Ruben put together an awesome video of the Tiki Tank at Critical NW.  Check out the video and share it!

Everyone has been burning the midnight oil getting the truck ready for burning man.  Here’s some photos that Jacqueline took: (Click for larger)

Team Tiki Tank had a huge success in our first trial run at the Critical NW festival in WA.  There were a lot of lessons learned on what worked well and what needed improvement.

High level priorities before Burning Man:

• Treads to be controlled by the Vehicle speed sensor
• More Lights – Addressable and non.
• Better shade
• Working Passenger door
• Generator cover
• Weld speaker mounts
• Redo all wiring / Pre-run all cables
• Paint
• Decorations

Full photoset available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/divide/sets/72157634776252833

Some Photos from the event (Click for larger version)

Arriving on site, fully packed up with camp gear

First day of the build. No lights installed yet

First tests of the lights installed.

Improved lighting once Seth arrived

Close up pic with Tiki textures visible at night

The speed of the light motion will be in sync with the actual vehicle speed in the final version.

6 days away from Critical NW!  So much work left to do.

Lattice Cut, testing the gun

Angela and Seth fabricating the shade pole receivers

Cutting and taping the mats for the treads

After several weeks of gathering materials, progress is starting to be be made.

Recent work done:

• Turret design and construction started
• Side treads to be built from ABS pipes and skinned with burlap sacks
• Acquired lots of bamboo and tiki materials
• $700 worth of LED’s for treads purchased from China
• Custom Arduino controllers and sensors for lighting effects

Seth Building the Top

Testing the angles for the new turret top

Temporary brace to get an idea of how it looks

Tiki tank and Crash Industries are sponsored by PBR.

Investigating materials for covering the vehicle

Gathering bamboo and burlap.

We spent some time putting together Photoshop mockups of the Tiki Tank:

Missing from these illustrations:

• Lighting – Treads and general outlines
• Shade configuration
• Actual material textures
• Rear view with the draw bridge / rear gate
• Water cannons
• Hula girl hood ornament

Side view, click for full size:

Front view, click for full size:

I outlined the body of the truck in Inkscape (free version of illustrator) to draw out the ideas.

Click for higher resolution.

With the announcement of the theme for 2013, we decided to change the theme and build structure of the truck to become a TIKI TANK; a WW2 era tank made of materials that would be found in a tropical jungle island.

Using tanks diagrams of tanks for inspiration, we drafted up a couple ideas.