Fun AND educational...DadLabs has got your back. This week Daddy Troy travels to the Maker Faire in Austin, Texas to report on how parents and kids all over the country are coming together to make clean, fuel efficient solar cars. Putting some energy into making a solar car with you child is a creative way to both energize your relationship and to casually discuss how much gas money they will be contributing when they start to drive....! DadLabs ep 434.

Daddy Troy: Welcome back to Dad Labs. Here we are shooting at the Makerfaire in Austin, Texas. They’ve got a lot of cool process things you can do with your kids. Hey dude! How are you? Here I am with Rob and his son Ayden. And they have built this solar car called Solita. And he is going to tell us all about it.
Rob: This is a project I started with my son. We originally were doing just some simple projects to see how far we could make a car move. And it started with just some simple solar panels and a DC motor on some erector sets and wheels and ran it along. It’s got a 13 watt solar panel roof on the top, carbon fiber tubing which is extremely light and extremely strong. And a brushless DC motor for high efficiency. And I wrote some software programs to run the motor and also stepped it up a little in terms of the solar cells.
Daddy Troy: And Ayden you helped out in building this as well. What part did you take?
Ayden: I did the lights, which we had in the front but are gone right now. And I helped with the wheels.
Daddy Troy: Cool and where are these wheels from?
Ayden: Home Depot.
Daddy Troy: They look like lawn mower wheels to me. Is that what they are?
Ayden: Yes that is what they are.
Daddy Troy: And how cloudy can it be and this thing still run?
Ayden: Pretty cloudy. It can just a little sun and it will make it run.
Daddy Troy: Wow that’s great. Well this is Rob and Ayden they are telling us about their solar car. Here I am with Cyrus he is a EE student at UT, that’s University of Texas. And they have built a solar car. That last solar car we looked at puts out 13 watts, this one puts out 1.2 kilowatts. That is 1, 200 watts. That’s a lot. So tell me when you were a kid when did you start tinkering or doing things like this?
Cyrus: I mean ever since I was young I would take apart remotes. I would take apart like anything that I would screw on. And I wanted to know what was inside and just figure out –figure it out.
Daddy Troy: And were your parents involved in that at all?
Cyrus: They didn’t necessarily push me in one direction but definitely my parents told me how to be inquisitive about just about everything. One of the main points of our organization is to introduce what solar panels are and what application they can use. So what we can do here for kids is show them how we can take an electric car and turn it on with just some solar panels. So if you can imagine how a little car like that can get as much energy form that solar panel now you can imagine how much energy we can get from our car.
Daddy Troy: Well that’s all this week from Dad Labs. Remember if you are in Austin or in San Francisco you can go check out the Makerfaire. They also have a website. We will see you next week on DadLabs.com