Hi All,
I want to share my personal saga of working with key people on this forum to get the TSDZ2 firmware to where version 20.1C is now. I am so happy and satisfied with version 20.1C that I have decided to share my Hand-Cycle story to express how much I appreciate what everyone has contributed to getting us where we are today.
First, I will tell you the abridged version of my biking life and where I am now. I started mountain biking in 1986, and fell in love instantly, rode my mountain bikes and road bikes year-round three times each week, and enjoyed every minute of it.
Then while on a mountain biking vacation in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in 2015, I rode off a 6-foot drop that I didn't see and was going way too slow to make the landing. I broke my neck, and I am a C6-7 quadriplegic. I'm paralyzed from the middle of my arms down and from my chest down. Nothing works. No muscles and no feeling. The very worst part is my hands don't work at all.
So, as you can imagine, I was devastated, and while I was in the hospital for three months, I searched for what type of outdoor activities I could do even as a quadriplegic. As I searched, I found that the two activities that I wanted to do were skiing and biking, and every post or video I saw was all about paraplegics and amputees. They both have working hands and some core strength, depending on where the break-in their back is. To make it simple, if someone breaks their neck and doesn't have working hands, they have quadriplegia, and if someone breaks their back and has working hands, they have paraplegia.
Before my injury, I was in great shape and more robust than an average person. But that all ended quickly, and I had to retrain what muscles did still work, how to work again. Before my injury, I worked with my body all day long every day, plus I rode bikes, skied, and snowboarded. After my injury, I have about 60% of the bicep’s strength of an average out-of-shape person and 30% of an average out-of-shape person's triceps strength. So, after nine months of no biking or skiing, I found https://www.utrails.us/ They had hand-cycles that I could try at a park 15 miles from my home, and they offered instructors to ride along with you if something went wrong during the ride, which it often did. So, I went there and gave it a try. On that first ride, it took me two hours to make two loops around that park. But it was something I could do outside. I kept at it, and a very kind Lady, I wish I could remember her name, gave me a used Top End XLT hand-cycle. After some time, I also found https://wasatchadaptivesports.org/; they also offered hand-cycles to ride if you didn't have one. The most significant difference was they were very close to my home. I didn't have to drive Uptown and ride at the same park time after time. I could ride even from home and meet them along the trail. Then shortly after this, I discovered https://discovernac.org/. They offered the same thing and the ability to ride on dirt and not just pavement. Riding off-road was exciting because it was more like mountain biking which I enjoyed so much before my injury. But here, I found out that I needed a power assist that had more low-end torque and was a lot safer than required on the pavement.
I needed Power-Assist to work for a hand-cycle with a coaster brake and someone with very week arms. I also needed a way to shift gears because my hands were strapped to the pedals. I started searching for something that would work for me. I called the major companies that sell power assists, and they all told me that it did not exist. I was on the Internet continually trying to find things, and there was nothing out there. Then after a year of searching, I found Mark at https://www.electrifybike.com; he had just started his business and was working in a small garage at his home only a few miles from my house. He told me he had the power assist I needed a TSDZ2 that would work with a coaster brake. So, we installed it on my bike, and I was off and riding, NOT! It did not give me enough boost because my arms were too weak to get the torque sensor to apply power. After months of trying, I figured out that if I pulled on the cranks against the brake when I booted up the system, it would assist me with the power I needed. That was a game-changer.
I was also was able to find XShifter and work with the owner and inventor Paul Gallagher. With his help, we were able to use his current electric bike shifting the XShifter so that I could either shift with my voice and then eventually with my chin so that I could be in the right gear at the right time. Before XShifter I had to remove my hand that was strapped to a pedal from the cranks reached down make a shift put my hand back into the cranks and pedal again then repeat for each shift. It was very difficult and frustrating because I would lose all my momentum in the process of shifting. But with the ability to shift with my voice or chin I could shift very quickly without removing my hands from the cranks what a big difference that made. I am now the distributor for XShifter it's an awesome product that can help anybody shift simpler, easier and faster. https://www.electrifybike.com/store/p155/Xshifter.html#/
Shortly after that, Mark let me know about a guy called Casainho, the name he goes by on Endless-Sphere.com, an ebike technical forum for DIYers. He lives in Portugal, and he was working on Flexible Open-Source Firmware for the TSDZ2 with an LCD3 Display. We contacted him and let him know what we were trying to do. He informed us that there are many riders with weaker legs like his young son that could also benefit. He made a lot of improvement over time, but I still had to pull back on the cranks when booting up the system to get the power I needed. And if you pulled too much against the brake when the system boots up, it was difficult to stop rotation when you needed to brake.
Then Buba, an EndlessSphere.com engineer in Sweden, started adding to the TSDZ2 LCD3 OSF project. He reached out to us, and we started working together to make the safety and usability changes we needed. He made some changes that made it much safer to pull backward for the coaster brake. And give it much more power at a low rpm and from a stop. But you still needed to pull back as it boots up to get the amount of power required. At that point, we needed to stay with V20 because V19 was not safe for braking with a coaster brake.
We started converting hand-cycles for those programs listed above and individuals that had their own hand-cycle. And I could see that I was making a difference for others in the same situation as I was. It also made hand-cycling much better for paraplegics and amputees.
I stayed active on the forum, continually asking for help, then Covid 19 hit. Mbrusa, an Endless-Sphere engineer in Italy, offered to help as he was stuck at home and had some time to try and help make V20 for the LCD3 better, and he did. For the first time with his changes, you no longer needed to pull back against the brake as the system boots to get the required power. At about that same time, Casainho released V1.0.0 for the 850C. My new hand-cycle didn't need a coaster brake because I designed a new elbow brake. I wanted to try V1.0.0, but I was not too fond of the 850C display, So I kept asking Casainho to get version 1.0.0 to work on the 860C. Mark sent him an 860C display, and I think he acquired some 860C’s on his own. After he got it working with V1.0.0, I put an 860C with V1.0.0 on the new hand-cycle and left the older one with mbrusa’s version of 20.1 on the LCD3 he did for me on the older hand-cycle. Long story short, the 860C display was in every way the best display that I had tried. But for me, V1.0.0 had no low end and did not perform near as good as the older 20.1 on the LCD3. Even after a year and countless hours of trying different settings.
Then mbrusa stepped up and brought the best of both worlds together. He used the 860c display code and the incredible 20.1 motor firmware. I thought it was going to take another year to get this working. But he got it done very quickly, and it is so awesome to be able to use the 20.1 motor firmware on the 860C and blend it with the display firmware that Casainho had done so well on the 860C.
I am so thankful for everyone that has contributed to this OSF project. I mention the main three friends that I've worked with and the countless private messages that have gone back and forth to get to this point. Casainho, buba and for me most of all mbrusa. I can call the current state of this project close to perfection. It's taken four years to get here and at the point where it's very safe, very powerful at no or slow cadence, very usable, very friendly, very smooth, and on and on.
My main goal for all of this was if someone looks into hand-cycling, they will know that it is possible to ride a hand-cycle safely, and all they need is biceps. Knowing this would have made a massive difference in my life for that first year after I was injured. When I started, I had biceps and triceps, but my average speed was five mph, with my longest ride of 25 miles, which took 6.5 hours. At that slow speed, it is all work and not much fun. Also, without a headwind, it was easy to overheat. Now my average speed is 15mph, and I can ride 30 miles in less than 2.5 hours. My longest ride so far is 110 miles. In one day, I use three 17.5 Ah batteries to ride that far, and I have done that ride once in each of the last two years. Now that riding is much safer and much more fun for me and everyone else, they can take advantage of all the contributions that everyone has made to this OSF Project!
Some of you may know that last year I started to try to liquid cool the TSDZ2. The primary purpose of this was that because I'm 190 pounds, my bike, pack, and three batteries are 100 pounds. The TSDZ2 has to power 300 pounds up and down the trails. With watts turned up to 900 watts, it was super fun, but anything over 450 watts would kill the TSDZ2. After several coolant leaks and other problems, it was working great. I am still going to share this "how-to" with everyone. I chose to put it off because getting to this point with the firmware was more critical than keeping cool at high watts.
I have been riding my old hand-cycle with the 860C 20.1C for testing. And I have been riding my newer hand-cycle with a BBS02 because Mark wanted me to compare them. I have to say that a torque sensor is the only way to go now that we have 20.1C on the 860C! To compare the TSDZ2 at 450 Watts to the BBS02 at 1100 watts is not fair. But with the TSDZ2 turned up to 900 watts with liquid cooling, the only two things that the BBS02 does better is quiet sound and runs cooler without liquid cooling.
Many more people have worked coding, testing, and writing the TSDZ2 open-source firmware project. Thanks to you all. I am grateful to see this come together after three years of effort.
Thanks, Jeff
