Date : Saturday, March 10th, 2012

Time : 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location : Dallas MakerSpace (DMS)

Address : 2995 Ladybird Lane Dallas, TX 75229 (off Monroe and Walnut Hill)

Website : http://dallasmakerspace.org/blog/

All monthly meetings are free to attend and open to the public.

We had a great turn out again at DMS, we just about filled up the meeting room again.  We even had a surprise visitor!  John B. showed up at this months meeting!  For those of you who don’t know John, he was the previous NTEAA President years ago and really did a lot of great things for the EV community while he was NTEAA President.  He moved down into the Austin area and is doing a lot of good work down there with the City and trying to get a School Chapter going.  So that was great to see John again and get some updates from him.

We discussed the upcoming events going on and we believe we have all of the arrangements needed to fill the events and have the man power to run some booths.  So we hope you come out to all of the Earth Day events coming up and come see us.

We also discussed moving the meeting to an alternate day because NTREG (http://www.txses.org/NTREG/) also meets on the same date and time.  NTEAA and NTREG have a lot of synergies and a lot of us would like to attend both events.  So it was put to a vote and the NTEAA monthly meeting has been rescheduled going forward to the 3rd Saturday of the month.  The NTEAA website calendar has already been updated and we hope this new meeting date works as well or better for us all.

We did do our Officer Elections this month and we do have some new people in positions.  The new filled positions are Ron Swanson as President and Neal Farris as Vice President.  Paul is still Secretary and Bill is still Treasurer. I (Jared L.) just didn’t feel I like I had the adequate time to give to NTEAA so I stepped down as President.  But I will still be helping out where I can and doing the website updates.

After our meeting we were planning on showing the movie “Revenge of the Electric Car”, but after we adjourned, everyone went out into the work shop and was checking on Bob and Stan’s progress on their EVs.  So we didn’t end up watching the movie after all.  But it is there now at DMS when ever we do have spare time and can watch it at a later date.

There was a lot of great conversations in the warehouse and they continued on for a very long time.  So we had a lot of show and tell and a lot of information exchange and was great to be part of that.  We hope you will be able to join us in a future meeting even if it is just to get questions answered.

This is my last post as President, I hope my contributions over the last 4 years as President (2009 – 2012) have helped grow EVs as a viable mode of transportation.   I wanted to thank everyone who has helped over the years to make NTEAA what it is today and I look forward to all of the great work to come from the new officers.  Lets all give them our support as we move forward.

Jared

Date : Saturday, February 11th, 2012

Time : 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location : MakerSpace

Address : 2995 Ladybird Lane Dallas, TX 75229 (off Monroe and Walnut Hill)

Website : http://dallasmakerspace.org/blog/

All monthly meetings are free to attend and open to the public.

We had our monthly meeting at Dallas MakerSpace.  It was a very good turnout this month, we were very close to filling the meeting room.  There was some wheres around 20 to 25 people, it is a little hard to count as people kept showing up after we started.  But that is fine to come in late, better to be late than never.  We talked quickly about some upcoming shows, showed some hardware, and had some general discussions about EVs.  Mike H. and Stan had some wooden battery mock ups of lithium batteries to use as measurement devices when planning a battery pack layout.  After the short meeting, we started the movie “What is an Electric Car”, it ran about 75 minutes (We’ll play it again in future meetings, so check the schedule to figure out when) to finish up just in time to go to the shop and look a Bob’s progress and design change ideas along with Stan’s motorcycle conversion.

Stan just got in his new hardware and had them layed out for display for everyone to look at.  Dallas MakerSpace look at expanding to one of the neighboring buildings which would be a larger work shop for personal projects that have an extended build or work time (like converting an EV).  There would be a small fee to “rent” out the space for your project to stay while you work on it.  It would be used for any project that you like and is a very cool idea or people who don’t have a garage or for people with too much stuff in the garage.  The fee isn’t yet figured out as that still needs to be negotiated but hopefully very soon that will be an option.  If that is something your interested in, please get in contact with Dallas MakerSpace and let them know you would be interested in renting a small space to work on what ever project you would like.  We also had a new EV show up that we hadn’t seen before.  This gentlemen (Teodore) came with his Miles EV which he changed the batteries to Lithiums (which dropped a lot of weight), increased the voltage, and change out the transmission to a manual stick shift for greater flexibility.   He had a few other small changes to the Miles EV, but it was pretty neat seeing that EV at the monthly meeting.

We also had a few Leafs there from fellow NTEAA members vehicles and Mike H. showed up in his Ford Ranger EV with a brand new set of batteries which had less than 1 mile on them.  He and I (Jared) changed out the batteries right before the meeting (and a little bit during the movie) at Metroplex Battery.  They are litterally just down the street from Dallas MakerSpace.  They were very helpful and informative, we learned a lot of stuff talking with them after swapping out the battery pack.  We might try some time to have them come chat with us about the Lead Acid batteries world.  Mike and I (Jared) learned a few things chatting with the owner so I’m sure we could all learn some good info from them.  If you have some battery needs, you might want to check out Metroplex Battery, they are a master distributor and carry a lot of batteries for probably about any application your working with.

I hope the people that have been following the website will show up to some of our upcoming meetings because there’s lots of stuff going on right now at Dallas MakerSpace and according to a fortune cookie I got which said “The price of gas will climb ever so higher”.  So come out to one of the meeting, they are free to attend, you can ask as many questions as you like and we have lots of shows coming up in the April and May time frame, so lots of opportunities to come check out EVs.

Date : Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Time : 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location : MakerSpace

Address : 2995 Ladybird Lane Dallas, TX 75229 (off Monroe and Walnut Hill)

Website : http://dallasmakerspace.org/blog/

We had our monthly meeting at Dallas MakerSpace this month.  We had a very good turn out and just about filled the conference room.  We had a lot of discussions ranging from Solar Panel systems, Lithium Batteries, and several different conversions currently going on.   Bob and Stan both have conversions going on right now at MakerSpace.  Bob is converting a Pontaic Fiero and Stan is doing a Honda ST1100 motorcycle.

If you would like to read up more on Stan’s conversion of the Honda ST1100 motorcycle you can visit his blog at st1100ev.blogspot.com.  You can follow along with Stan’s converson on his blog as he is covering all of the details, components and the install with great detail.

After our short meeting we gathered around the conversion and were discussing different aspects and options.   Bob has taken on quite the project as he is enlarging the cabin of the car to give him more room and also creating a hatch back of sorts for the Fiero.  As you see in the pictures Bob already has 1/2 of the Firewall removed from the car and some components are already installed.  We will be having more monthly meeting here at MakerSpace so if you wanted to come see the Fiero’s progress you just need to come out to one of our monthly meetings.

Monthly NTEAA Meeting

Date : Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Time : 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location : Joel’s House

Website : http://holidayexpressridingtrain.com

Address : 156 Hidden Circle Richardson, TX 75081   Google Map

We had a pretty informal meeting at Joel’s house this year.  We had a few new people show up and ask questions and hopefully they learned a lot.  Joel ran the train around some giving rides.  Nothing like seeing a whole bunch of grownups riding around on the train with EV grins.  If anyone got a picture of that, please send that to the officers so we can post that picture.  We did a few changes to the train while we were there to help Joel’s train run a little smoother and longer.  But in general it was a pretty informal meeting and just had fun chatting and playing with the train.  Hopefully everyone saw all of the updates that Joel did to the train this year because it was a huge success with the kids.  Thank you all for coming and we hope you can make it to more meeting in 2012!

Date : Saturday, November 5th, 2011

Time : 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM (MakerSpace will stay open until people stop coming)

Location : Makerspace

Address : 2995 Ladybird Lane Dallas, TX 75229 (off Monroe and Walnut Hill)

Website : http://dallasmakerspace.org/blog/

All monthly meetings are free to attend and open to the public.

We moved our monthly meeting to a new date and time to accommodate the open house for Dallas Makerspace.   Dallas Makerspace is a membership based, not-for-profit, shared community workshop and laboratory, commonly known as a hackerspace.   They are an organized group of local artists, engineers, makers, creators, and thinkers who work together to collect tools and resources for their membership, whom could not otherwise afford, store, or use them individually.  They use these resources to collaborate on individual and community projects in order to promote science and technology, while working and experimenting on innovative ideas to encourage learning within our community.

Thanks to everyone that came Saturday for the Makerspace event.  Great turnout for NTEAA and lots of great interest in the cars. We had 4 cars, Rons Leaf, Mike’s Ford pickup, Mark’s NMG and Neal’s VW Golf.  The Makerspace folks had a great event, lots of things going on from DNA, robotics, photography, laser cutters, CNC machines, 3D Printers, craft projects, Metal and Wood shop stuff, and even R2-D2 showed up!.   A nice new big space for some great projects.  There’s a rumor that there might be an EV there to work on….. Let’s see if that can happen, maybe our first club car build?  It was a great day and a lot to learn here.  Thanks again to all who came out.

If you got any pictures that we could post, please send them to the officer email (nteaa dot org at gmail dot com).

DFW Solar Home Tour

Date : Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Time : 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Location : Entire DFW Area

Website : http://www.dfwsolarhometour.org/

Website : http://nationalsolartour.org/content/dfw-solar-home-tour-ntreg-txses

NTEAA was part of NTREG (North Texas Renewable Energy Group)  DFW Solar Home Tour.  The turn out at the homes were great and we were told that the number of visitors from last year were doubled.  That is a lot of people interested in Renewable Energy.  Of course several people’s bubbles were burst when they found out some of the costs behind solar PV.  But once they find out that doing upfront upgrades and changes to the house makes a big difference on how much solar PV you need.  It is a huge savings doing some cost savings up front when it comes to solar PV.  Here are some pictures from a few houses with EVs at them.

Date : Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Time : 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location : Irving Main Street Festival

Address : Heritage Park  217 S. Main St, Irving Tx 75060

Website : http://www.manifoldsonmain.org/

We had our monthly meeting at the Irving Main Street Festival.  We had 4 electric cars, which most was a Nissan Leaf.  Several people thought that we were a Nissan representatives because they were mostly Nissan Leafs there.  But it was a good turn out for NTEAA members and since it was a Festival, there were a lot of people walking by and checking out the EVs.  Got to meet several very interesting people.  We had a quick 20 minute monthly meeting talking about the upcoming events in Sept and Oct.   Details of those events will be sent out to the NTEAA Yahoo Group.  While we were there we go several good questions about the cars and I (Jared) think several people were ready to buy the cars.  It turned out to be a great weather and not too hot to stay out side.  There was a lot of things to do around the Festival and the car show had a ton of entries.  While we were there at the event I (Jared) pointed out to the group that the light polls in that area were all Solar Powered.  That was very cool to see that type of technology being used by the city of Irving.  We hope a lot of you that had some great questions come out to another monthly meeting where we can have a more one on one experience and actually take the cars for a test spin.

Jared’s Electric Vehicle Channel

For other pictures and details, you can always check out his website :

ElectricFormula.com

Date : Saturday, August 6th, 2011

Time : 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

Location : Bankston Nissan of Dallas

Address : 4707 Lyndon B Johnson Freeway  Dallas, TX 75244

We had our monthly meeting on the 1st Saturday of the month this time and we still had a good turn out at Bankston Nissan.  Bankston Nissan provided us all with some great BBQ lunch.  They had both Nissan Leaf’s and a GM Volt there at this monthly meeting.  We also had several of our Electric Car Conversions there.

We were able to use Bankston’s meeting room so we could stay out of the 100 degree heat.  We tried to get the movie “What is an Electric Car” to play in the TV that was in the room but it was not working.  So we will have to schedule another time to watch that movie.

So we just had our normal monthly meeting inside.  Went around the room introducing our selves, doing show and tell and hearing about projects people were working on like Bob’s Fiero Conversion and peoples experiences with the Nissan Leaf.  We even talked about some benefits to Leaf owners that people were seeing by charging on Level 1 chargers in the Texas heat (since it had been hitting 100 degrees for the past 30 days).  The conclusion was that the Level 2 charger was creating too much heat in an already high temperature environment (charging in the sun in a parking lot or even a hot garage) and not quite leaving the batteries 100 percent charged.  Even a Nissan Tech told one of our members to use the Level 1 charger in high heat conditions.  Anyways, we had some great discussions about the electric car and some ideas for conversions.  Afterwards we went out side and ate some great BBQ that was provided by Bankston Nissan and prepared by TX TN Custom Bar-B-Q.

Then we just hovered around the Electric Cars, did test drives, checking out some of the custom work that Mike H. has done on his truck and just generally having fun around the electric vehicles.

As usual charging was provided by Bankston Nissan and we had members taking advantage of that opportunity.

Bankston has been gracious enough to provide us with their amenities and we think they have a great location.  Thanks again Bankston Nissan.

Date : Saturday, July 9th, 2011

Time : 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Location : Green Spot Market and Fuels

Address : 702 N. Buckner Blvd., Dallas, TX 75218

All monthly meetings are free to attend and open to the public.

On July 9^th  we had the rare opportunity to christen a new pair of Blink charge stations at the Green Spot in East Dallas. This was among 5 new stations that just went on-line in the DFW area from Blink and Ecotality.

Close to White Rock Lake, the Green Spot has been a local pioneer in alternative energy and healthy living. They are one of the few places in town that offers Bio-Diesel. Their store offers healthy snacks, drinks and a variety of locally produced products.

The White Rock Local Market, we attended, is a bi-monthly outdoor event designed to promote local artist and food producers from around the North Texas area.

Dave Aasheim was there from Blink with his Chevy Volt to answer questions about their charging network and the Ecotality EV Project program. The EV Project  is a federal government funding intuitive to create new charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) across the US. You can learn more, suggest charge station locations and sign up for your own Blink network access card at ecotality.com. The Blink system access is currently free.

Norris Lauer brought over his Eclipse and Mike Barkley drove down with the modified plug in Prius. Neal Farris brought his VW Golf to round out the conversions. We had two white Nissan Leafs belonging to members Paul Shaffer and Ron Swanson.

There were lots of really interested people with great questions. Once again the demographic of the East Dallas area makes for an eclectic crowd with many varied interest, including EVs. People are really talking about how an EV would work for them. It is such a refreshing change to hear about where the EV is going rather than wondering when it will get here!

With all the activity at the Green Spot we held our own with individuals and whole families looking at the cars with great interest. There was one family that I saw talking to Norris, I made the comment that the wife and kids could go look at the other things at the Market and the mom said to me that they all wanted to see how an electric car works. Wow!

As always we had a great showing and appreciate the support of the folks at the Green Spot. You can stop by and pick up a charge for free, even if you don’t have a Blink card, the staff will turn on the station. And of course don’t forget to recharge yourself with a drink or snack.

By Neal Farris