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Author Topic: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars  (Read 15655 times)

JohnPhoenix

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The name of this forum is Electric Bikes.

That's what I have a real electric bike - not an electric scooter or electric motorcycle. The U.S Government says an electric bike is a bicycle with an electric motor on it that does not have a motor more powerful than 750 watts. There is no drivers license or insurance required for these and depending on where you live you can reach speeds between 20 to 30 miles per hour and drive them in the bike lane or side of the road of any street except for an interstate system and other major streets where bikes are not allowed.

My bike consists of a 100 dollar mens full suspension mountain bike with an electric front wheel hub motor, a voltage regulator and is powered by 4, 12 volt 20 AH sealed lead acid batteries - bought in kit form and installed by me - cost 600 dollars. It will reach speeds of 25 mph and has a range of about 10 miles without pedaling - with pedaling to make it a "pedal assist' bike it has a range of 20 miles. Takes me everywhere I wanna go in town.

On the streets due to traffic and red lights etc I can normally beat most cars going 35 mph to their destination. I love the look on people faces when I zoom past them if they are in grid lock :-)

I plan to purchase a LiFePo4 battery for 600 dollars. This Lithium Iron Phosphate battery will be half the weight and size of my current battery pack and it will allow me to get a full 20 mile range at 25 to 28 mph.

I'm 43 and love my bike. I go everywhere with it around town and can carry about 60 lbs extra weight for going to the store and back. I weigh 140 lbs.  This bike is greener than my other gas motorbike or cars - in fact only the wife drives the car now. I have let my drivers license expire and have no thought to renew that evil document.

I urge everyone to get a real electric bike. Save that license and insurance money for something better. Stop spending your money on Gas from the petrol cartels. Electric Bikes are Fun to drive and you can pedal for exercise if you want to. It's a win win! We only use the car now if there is something we have to do we cannot do with the bike.. and that's not much.

SkyWatcher123

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2011, 04:28:55 AM »
Hi john, thanks for sharing. Glad it makes you happy to cruise on your electric bicycle.
I have a 36 volt 350 watt front wheel hub motor i picked up a few years back, though I don't like the drag it has when trying to peddle without it turned on, still pretty good though for cruising around.
By the way, you only need a drivers license to drive when in a commercial capacity, not to travel, which traveling is what most people are doing.

Its called the common law right to travel, where as if you are a taxi driver, you are in commerce and would need a drivers license then.
Maybe they just forgot to inform us of these things, or maybe they didn't want us to know, you decide.
peace love light

kidsonroll

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2011, 11:06:18 AM »
Fundamentally, an e-bike is just a regular bicycle with an electric motor to provide additional assistance. You can pedal normally and just use the motor to help out on hills and headwinds, or use the motor all the time just to make riding easier. The experience is entirely different from riding say a petrol scooter or motorbike. Here the electric assistance is perfectly smooth and silent and it complements rather than supplants human power.
 8)

Paul-R

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #3 on: June 10, 2011, 05:05:24 PM »
Braking is an issue with electric bikes. What is needed is a KERS system
to use braking to generate electricity to top up the battery:
http://www.formula1.com/inside_f1/understanding_the_sport/8763.html

Magluvin

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2016, 05:31:46 AM »
Just thought Id post it here...

I have an electric bike with a 48v 500w brushless 3 phase motor and controller. Been ridding it for about 9years now. The only problems Ive had with it is the 3 hall sensors in the hub motor. It is described how to replace them on several vids on YT.

What would happen when one sensor goes bad is the motor starts cogging heavily from the missing magnetic switch time. The first time it happened it just happened and I replaced them all just incase. But this time it happened and I turned it off and peddled. After it cooled, it worked again.  So now I have good reason that it is the heat of the motor that degrades these hall sensors. Looking for high temp, if any, at this time.

I had a little stash of the halls needed but used them up. They are just bipolar quick switching. All I have in stock are linear halls for other projects.  So I did a test on the bench with a good bipolar I took out of the bike and one of the linear.  The bipolar showed the quick switching from 0v to 5v, using 5v in, and the linear had shown an output swing from  just under 2.5v down to 'near' 0v with say N pole approaching and from near 2.5 to 'near' 5v swing with south pole.  So basically it did the same function of 0v for one pole and 5v for the other pole, just not fast switching with the linear, and another problem, the linear went high with say N pole and the bipolar went low with N pole.  Soooo, I just reversed the faces of the halls to face inward, giving me my reversal. Now I had to make changes in the connections on the small pcb to make the connections correct due to the flipping of the halls. So I just desoldered the output wires of the first and last sensors and switched them. Then I just flipped the pcb over and done.

Put it together and TAH DAH, no worky. ??? >:(

So I peddled it home. Peddled back to shop today to test things. Throttle wires were getting power, gnd and throttle up signal, hall wires were showing near 5v on the + and output of all 3, of which there was no big change when the magnets changed as I moved the wheel.

So I opened the wheel and made sure the gnd wire was connected, as if it were not, I would get those same readings back at the controller where I checked first. But was ok.

Found the halls didnt have enough clamp to pull down 5v at the controller. Hmm. Sucks.  Then thought to put buffer transistors on the little hall board to boost the clamp. But then I thought, lets just try a resistor across the center pin(gnd) and the output. Started and ended with a 1kohm. The low voltage was near 1.45v and the high was right at 3.5v.   Lucky guess as another value resistor would have thrown off the switching center timing.  Put the wheel back on and it works great. 

Sometimes we can do anything with a little thinking. ;D ;)

Here is a guy that shows basically what to do.  But I thought my story was worth posting. ;)

http://visforvoltage.org/forum/control-systems/1693

Mags

Magluvin

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2016, 07:53:50 AM »
Just got home. The ride was good. The motor casing was just warm when I turned it off. When it was cogging after heating up, it would be hotter than this.  When I tested the old halls, one was noisy with no magnets. So if the controller was getting noise when cold. I imagine the the higher the heat, the higher the noise till cog temperature. Just before full cog, you could hear and feel it coming on.  Hmm. If the hall was that noisy, that would cause a bunch of spikes off the windings, maybe causing more heat? dunno. But I have more knowledge on these things now. More to go.

I didnt have a topped off charge on it but a full one. Was strong over the canal bridges. It feels just different in some way. Will have to put the speedo back on to check top speed. Im still a bit flabbergasted that my mod worked. Will have to scope out the outputs to see if the resistor is just a fluke or if they need a fine tune. Just seems to run smoother.

Its possible the analog swings of the halls smooths off the switching? Just thoughts before I check tomorrow. I would think what ever in the controller that determines the trigger sig to be 0v or 5v must be just looking at a crossover voltage level like 2,5v. If above 2.5 then on, and below 2.5 then off.  Looking into it to understand it better.

Anyway, I wonder how much heat these can take before going bad. And could the clamping of the trigger leads to gnd help reduce the work load the hall has to do, and maybe less heat sensitive?
Will update.

Mags

mscoffman

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2016, 10:29:07 AM »
The design seems suboptimal. Having electronic sensors this close to coils that can heat up looks way bad.
You might want to look around for a way to use opto's. You could locate the driver/sensors away from
the coils with fiber optics. Use pulsating synchronous detection to allow for some sensor degradation.
The first thing to do is to go with one sensor and have a PLL phased locked loop sythesise firing the three
different detectors by means of a pic micro.

ramset

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #7 on: July 18, 2016, 07:16:01 PM »
Mags
I think you saved me some Bucs today as well as prolonged my ownership of an old 1995 Subaru family heirloom.

Been having very odd and hard to track stalling issues while underway and sitting in traffic ,its been brutally hot in the NE USA last week or so ,and car drove "OK" until I put on the AC ,which dumps Hot air right into the engine bay.

a few minutes of that {AC on} and the car would hardly run, shut off AC and I could continue on,   albeit tenuously , was going to Check all connections and Grounds today ,but then I read your Post last night and remembered an odd detail about the Cam sensor
its mounting bracket had a hole and passages in it to assist air flow and "Air" cooling.

pressure washed 250K worth of Shmutz off the engine this AM [cleaning especially good around the Hall sensors ]
attempted to seriously abuse the cooling system, let her sit running for several hours in the high heat which would manifest the issue in ten minutes prior

Wallah.....

she gets to stay on the road ...

However your example of the Bike and how successful it has been In your everyday life is making me seriously consider
some type of Utilitarian [small payload] electric Bike or tiny car build.

That and my part of the USA is seriously kicking around a mileage Tax for autos [bikes and small electrics would be exempt]

thanks
Chet


Magluvin

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #8 on: July 18, 2016, 11:22:44 PM »
Mags
I think you saved me some Bucs today as well as prolonged my ownership of an old 1995 Subaru family heirloom.

Been having very odd and hard to track stalling issues while underway and sitting in traffic ,its been brutally hot in the NE USA last week or so ,and car drove "OK" until I put on the AC ,which dumps Hot air right into the engine bay.

a few minutes of that {AC on} and the car would hardly run, shut off AC and I could continue on,   albeit tenuously , was going to Check all connections and Grounds today ,but then I read your Post last night and remembered an odd detail about the Cam sensor
its mounting bracket had a hole and passages in it to assist air flow and "Air" cooling.

pressure washed 250K worth of Shmutz off the engine this AM [cleaning especially good around the Hall sensors ]
attempted to seriously abuse the cooling system, let her sit running for several hours in the high heat which would manifest the issue in ten minutes prior

Wallah.....

she gets to stay on the road ...

However your example of the Bike and how successful it has been In your everyday life is making me seriously consider
some type of Utilitarian [small payload] electric Bike or tiny car build.

That and my part of the USA is seriously kicking around a mileage Tax for autos [bikes and small electrics would be exempt]

thanks
Chet

Usually it is an idle air control solenoid to check first. It ramps up the idle for the additional ac load on the engine. They do go bad. You can usually find a forum that guys give decent tips for certain problems. There are forums for just about every make of car out there.

Mags

ramset

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #9 on: July 19, 2016, 03:07:52 AM »
Mags
 

as I mentioned... Its fixed ,the baking / overheating Hall sensor was the problem , Didn't have to change it Just removed its greasy tomb and let it run cool [er]

 running sweet !
IOU one ,It has been an ongoing issue for quite some time,  was a good day to use the Air conditioning

thanks

Chet

mscoffman

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Re: Free yourself with a real electric bike for under 1 thousand dollars
« Reply #10 on: July 19, 2016, 11:26:54 PM »
Magluvin,

I have a suggestion. Move the triple pc board nearer the sensors as possible, then use miniature coaxial cable, like they use in cellphones and wifi
RF modules to carry the signals back all the way back to the controller board.  Use a "single point" ground there. It may not be thermal spikes alone
that are damaging these sensors.