Sawzalled the tank, got the iPAQ, and Riding!

"Sparkfest" took place on the tank, where I went to Brian's shop and applied a wide range of reciprocating saw technology to chop out a rectangle section of the tank. The grinder portion generated the sparks and was mainly used for finishing. Besides some damage from the blade hitting the underside of the outside shell, I noticed the tank had a small split which likely leaked air/gas fumes when it was a gas machine. After some filing, I masked off the outside of the tank and sprayed the inside white in hopes of preventing/slowing the rusting action.

I got the iPAQ destined for my battery meter and quickly installed the "Familiar GPE" linux installation from www.handhelds.org, using only the CF card because my serial cable hadn't arrived.
Once installed, a little treat called "usbnet/ipaqnet" allowed my linux laptop to directly connect via IP to the iP - it works great, allwoing me to rapidly install software, log into the iPAQ as a little server (via SSH) and generally run it as a little linux box. I quickly got Pythin-GTK installed and the demos I ran from the tutorial working on the iPAQ. I then got totally sidetracked by the desire to put cool e-moto sound affects out via the iPAQ, the best bet besides urandom > /dev/audio is a tool called "Boodle" that in an earlier version was ARM compatible. More on this later.

Oh, and RIDING. Today the neighborhood was very quiet and so I suited up and took a spin around the block, unleashing my 24 volts onto the public streets. It went well, the bike was easy to manage, but was surprisingly loud from the gears and chain. I suspect the chain tension might be too high, and the chain is rubbing on the swing arm plastic pad. The rear disc brake might be touching a bit too much too - I think I need to do some basic mechanical maintenance, connect up the headlight and fix the rear-brake light switch to improve roadworthiness. Its very cool all the same, and in time for the grand unveiling this weekend!

I went a touch over 20 mph according to the speedo, but Barb passed me on her bike at one pint so I am not sure I trust it. The ODO reads 0.9 miles, and the batteries charged right back up with the 2 Soniels. I should start keeping a log, forget the iPAQ audio and get a tiny piezo, focus on the battery meter and maintenance. Away we go!