Endless Sphere

As long as this thread is getting bumped to the top, allow me to throw in a YouTube video recommendation. Light Speed is a new documentary about last year's World Solar Challenge in Australia. These solar race cars were the inspiration for my project back in 2006. I thought "sure, these cars ha...

Your regen brakes will charge directly to the battery without interacting with the solar charger controller. There will be no problem. All the solar system sees is an increase in battery voltage. Exactly right. There's no meaningful conflict. When my battery charge is at 90% or higher, regen brakin...

Did you encounter any unexpected difficulties, such as flat tires? Just one flat tire on day 1, thankfully. No serious mechanical issues. My trailer's suspension "collapsed" on the way back but fortunately it was just a bolt that worked it's way loose from all the vibrations and I caught ...

Here's a teaser from a project that's currently in my video editing queue.

How many solar watt-hours did you average a day? Here are the trip stats from the end of the video. 20,104 Wh and 12 days looks like 1675 solar Wh/day but that includes solar Wh generated during my non-travel days. If I add up just the travel days, I averaged 1472 solar Wh/day with a low of 1079 Wh...

Since Alaska isn't another country, just call that a practice run. Then you and your bike can take a boat and bypass Canada, so the virus doesn't impede some real progress. Take a month or 2 to see Alaska by bike in late May or early June and get that advantage of very long days with your solar pan...

Just one question. When you gonna get out of that fire infested hellhole and get on the road? It's been 2.5 years of analysis, so time to come out of the analysis paralysis phase and do it. I've been waiting on the message "John I should be hitting CR on about X date, how to we meet up?" ...

I took a trip down the coast to visit relatives and put the whole rig, gear and rider to the test. I figured I would post here when I got back but I'm not finding the motivation for a detailed write-up. Here's a video I put together. How about an open question and answer session? What do you guys wa...

Aluminumwelder, please come back and give a review on the Chinese MPPT charge controllers. I hope they are a good product. These look awfully similar to the one Alex reviewed except they added under-speced 12v and 5v outputs (6w and 5w only?!). You can buy just one unit for US$30 on eBay or AliExpr...

That last photo reminds me of our bush fires here in Australia over the summer. Was scary stuff! It was surreal. At New Brighton beach, there was some light ash falling and water-dropping helicopters flying directly overhead. The total area burned so far is only about 1% of the Australia bush fires...

I decided my wind gust problem was mostly hardware related. The adjustable driveshaft clutch I'm using to protect the tiny gearbox of the motorized tilt mechanism was not strong enough to hold the panel in place against a sudden wind gust. Even when the panel was level, a slight updraft could sudden...

Fabric tail fairing mock-up. What do we think? Is this worth pursuing? Over decades of riding, and lusting after higher speeds, I found that my average speed on a long day never got over 15 mph. At that power level, adding fairings didn't help. Thanks, Warren. I keep coming back to this every coupl...

Fabric tail fairing mock-up. What do we think? Is this worth pursuing?
[youtube]k7IBL_LM2Iw[/youtube]

I find this interesting as I've found the opposite. After I first put a solar panel on the front of my semi-recumbent I noticed a significant improvement in cruising speed (45-50kph) efficiency of about 50W+. I've increased the size of the panel over the years from 15W to 40W now and the efficiency...

I was wondering why I dont' see any aerodynamic trikes compete in sun race... I think this is one of those things that seems simple and obvious until you actually try to implement it. It's a challenge to make a fairing light enough so the gains aren't eliminated by the weight penalty during slow hi...

Now that I've ridden several hundred miles with the new sun tracking trailer, let's revisit the question of "how much more energy do you get with sun tracking?" The short answer is "it depends" and "probably not enough." We'll need some definitions of sun tracking in th...

Thanks -- this has been *very* useful information and will save me from multiple trips down the wrong rabbit holes. I can't begin to express the real gratitude I feel for the amount of your time and hard work that you're willing to share with total strangers like me. If your travels ever take you t...

I agree that using your design as a "starting point" is likely the wisest approach, since my foot/pedal clearances might just be sufficiently different. Having an actual printed piece would allow me to get more accurate dimensions, and would be an easy way to produce a prototype. Sounds g...

Thanks for the great advice -- the arrows you've taken in your back are definitely making life easier for those of us who are following in your footsteps. Hang on a sec... If I'm in the front, you're following in my footsteps and the arrows are in my back, who is doing the shooting? Unfortunately, ...

It will take a while to digest all of the data in your magnificent post, but I think you've definitely earned a place in the history books for this achievement. I appreciate the sentiment but I've managed to remain humble by remembering that the solar bike record is held by 2018 SunTrip participant...

A deadline has a wonderful way of focusing the mind. I got my custom encapsulated solar panels in August of 2018 and kept putting off the irreversible final step of bonding them to my new nearly-finished trailer until two weeks ago. Some of it was about wanting higher confidence that I hadn't overlo...

Indeed, even if you went to 20 degree adjustments you'd see almost no change in harvested power. Sure, for some definition of acceptable loss. At 20° error, the loss is around 6% which kind of defeats the point of having automated sun tracking. Admittedly, the tracking is more of an interesting exe...

Here's a short time lapse of the sun tracking while the bike is stationary. I'm looking forward to doing these in more scenic locations in the future. [youtube]5p6qLDJF6zQ[/youtube] Eliminating the clutch will reduce the backlash which means I could do smaller, more precise angle adjustments but hav...

solarEbike, wow it looks awesome. Thanks for sharing. Hello and welcome to the forum. Thanks for creating an account just to leave a kind comment here. the total solar Wh was 10% higher than the model predicted. Either my model inputs are too conservative or the perfect cloudless day had more insol...

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've done several test rides with the handlebar mounted potentiometer to limit the maximum tilt angle and it appears to be quite effective in terms of giving me fine manual control of the wind profile on the fly. I don't mind having to fiddle with it for now since it'...