Endless Sphere

I like the Lazy Susan as a starting point. Nice work :) That was a fortuitous discovery. I started out trying to design a pivot mechanism from scratch, went browsing on McMaster-Carr for bearing ideas, saw a bunch of very expensive and heavy slewing bearings and then stumbled across this $20 soluti...

A little progress update. After ten years of stubbornly refusing to explore overhead mounting options, I finally decided that having a small roof over my head would have enough value in keeping the sun and rain off my head to offset the perceived downsides: high center of gravity, aero drag, cross w...

I've had a few requests for details about the sun tracking tilt mechanism I built so I'll try to gather the key bits here in one place. This is not going to be a clear how-to guide with easy to follow steps. I've had lots of failures and a few successes and I'm still working on optimizing my design....

I applied a 15 day moving average to make it possible to compare with typical weather data We had a friend who's involved in tracking migratory animals recently share us this program here https://www.movebank.org/node/6607 which would let you extract the actual weather info for an location at any t...

#2 Enable Regen Speed Limiting: This way whenever you are exceeding the speed limit the bike will do proportional regen to slow you down. If you combine that with either the aux potentiometer or digi-aux control set to vary your speed limit, then you can easily slow down right to a stop via regen w...

These aren't huge numbers but they are noticeable. Looking at some random examples I can find in our log data the solar output seems to drop by about 5% within 5-10 minutes of stopping. A fun theoretical question is whether the energy needed to actively cool the panel would be more or less than the...

Hey Justin. Thank you for dedicating so much of your time and Grin Tech resources to upgrading the Trip Analyzer and sharing your detailed analysis. The low rez/high rez approach and the shading are elegant solutions to working with large data sets in a browser app. I'll certainly be putting them to...

I've updated the solar modeling tool I posted earlier so that it now automatically imports weather data for any city in the world. Just enter your location, pick any date range and change the battery/panel specs to match your solar bike. Supports fixed and tilted arrays. Use cases: Figure out the so...

If you had some test runs, what is your average speed and how far you go one day, and how many hours you spend moving? I've logged about 2000 miles (3000 km) with various solar setups over the years, mostly short 2 day weekend camping trips in the San Francisco Bay Area between May and September. A...

UPDATE: This post is now obsolete. I've created a new version of this solarEbike Trip Planner which automatically imports weather data for any city in the world. The new version is available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Za-3a4wOQHfdXC8ih5EQkNvv1A90bd7S-pbzUT162c4/edit#gid=0 I've pr...

Are you thinking about adding a solar panel to your ebike and want to know how many Wh per day you can expect? Maybe you already have a fixed tilt panel and are wondering how many more Wh you can get if you add a tilting mechanism? I've published a free tool which estimates these values for any loca...

Can I just run the CA-DP Plug's red V+ wire to the battery through a switch? Is there a way to turn off the CA3 backlight? Yep - just switch the CA to Vbatt+ and you're all set. I wire my bikes this way - the switch also powers the lighting DC converter and there's a kill switch on the throttle to ...

Would the controller have to be powered on for the CA to measure/record the solar charging current? No, the controller doesn't need to be powered on, but the CA does so you may need to mod the CA-DP connection if you are powering the CA from the controller. Having the CA active in an unattended sit...

A lil progress for ya, should be assembling the bike by the end of this week! I'm getting kind of a Cronenberg vibe. I like it. Is the hoop winding along the entire length of each tube primarily a structural or aesthetic choice? From what I've been reading about carbon fiber tubing, for most applic...

Installing a Phaserunner gave the prescribed quiet operation, but took away all the radical acceleration. Very nice and controllable but boringly docile even at high phase current. So - I like the control but do miss the acceleration... Oooh. Thanks for explaining that. I've been using a couple of ...

I'd consider adding a bit more distance between the solar trailer and bike as well. For the final build... I'll move it a little further back. I'll still get the same shadow but it will be later/earlier in the day. Previously, I had posted anecdotal evidence along the lines of "When I'm riding towa...

Ah. So you don't want to encapsulate them. I infered from your comment that the diode you are using was too big to encapsulate that you would have preferred to do so. Yeah, sorry, no. I was just entertaining that line of thought. Keeping them accessible makes more sense for my application. Fast for...

I read through the thread like a page-turner thriller and then registered to post. Hello jalwa and thanks for your kind words. I lurked here for 10 years before creating an active account. Sometimes it's hard to tell if I'm going too deep and then I remember this is Endless Sphere and there's no su...

I'm probably ignorant of the potential downfalls, but I'd be inclined to tear into one of those diode packages to find out how small the active components really are to see if encapsulation along with the solar cells really is feasible. I can imagine how that might be a bad idea, but if having ever...

I have purchased a small stack of the SunPower v3 solar cells, with the goal to create a similar foam panel to attach to the top of my cargo bin. My question is how are the solar panels face mounted to the fiberglass board? I cannot seem to locate sources for ETFE material, or the corrugated alumin...

At some point someone is going to build a tiny (0805-sized) device that will work as a perfect diode and put one on each cell. That will solve the problem completely. Looking forward to it. It's going to have to be that small to be encapsulated with the cells. Ten years ago, the first successful PV...

My custom-made PV modules arrived last week. Here's a quick peek at what they look like. Cool panels. Can I ask why you chose those over a more standard 4x6 panel like the Solbian SP78? Was it the extra few watts you could get, or was there some other benefit in going completely custom? I have a co...

I'm changing them all back to unlisted for the benefit of ES folks. Please try to forgive my terrible monologues to the camera, it's pretty bad. Keep in mind these were mostly produced while on the road and somewhat under duress :D Hopefully those videos will fuel your excitement for your own trip ...

Thanks! I guess I should make the video blogs public again... Were you able to view them? I think I took them down a while ago because of mean comments and they are a little embarrassing :D All the embedded YouTube videos appear to be broken/missing. You could disable comments (under Advanced Setti...

Just found this thread, and I am very much looking forward to following your journey for the next few years! Hey Troy! Just seeing your 2014 trip thread for the first time. Great stuff. Just lost an entire morning and I'm only half way through. I hope I leave behind an equally compelling tale of te...