Experimental Cargo Ebike Trip, Vancouver to SF Maker Faire

[liveforphysics]

I got my 2 bike builds together and functional for Maker's Faire. Deathbike's orignal size6 was given to my buddy Terry, but I managed to swap around a race bike for one, but we had a contactor wiring issue and the size6 was damaged, had to swap on a size 4, but didn't have time to re-gear it for having only 420A phase currents rather than it's normal 660A. This meant it didn't need it's rear 2.5kWh pack to let the cell C-rate not be exceeded, so it's feeling pretty light and nimble for being deathbike.

My plan is to arrive at 10am tomorrow and try to get them in.

 

[justin_le]

My plan is to arrive at 10am tomorrow and try to get them in.

Right on Luke! Recall that our temporary cell number is (773) 306-8584 if you or anyone else needs one of us to toss an official looking maker badge over the fence to help you get through the gates, though I imagine with a bike like that no one will doubt your maker credentials.

This thread is still at the Portland stage of the trip but I probably won't have time to get it further caught up until after the weekend. Needless to say me and Robbie got into SF just fine the other day, here's the obligatory shot after crossing the golden gate bridge some 1800km and 31kWhr later:


We've been well taken care of at Greenmachine's place and can't wait tomorrow morning to make the final leg on our bikes to San Mateo and complete the journey and be part of an awesome ES geekout. See you soon.

 

[Warren]

Justin,

While you are in California you should hook up with my all time hero, Bill Bushnell. He has ONLY done 155 miles on a single ride, in the mountains. And he descends regularly at crazy high speeds.

http://mrbill.homeip.net/bikeBlog.php?2012#mtTamFromHome.2012.05.19

But he has been riding his mid-drive, recumbents since 2007, and the number of rides over 100 miles are too numerous to count.

Edit:
I see from Lyen's pix that he was there, and just about everbody in the e-bike universe.

Warren

 

[Green Machine]

Justin and Robbie were here in SF for a couple of nights staying at my place by the ocean.

Highlights...crashing and destroying 100mph castle driven car new out of box...worlds most expensive dog toy.

Jump starting broken down van with hobby king lipo.

Riding the best electric skateboard ever.

Late night bloody mary's and sushi.

Talking about ebikes until 5 in the morning.

Breakfast over the cliffs.

Getting my v3 cycle analyst dialed in by the hands of the very best.

My astro powered bike today is a tamed beast (it has a legal mode) and ready for riding safely through the crowds of makers faire.

 

[Obiwan007]

Got to spend the day at the SF Makerfaire today and it was just AWSOME! Rubber elbows with some ES luminaries like Luke, Robbie, Justin and others. Lots of interest in everything EBike. I got to meet Luke who showed up with his "slow" death bike. The room to run was very short for this bike yet it made every other bike there appear to be going in reverse.


Some other custom builders brought their creations too.


Got the opportunity to talk about all the builds and some of the new stuff that Justin is working on. But the highlife for me was getting to look over the Electric Jeepster with Justin before he took it for a ride.



I even got to ride the coolest skate board ever produced..wow!
All in all it was a great time as this was the first time I got to meet any of you from the sphere face-to-face. Thanks for the kind words and the chance to mingle. Sadly, I will not be able to go on Sunday too but the memories will last a very long time.

Obiwan

 

[Obiwan007]

 

[mikebikerad]

I was in my local bike shop in Redway, CA and the shop guys asked me if I had converted a couple electric cargo bikes because they saw two of them zoom by the shop a few days before HAHA I told them about this trip and asked them if it looked like two friendly Canadians with a unicycle hanging off the back! Shure enough you have been spotted in the wild.

 

[j3tch1u]

eric, now i wish i stayed a few extra weeks in sf. looks like i missed out on most of the fun, but not all..i was also at maker faire on the same day halfway around the globe. sadly, no other ebikes were present. hopefully i inspired some future builds, but i don't think i could start the movement alone--got really exhausted after only 3 hours of fielding the deadly "innocent ebike questions /w long answers": 1. what's the range? 2. does it regen when you pedal? 3. what kind of battery is that?

don't want to hi-jack this thread so more pics here: http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=15233&start=500

Justin and Robbie were here in SF for a couple of nights staying at my place by the ocean.

Highlights...crashing and destroying 100mph castle driven car new out of box...worlds most expensive dog toy.

Jump starting broken down van with hobby king lipo.

Riding the best electric skateboard ever.

Late night bloody mary's and sushi.

Talking about ebikes until 5 in the morning.

Breakfast over the cliffs.

Getting my v3 cycle analyst dialed in by the hands of the very best.

My astro powered bike today is a tamed beast (it has a legal mode) and ready for riding safely through the crowds of makers faire.

 

[swbluto]

Anybody have any cool 3d printer or electronics pics?

Was thinking about going, but didn't.

 

[fechter]

I was able to make it yesterday for a few hours. Great to see everybody and their creations.
Here's Justin, Robbie, Me and Luke (left to right)


Methods and a big pile of parts. Makes me feel like I'm in my garage:View attachment 10
Todd's retro moped:



Luke's DeathBike was a favorite

-Only- 350 amps?

Deathbike Jr.


Looks like we have enough power for the battery chargers:


Not electric, but the fattest tires I've seen on a bike. Surprisingly ridable
View attachment 3

Other typical Maker Faire stuff; Large destructive robots:

DIY Submarine:

Flaming Lotus Girls:

 

[Ypedal]

Hey Obiwan, nice to see the old clyte 4 series still representing !!!.. .. dying breed but a classic. 8)

 

[Lyen]

Tons of photos from after the fair, please see the link below :
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48578&p=743455#p743455

 

[Green Machine]

The people of ES at makers

 

[Juicerman]

Two weeks ago I got the PM from Robbie. He likes the new Juicer 36 and sez he and Justin have some passes for me if I can get it to Makers. I got nothin' going on that weekend that I can't wiggle out of, I'll just promise my daughter I'll make it to her next wedding.

Robbie said they'd have some EV-Grin surprises in store, so I figured I'd better engineer something new for the show, so I got to work. The varnish dried just in time to bring this bit of electronics, which proved to be a useful paperweight for the Jucier posters and release forms.

At first I didn't realize that Justin and Robbie were coming from Canada ON THEIR BIKES! That's hardcore! After I'd met the guys face-to-face, Robbie gave me the dime-tour of their extraordinary touring mochines. I met a few others at the faire that I had only communicated with over some kind of wire. That includes Todd from Electric Motorsports who showed up on a bananna seat on this cool, custom Native.

From the right in the above photo is Justin, Luke, Luke's high-school buddy on Deathbike, and Todd. Luke and I compared scars, which is always convenient for him since he seems to have some kind of shirt allergy. I'll give him the win on the scar contest. Luke's buddy was cool, as was this girl called Segue who came on a motor-rickshaw with two hub motors and a canopy roof. Of course my hosts Robbie and Justin were super-cool. I got to try their awesome motorized skateboard. Remarkably easy handling that, and it has it's own cycle- er, skateanalyst.

Juicer, as always, got a lot of attention, so that's always gratifying, but I really came to receive the benediction of our benefactor here at ES. I'm pretty sure I got it, or am I wearing rose-colored glasses?

 

[Kiwi]

...this kid know where things are going.....and so it began in every neighbourhood across America...
..it that his skid mark?

 

[justin_le]

Hey, just wanted to give a big THANK YOU to everyone who made this trip and the resulting maker faire the awesome event that it was.

Myself and Robbie had a really great time meeting up with so many people on the route down and especially during the show. Afterwords we stayed with Methods for several days in Santa Cruz, learning how to surf for our first time, and got initiated in late night zero motorcycle riding from liveforphysics luke too. There are quite a few more posts that I want to make about this ebike journey (including lots of energy analysis) but am going to be dark for the next couple weeks before I can do that.

See rather than returning straight back to Canada I took a slight detour to Argentina, where by good fortune I got to meet up with Federico, one of the early adopters of DIY ebikes in this continent. He's got a fast wind 9C hub with a 48V 20Ah PING battery mounted to a full suspension bike, and has been trying to spread the word on ebikes via his website here:
http://electrobike.com.ar/intro.html


On the left of that is a non-electric folding bike that is my current mode of transport, which is quite the opposite of the 250lb dual motor electric longtail I used to book it down the west coast. For the next couple weeks I'm joining with anne-sophie on her unicycle touring trip up Patagonia, during which time I'll be mostly unplugged:
https://www.facebook.com/Monocyclette.ca

 

[voicecoils]

Good luck on the road and enjoy your time offline!

Will you be unicycling too or continuing on your pedal powered foldie?

 

[Green Machine]

Here is a link with high resolution photos of makers faire ebikes:

http://chessmonster.smugmug.com/Electricbike/makers-faire-ebike/29720462_PN8D3M


Here is my favorite:

 

[flathill]

After a few revisions on ways of sensing the torque, some of which had way too much flex for my liking, we came up with this, machined from aluminum plate stock.
View attachment 8
The lever arm of the bracket pulls downwards the metal in a way that results in a uniform shear force inside the dogbone cutout, which is then easily measured with a single shear sensing strain gauge bridge.

A few days of CAD and CAM and then finally CNC machining:
View attachment 1

It's always a happy moment when something comes off looking exactly like the 3D computer models:


And here is a closeup showing what it looks like with the strain gauge sensor glued in place. Strain gauges are delicate things, but once glued to the solid aluminum substrate and covered with potting compound they're as robust and reliable as you could hope.
View attachment 2

This reminds me of the dropouts with integrated strain gauge sensor. I wish all drop outs were bolt on and universal so we could make a one fit all solution:

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

sweet aunt jamime!
greenmachine musta blew out the zip in his pants when he laid eyes on this.
say greenie, didja offer to buy it on the spot? :lol:

 

[adrian_sm]

One of the more exciting pieces of gear being field tested is a high power modded 6-mosfet sinusoidal field oriented motor controller (FOC) that we've been developing with Accelerated Systems of Waterloo, Ontario. They have a nicely compact stock controller in production called the BAC 500 that we were looking to carry as a sophisticated higher-end ebike controller.

Just found this thread. Justin, a high quality programmable FOC controller is a game-changer, when can I have one????'

Hopefully not too long in fact. We're working on doing a pre-production pilot batch of 50 pieces by mid to late June and are getting the stuff in gear for that.

Any news on how your customised BAC500's are coming along? I am very keen to test one out.

- Adrian

 

[melodious]

You know what's funny about unicycles?


You can let anyone ride it. You can't do that with 2 wheels. :lol:

 

[spinningmagnets]

Did ANYONE get this kids email address, or any way to get ahold of him?

 

[jkbrigman]

Please - can we can get an update on all the new equipment that was tested on this trip?

- the new supa-badd controller
- the new supa-badd charger
- the new supa-badd motors (One air and one liquid cooled. That hub motor you guys made looks great for a direct drive 700c conversion...)

I'm hoping we'll soon see these impressive products for sale on ebikes.ca!

 

[stoney]

I am following....