Earth Rover
Was wondering sabout a co2 motor, and I thnk these are conversions for a small petrol motor Iactually own... cox 0.40 iirc.
http://www.davisdieseldevelopment.com/co2/
servo-switchable gearbox - 1,2,r
Thnking the key is going to be using the motor both as drive and for regen braking or at least making the two systems play nice together. Main consideration though is whether the gearing will be right to provide some regen without slowing the car too much although I suppose by the time it's ready to roll it'll weigh a fair bit so have decent momentum.
Perhaps regen coils in the wheels would allow a more controllable regen flow... so rather than trying to use the motor as a generator where the windows might not be optimal and provide too much movement resistance, perhaps leave the motor as single-use but minimise it's power usage and try to balance with in-wheel regen systems e.g. cruise using minimal power on the drive side, minimal intertia and resistance from the drivetrain, and meanwhile the regen coils in the wheels do their thing.
possibly some sort of auto-locking hubs (like on irl 4x4s) would help reduce rolling resistance during regen.
EDIT: Actually on reflection don't think so - part of the point of regen braking is to use the force required to brake to generate more significant amounts of power rather (amps rather than ma) rather than just trying to re-capture some charge from ongoing movement. Braking *torque* effectively will be what gives the power back rather than trickle charge.
Will need a heavy duty switching unit or a speed controller which supports regen charging (check). Perhaps some heavy duty relays? DPDT would allow rapid switching between regen and normal speed controller control. or parrallel relays of 10a perhaps.
More info re spoeed controllers and regen braking.
Nimh packs for RC cars - 4200mah!! Problem solved - three of them should be enough for about 30 mins driving. Needs special charger though.
defence system: how about something like this: link from tasty today. Apparently uses the half-life aimbot to control servo-controlled item. Would be doable with existing planned onboard computing. Perhaps with more compact soft-air gun,
