When Pigs Fly | Front Fork

I have started building my first bike ever. And it’s going to be a motorized one. Having always liked the board track style it inspired me on my build.
Most people around me were saying that my ideas would never work, hence the name: When Pigs Fly

When I started the project I had never really welded before in my life so I couldn’t blame them for thinking I would fail. Still can’t make a decent looking weld but it’s getting better.


Parts used:

  • Ross Girls frame
  • 26 inch Springer front fork
  • 160mm Kreidler front drum brake
  • 26 inch wooden Ghisallo rims
  • Wooden Ghisallo Moustache handlebars
  • Shimano FH-M525 rear disc hub
  • BMX bottom bracket
  • Renthal BMX front sprocket
  • 80cc Engine Kit

IMG_0628My bike started out as a Ross Girls frame. I added a Kreidler 160mm front brake and a standard springer fork.

IMG_0712The springer fork I bought didn’t fit so I had to cut and weld the clamp.

Continue reading “When Pigs Fly | Front Fork”

MQTT OLED Controller | First Tests

OLEDInspired by Mat Smith’s MQTT Lightswitch I started working on an MQTT Controller. I shamelessly ripped Mat’s idea in using the same 256×64 OLED and MQTT for the backend. But instead of using an Arduino Mega I opted for an ESP8266. Had a NodeMcu 1.0 in my parts bin and since it has the most pins available of all ESP chips and it’s easy to breadboard  I started hacking away.

Mat has his code available on his GitHub but the u8glib library he is using hasn’t been ported to the ESP-8266 Arduino IDE at this time. So </shameless rip>..

nodemcuThe OLED uses an SSD1322 IC and fortunately, there is a working Adafruit GFX driver available for the ESP. This enabled me to build it all up on a breadboard and write some working code. Because the ESP8266 is somewhat limited in available I/O ports I need to really think about which direction I’m going regarding the user input. For now, I have converted an Arduino Pro Mini to 3.3v and connected it to a rotary encoder and a 12 port MPR121 Capacitive Sensor. It talks to the ESP8266 over a simple serial connection. The idea is to mount it all behind a printed plexiglass front panel hoping the MPR121 will work reliably through plexiglass.

The ESP8266 also drives a couple of WS2812b RGB LEDs. They can be individually driven using Adafruits NeoPixel library.

Not sure if it will ever work, but we’ll see.

Made a demo video. Still using an MCP23008 i2c I/O expander in this demo.

Transferred it to stripboard and moved from the MCP23008 to a slave Arduino with an MPR121 sensor and WS2812b LEDs.

Update: The OLED Controller has made it to the prototype phase.