I got connection but only at the speed of 5 Mbit/s (A new WLAN card would help, I will soon order one) UPDATE: With a new WLAN card it works fine What do you think about my configuration and the price? Do you know any possibility to fix the problem with 3D games? Leave a comment!

Cheers,
Florian

The AVR NET IO has a webpage (saved on the SD Card), one part my little webpage looks like this and gives you some more information about the NET IO (I replaced the Atmega32 with an Atmega644):

In the picture on the right you can see something called “Ethersex” is mentioned (I didn’t invent that name!).
This is the server program running on the Microprocessor, you can download it from ethersex.de . If you want to use it, you have to download it from the git repository an compile it. You should use Linux for that. The configuration is easy and graphical.

I decided to use the ethersex server, because it has a lot of features and support for SD-Cards and LCD screens.

Another feature is “ECMD”.

ECMD is a protocol which you can control all the functions of ethersex-running devices with, e. g. you can send messages to the lcd screen.

If you want to send me messages: eMail me (florian.robotics[at]gmail.com) and I will send you a program called ecmdGUI (and the source code if you want it, Visual Basic 2010)

It is a little and easy graphical ECMD user interface for Windows. If you use Linux or any other OS, I will tell you how to use ECMD without any GUI.

Let me show you some more pictures of the webpage and the NET IO:

An idea at the end:  The AVR NET IO has also got a serial port. Maybe you could connect this to the RS Media and control him using the TCP to COM program YPort for the NET IO…

You want more information about the little server? Have a look at

http://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/MTQ5OTgxOTk-/Bausaetze_Module/Bausaetze/Bausatz_AVR_NET_IO.html

http://www.pollin.de/shop/dt/Nzg4OTgxOTk-/Bausaetze_Module/Bausaetze/Bausatz_Add_on_fuer_AVR_NET_IO.html

http://www.ethersex.de

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBy8b5OCBzA

Florian

I have already told you that I am working on a Software for Computers connected with RFID-Readers. I have finished this program now, it is called “pRFID”.  pRFID is a very interesting program, especially for developers, because the source code is public, written in Visual Basic 2010.  I hope you want to see and get it now! You can download it from rfid.de.tp(=computersnmore.dyndns.org\RSMSerialHack\pRFID.html). You are not interested yet? Then first watch the video here (Download: pRFID – V 1.0).  After you have downloaded pRFID you can also comment on it at “take the tour”. I hope you’ll enjoy pRFID, although the picture support doesn’t perfectly work yet!

pRFID is updated regularly, so don’t worry, picture support is coming soon. If someone wants to help me, tell me! View the support page to get contact details.

Cheers,

Florian

Just very recently, I decided to buy myself a new Arduino Duemilanove. I have got the one with the new ATmega328.

I am planning to make a mini-robot with it.

If anyone (Yes, anyone) has an idea on what else I should make, just simply make a comment. (Maybe post a link to some instructions if you want) I would love to hear what I other things I can make.
I have made a gallery down below. Hope you like it.

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Jamie Kugelmann

I have just finished making 2 9V battery clip to barrel jack adapters. What they do is convert a 9V battery clip to a barrel jack. Very useful to me.

I am using one for my Proto Board, and one for my new Arduino Duemilanove.
I have also made a gallery below. Hope you like it.

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Cheers,

Jamie Kugelmann