I’ve been having so much fun riding ARP Synesthesia around that I haven’t even blogged about it. Before I get into that, though, a word of caution: pay attention to dimensions when ordering parts! I thought I’d ordered a small waterproof power connector. The connector size I expected is to the left. That shiny circle is a quarter. The connectors that arrived were MUCH LARGER:

On to the project at hand. First off, I got the battery mounted extremely securely using some 3/8″ rod that was bent into a holder, and a 3/8″ threaded rod to yoink it down. Parts:

And installed on the rear rack:

I also had to rework the speaker mounts. A single conduit clamp wasn’t strong enough to prevent them from wobbling, which would eventually cause metal fatigue in the metal bowl enclosures. So I doubled up the number of conduit clamps:

And secured the speakers to the frame at two points instead of one:

I’ve also added several incredibly bright blue LEDs. Here’s one lighting up the beehive spring on the front fork:

WRT other projects, the swingbike has seen a few design revisions, and I don’t have photos yet but will post some soon. Also underway, and I’ll blog about this — a bikeboom-style bike radio using cheaply sourced materials and components.

I haven’t been blogging lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle. I’m working on adding a radiobox onto ARP Synesthesia, and also starting to plan out my next builds — swingbikes! I’m pressed for time right now, but here are a few photos.

I managed to mount the subwoofer to the front fork using U-bolts and by cutting a flat mount out of steel stock. This taught me the value of a sharp hacksaw blade, and its effectiveness over an angle grinder. The angle grinder is an excellent brute force weapon, but the hacksaw blade excels at fine work. Anyhow, I’m stuffing the sub enclosure with polyfill in order to deaden the sound — lots and lots of polyfill:

The inside of the subwoofer enclosure was liberally sprayed with spray adhesive — nasty stuff — and I jammed the polyfill inside the enclosure:

Once the polyfill was loaded, the next challenge was installing the woofer itself. That went well — I drilled pilot holes into the wooden braces inside the enclosure. Amazingly enough, the wooden braces matched up well with the locations of the screw holes on the woofer. Score one point for measuring ahead. However, the grill cover for the woofer, which is supposed to pop in and turn into place, wouldn’t fit in place because the enclosure wasn’t perfectly round. I ended up using some ratcheting straps — come-alongs, basically — to force the grill in position and pop it in place. It took a significant amount of pressure; I hope that I don’t have to open the sub box up anytime soon, since it’s going to be just as difficult to remove. Here’s the grill, installed:

Blam.

I also found a good spot to mount the speakers. The front part of the top tube of this frame turned out to be an ideal place. They’re not on the handlebars, so they don’t affect steering, and they’re towards the front, which will help counterbalance the warp core when it’s installed:

Finally, I started looking at this pile of electronic doodads and thinking about making them into something cohesive:

The electrical bus box just came together reasonably quickly. With several false starts, but hey, it worked out well in the end. The input is through a vaccuum cleaner cord and will be fused close to the positive terminal of the warp core. There are four outputs — one fused at 20 amps, for the stereo system amplifier, and three more with 2 amp fuses for lighting. Here’s a shot of the inside, showing the electrical bus and in-line fuses:

And here’s the electrical bus system, completely assembled:

This will mount to the handlebars for easy access. An iPod can be strapped to the surface of the bus box to provide sound input. Next tasks are to complete the remaining electrical and audio cabling, and then route the cables. Woot!

In case your corner of the blogosphere hasn’t heard about it yet, OnPoint aired a show about bicycle culture:

http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/05/cyclist-culture

I haven’t given it a listen yet, but I hear it’s worth checking out. An audio archive of this episode is (will be?) available on OnPoint’s website.