Home made Segway

Pretty funny. I liked the comparisons between the real deal and his version. All in all, a pretty smart guy and quite interesting.

David

I like the 'safety features' section

"There is no redundancy or backup system. It is not even robustly made. Loose wires literally dangle out the bottom. In the fairly likely event of the software crashing, a wire coming loose, a component failing, or the batteries running low, the wheels will lock and the entire kinetic energy of the system will be used to accelerate my head toward the ground. "

ROFLMAO

I like how he said it was so easy to build, considering all he did was copy it. And at $2500, I think I'd spend the extra $2500 to get the extra bells and whistles.

oomph

Except even purchasing a real one would not solve the fundamental design flaw that this guy discovered - you look like an utter idiot/geek riding around on it. He claims you'd need no less than 3 cellphones and a PDA strapped to your belt to achieve the same level of nerdiness.

Russ.

But it is a great attention getter at conventions. And you also end up standing about a foot taller than everybody else. Remember the good old days when nerdiness was dictated by a pocket protector and tape on your glasses, not the number of gadgets you owned.

One of the reasons that I am not all impressed by this guy is as you stated he copied it. So what he made was a substandard copy of a device someone else spent a bundle to design and has almost none of the redundant systems and safety features required to sell such things to the general public. Ok, I give him some credit for the smarts to do it, but the pitch in these types of "news" stories is that someone made it cheaper than what the manufacturer is selling the original for. Next we will have the less than genius wannabees cheapskates building them and the injuries will start stacking up along with the lawsuits.

I am not thrilled with the properly manufactured Segway as the future mode of transport. I think it will be another Edsel/Fad and a triva question for our grand children. But half baked geek nimrods making cheap unsafe copies to run on the sidewalks give me even less of a warm fuzzy feeling. The only bright side is after enough injuries the federal goverment will come in a regulate them to death and expidite them into becoming a piece of history.

Cranky Old Bob Ruth

We nerds had our handy slide rule and a mechanical pencil. The glasses are a figment of hollywood. No repecting nerd had broken glasses. We also belonged to the chess club.

True nerds are near excteniction and have been replaced yuppies and yuppie puppie geeks. Often tons of gizmos with no clue on how to use them nor are they productive with them. Just toys for show.

At the office our old tech used yellow note pads, a pocket paper date book, a bunch of 3" wide spirals that fit in you pocket and always got the jobs done and kept the customers happy. I could ask him about any piece of equipment he worked on and somwhere in his acient piles of paper he could produce the information.

Now we have a techno geek with a pda, high end desk & laptop computer plus an over priced cell hook up with a head phone/speaker system. Walks around looking like a backstreet boy cosmanaught reject. Everthing is done on computer and over priced software. How does he rank against the old tech? well lets just say I would give my eyeteeth to have my old friend and his primative notebooks back.

Us old nerds were at least productive with our tools, while the new geeks seem to be seeing how much more complex and expensive they can make things while producing even less.

Bob Ruth

Did you read the whole story? The gist is i got was "I made a crappy knock of just for the heck of it. It's really a piece of crap that could fall apart and make the riders skull one with the pavement without notice, but it was a fun project."

I agree with you about the Segway as the future mode of transport. It's the pogo stick of the new millennium.

Kinda OT, but i saw Peter Gabriel perform a few months ago. He and his Daughter (passable backup singer) performed Games Without Frontiers while doing a very military-like choreographed march/dance/formation while both on segways. I thought it was brilliant, and regardless of what you think of his music, ya cant deny that the cats got style.

Eh, your not wrong, but i think you missed his point. A $2500 prototye roughly = a $250 production unit. If these were made to 'normal' quality standards - with gear trains NOT tuned to musical octaves - they might actually be able to sell them. And i have no doubt that if he were building it for somebody besides himself, he'd spend a few extra bucks for safety systems.

Besides, You could pony up $5k, build one yourself, or you could buy a cheap chinese made rip-off , seems all china does anymore is rip-off western products and assemble them with armies of prisoners working at gunpoint. :::stepping off soapbox:::

Frankly, the design i wanna see would involve a Harley 1200 sportster engine somewhere. hehe, not sure how the gyros would work though.

Yes I read the whole story and I will still stand by what I said. There will be plenty of nimrods that will read that story and will make their own cheap copies. I considered his "cute" saftey comments nothing more than CYA in case someone reads the story and gets hurt making and riding an inspired knock-off like he did.

Yep :-)

Bob Ruth

No, I did not miss the point. Do you really think that it cost only $2,500 to design a original concept workable prototype? How many paid man hours went into design & research? How many protos were built and rebuilt before a usable one was made? Did you include the costs of legal fees? Insurance? business expenses? Patent costs? Advertising? shall I go on or do you get the idea that taking an idea from concept to production is not a cheap process? All of that and more is calculated into the cost of the Segway before the profit is tacked on. The copy cat is not absorbing those costs in his rip-off prototype nor is having to build something that is end user safe enough to be practical. Segway is trying to sell this product as a metro/urban transport for business yuppies, not a bust your butt at your own risk sports toy like roller blades and skateboards. So it is no surprise that they shoot for the high end systems while the copy cat geek takes the low road. If you want to be cheap and half assed almost anything can be copied at a greatly reduced cost if you have the skills and tools to do it. That is why we have hard tailed patent laws in the U.S. Otherwise why waste all that money to design products that others will make rip-off copies of five minutes after it becomes popular? The irony of cheap third world rip off companies is that when they do develope someting which they want to sell in the U.S. the first thing they do is file for U.S. patents. I have always found it odd that those who bitch and ignore U.S. patents when they steal from others are the first to apply for one when it is their turn at being ripped off. Just like did you ever wonder why they always find large amounts of American Dollars when Anti-American leaders and terrorists hideouts are busted? I love the worlds double standards :-)

Bob Ruth

Sounds an accurate description of my whole fleet of model airplanes. ;o)

Marty

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick about this guy - he made no secret about the flaws in his design, and he noted that he had no intention of bringing it to market. Slamming him for indulging in an interesting and challenging project is unfair, and fails to appreciate the spirit with which he undertook the project. I found his page both interesting and educational, not just in respect of the technical challenges he overcame, but also in highlighting the gap between workable prototype and marketable product - as far as he went, he made it clear there were still considerable obstacles to making it as viable as the real Segway.

Russ.

He had fun building a Segway-like two-wheel self-balancing personal transportation device. "Copied it"? Only insofar as the thing looks like a Segway and works approximately the same way. Would you also disparage someone for designing a model aircraft? After all, that's been done before, and a new design would still be only a copy of, say, "aircraft with two wings and an engine driving a tractor propeller".

-tih

Bob, your a dope! For nearly every thing that is mass produced today, someone has made a home brew copy of it. Most of the time it's just to have the satisfaction of being able to do it. When we were kids, we'd build cars, called them hot rods, government pretty much ended that era. Nerds, like you describe, build their own computers now, often copies of what could be bought of the shelf at retail. Haven't you ever made something your self that you could have simply bought elsewhere, just to see if you could. If you're half the nerd that you claim to be, you do it all the time.

More power to Mr. Trevor Blackwell, he's just playing with the idea and says so on his site.

Paul

Gee, I am so sorry your message did not get through. Too much Static. Try civil debate mode the next time a subject comes up. You never know, you might of had some valid points lost in your pile of personal attack static.

Oh well, I think most of the civil crowd both pro and con has expressed their views without personal attacks. Thanks guys for the friendly debate. So I leave the rest of this thread's debates to the bottom feeders.

Bob Ruth