I've been busy with my day job over the last several weeks and
haven't had much of a chance to post. We've also had a few more
people sign up to the list so I thought I'd take this rare moment of
down time to update folks on my projects and say hello to the new
subscribers.
So, hello new subscribers and welcome to the EM list! We've got a
pretty good selection of members here ranging from newbies to
experts. There's a school teacher, an AMA champion's mechanic, a
couple of electrical engineers and a crystal meth junkie. We're a
small group of about 30 with five or six active posters. The list is
low volume with maybe 2 posts a day. That can spike up to four to
six posts a day when I've been working on my bike and blow something
expensive up. (Last count: four chargers, a controller and a
wheel-borrow of fuses.)
There's two places you can find archives of the list:
http://electricmotorcycles.net/listserv/archives
http://snipurl.com/em_archives
The list will accept up to 200k worth of attachments so if you I'd
like attach a photo point your browser to:
http://electricmotorcycles.net/modules/listserv/newphoto.php
At scale the image to fit. You don't need to use this form but it
might come in handy.
If you have several photos you can create your own gallery and post
full sized images along with a description of your project on the
website.
Speaking of the website, I'm working on my 3D models of common EM
parts and will start uploading them to the File Base soon. I've also
added a few more javascript apps in the Toolbox to help in the design
of your bike. They're not perfect, some bugs, but take a gander.
New for 2006, and this is a big deal to me, we'll start to see
interviews with movers and shakers in the EM community. I don't want
to leak too much because the details are still being ironed out but I
hope to see semi-regular interviews and maybe an article or two by
our very generous volunteer.
Here's a quickie update on my projects.
The CBR is going form 72 volts of Hawkers to 48 volts of Yellow Tops.
I have the new batteries, FINALLY, so now I just need to redesign the
subframe again.
The Hawk now has it's ADC 6.7" motor, Alltrax and SVR batteries. All
it needs now is lots of time and patiences to be put together.
The dash is coming along very slowly, too. I've decided to break the
project up into sub-projects. One part will be simpler analog
speedometer with a connection to the Alltrax. I posted some pictures
of the breadboarded version a few weeks ago and those should still be
in the archives. The next part will have data logging capabilities
so you can keep track of all that good stuff the Alltrax gives to us.
And the last part will use the Memsic 2125 dual-axis accelerometer to
measure such things as HP, 1/4 mile times, 0 to 60 times and so on
and so forth.
Now, let me get your opinions on something. I am thinking very
seriously of releasing the schematics and source code to some sort of
open source license. There many different licenses and I don't know
which would be best. I envision a community of people adding features
and bug fixes to both the hardware and software of this project. I'm
thinking I might design a PCB and have a bunch made to sell at a very
reasonable cost - enough to cover expenses.
Thoughts? Comments?
Mike
--
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http://www.electricmotorcycles.net/
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