Endless Sphere

I worked for Boeing many years and I've drilled millions of holes in the stuff. Hey Karl. Thanks so much for sharing your industry experience and knowledge about working with carbon fiber. I've cobbled together what I know mostly from working on a handful of fiberglass projects and doing an insane ...

What do you consider the maximum width for solar panels on a trailer? Perhaps the same width as the handlebars? Assuming a solar panel made from 125 mm wide Sunpower cells, 6 cells wide seems to be the most common width among The Sun Trip participants although I've noticed one or two vehicles which...

I’m taking this new trailer build very slowly since it’s made of expensive materials and is mostly held together by adhesives. This kind of ups the stakes on getting it right on the first try. It would make for a better post if I held off until the trailer is done but in the meantime here are a few ...

Are you concerned about the lift/drag you might start to generate if the front of that panel lifts a bit at high speeds? Hmm... I've been riding around with it for a while now and I haven't noticed anything that negatively affects the bike's handling. You're probably right that there's some lift/dr...

I wasn’t going to post this since it’s only an incremental upgrade to something I’ve posted before but I took some photos and they came out pretty good so I figured what the heck. I finally got around to upgrading the roof mounting hardware to larger diameter carbon fiber tubes to increase stiffness...

I went through this thread again, and I don't think you've discussed your bike frame at all. It started off with a 26" wheel in the back, and then switched to one with 20" wheels front and back. I had assumed you put the motor in the front for the higher efficiency at higher rpm, but what made you ...

Are you going to buy a couple of commercial flexible solar panels ? ( if so which ones and from where ) or Are you going to make your own panel ? If You make your own panel what cells are you going to use ? What is the cost of each cell ? Strips and solder , taxes and shipping costs ? And On what m...

Oh I see now, there are 10 fixed LEDs that represent the state of charge! That makes sense now naturally. I was thinking that you were doing something more advanced, like red + green LEDs equaled the state of charge, but then green represented how much was estimated to be remaining when you reached...

So do you basically just have to keep one or two LEDs showing green while you're biking, and you'll arrive before running out of charge? Sorry, I'm struggling to unpack this sentence... One or two green LEDs would be 10-20% SoC. On very long days, I don't want to run out of sun and battery 10 miles...

Thanks, guys. I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. If there's sufficient interest, I could spin this off on its own thread. I'm willing to put the source code up on Githhub for anyone who wants to try this although I could probably use some help with modifying it to be more universal. The curr...

I'm still working on the TailBrain (Arduino-based trailer tilt controller), having fixed coding issues which were causing random reboots and overheating issues resulting from trying to power my Arduino with 13.8V. I think I just lost another photosensor so not quite there yet. Having figured out mos...

I found on my setup it reduced the average cruising speed watts consumption by over 50W. Very nice. I like the simplicity of the 3D printed mounts. How have they held up over time? Have you noticed any reduction in solar power from the cells cracking as the panel flexes? I had a front fairing for w...

dunno if these are the right thing, but they start at under $30 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=360+Degree+Camera&s=price-asc-rank&qid=1559766308&ref=sr_st_price-asc-rank Good point. To be honest, I didn't really look at the low end of the market. Looks like there are all kinds of options out there. I'm...

wturber wrote: ↑

Jun 05 2019 11:35am

Oh. At that price I think I need one...

I know, right? Looks like it's gone up to $50 since I ordered 2 weeks ago. The white one is selling for $78. I can do gold if it's half price.
CamelCamelCamel FTW.

Cute. Which camera do you have? It's the Insta360 Nano . At 70 grams and only $40, I was able to talk myself into adding it as a possible 4th camera :mrgreen: to carry with me. This particular model came out three years ago. The newer ones have far better resolution and image stabilization but at 1...

I got a 360 camera. These things are fun.

It wasn't a subset of ASCII; it was more based on letter frequency. For example, E T A and O were all one finger press. I N S and R were one finger press plus one thumb press. H L and D were two finger presses. Etc. The objective was speed and being easy to remember. Never quite made it into a prod...

billvon wrote: ↑

May 29 2019 5:29pm

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6822852 (figure 6 worked the best)

"Inventor: William Von Novak, San Diego, CA" ...you're not related, are you?

So... a subset of ASCII? Did this ever make it into a commercial product?

...If there are any folding solar panels I might consider carrying them for emergency charging if I'm far from an outlet. I'm planning to ride the Southern Tier Bike Route next year from Florida to California. There are lightweight folding solar panels like this . But for my needs, the overlap betw...

...I'm curious if charging during the day while sleeping, and then riding at night... Personally, I like sleeping at night and riding during the day... Exactly what wturber said. Also, sharing the road with other vehicles at night is more dangerous no matter how good your bike lights might be. I im...

But enough about me. I recently stumbled across an old image on my hard drive and thought I would post some highlights from pioneers in this field. I first came across this article by David Clay when I was getting started with my solar bike effort in 2007. David built a solar bike in 2000 and rode i...

I woke up early this morning to the sound of pouring rain and thought to myself "this is a great opportunity to test the bike in the rain!" Expedition-scale planning has a funny way of redefining what passes for a good idea. At 7 AM, the roads were delightfully empty, the air had a freshly washed sc...

I’ve been putting in more 10-40 mile rides with the plywood panel on the trailer to try to flush out any failure points and it’s looking solid. Now it's time to finalize the Arduino microcontroller hardware and software. This is the arrangement of photo sensors I used on the Tilt-o-matic 1.0 trailer...

I'll probably need to change out the clutch for a larger one, assuming I can find one which will fit. Even on the highest setting, the current clutch occasionally has trouble overcoming the friction I deliberately designed into the tilt assembly to eliminate backlash and excess play which tends to ...

I took the new trailer out for a road test with the Arduino and light sensors mounted on a breadboard. Aside from some minor teething pains, the system looks like it will work as intended. The handling is so good I can almost forgot that it's back there. With a fully loaded bike the trailer will be ...