A Controllerless Solar Bike

in: community

The Last Solar Ebike was stolen back in February, and we decided to make a few improvements on the next version. With a flash of inspiration towards simplicity, a purely analog solar bicycle was born. It uses no ICs or microcontrollers of any kind, only 5 MOSFETs, a transistor, and passive components. We've included a schematic at the end, for everyone interested.

The design of this bike goes back to more traditional rear wheel drive, with a hub mounted clutch like a traditional assistance bicycle. As with the previous two, the frame and parts used to build the bike were inexpensive surplus. The small motor does not produce a great amount of power, but for someone who enjoys pedaling the bike, it provides excellent assistance.

The schematic for the analog controller is available right here in this blog post. If you want to use it, we are releasing it under a Creative Commons, Noncommercial-Sharealike license. Feel free to build your own version of our bicycle! We’ll have more information about it in the Cookbook in the upcoming weeks, including some photos and instructions on building and testing.

As usual, if you’d like to use this design commercially, feel free to Contact Us. We can license or adapt the design to whatever your business needs.

Also, for those who have been waiting for the Land Raider it’s almost done being painted. Priming didn’t happen before the snow hit, and that delayed things for quite a while. Riley says an update should be on this site next week. Watch the space.