Blog

Who would have guessed that this January 2008 would be our busiest month to date! We certainly didn't, and are running out of stock in a lot of categories. Either ebikers are an active winter riding crowd, or most of our customers come from California, or a bit of both. We are basically out of rear hub motors and 72V motor controllers. Unfortunately for reasons largely out of our control, the next shipment of Crystalyte parts has faced delays and won't get here until around the second week of March.

After a few weeks of fast paced development the next version of the Cycle Analyst code has been released for beta testers. This brings out features such as a serial output stream for data logging and on-the-fly adjustment of the current or speed limits via a potentiometer or other signal source. For more details, see this thread on the endless-sphere forum.

We are now completely sold out of the trial shipment of eZee hub motor kits. The response from those early adopters has been resoundingly positive and we appreciate all the feedback that has come back this way. Our next shipment with several changes and improvements is scheduled to arrive in mid-March. So hold tight all those who were slow on the draw, mid-March isn't that far away and we will ensure to maintain steady stock of these kits throughout the 2008 cycling season

We have received and already quality control tested the new batch of NiMH batteries from Nexcell, including '2D' cell 24V and 36V packs, and 'F' cell 36V and 48V batteries. For the first time in our testing history, every single battery in this shipment passed QC. The '2D' packs discharged to at least 19Ah with no cell reversals, and every 'F' cell battery put out a solid 12.5-13Ah without a single early reversal. The 2D packs have doubled up fuse holders in parallel to better handle 40-50A currents. These are available for purchase now.

There are a few other new items added to our store site. We've got two new sizes of black heatshrink, including 20cm wide which fits snugly on smaller 8Ah NiMH batteries, and a large 28cm tube that can even stretch over our triangular layout packs. There are 70oC thermal switches useful for overcharge protection for people building or repairing battery packs, and rolls of self-adhesive silicone tape for effective sealing and waterproofing of exposed electrical connections. 

It was sad news that we heard Sheldon Brown had passed away on Feb 3rd of this year. For anyone who has even casually searched the internet for technical information on bicycle systems, from seemingly obvious compatibility questions that no one seems to answer (like "can you use an 8 speed shifter with a 7 speed freewheel") to obscure details on internally geared hubs, Sheldon Brown's website would turn up like a resource beacon in a World Wide Web that is increasingly dominated by marketing and commercialism.

When we finally found a manufacturer of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries that met our requirements for an ebike-ready battery pack last fall, we fairly promptly placed a large order. The original expected arrival was at the beginning of January, but that has faced several holdups, and due to paperwork delays overseas it missed the last boat before the Chinese New Years holidays. We will post details only after they arrive, and from now on we will be following our earlier practice of not mentioning pending orders of new products until they have arrived and been tested to meet our specs. Sorry to all those who had their hopes up for these batteries to be in by now.

You would think looking at the projects page that we haven't built an ebike in 3 years, or from the troubleshooting page that the only thing to check is the throttle and hall effect signals on a motor controller. Fortunately, the winter season tends to encourage staying indoors, so the ball has started rolling on web updates again. The Events page has seen some new additions and be prepared to see projects like the following featured soon enough:

We've conned two more idealistic youths to join our little operation in Vancouver. Alison Corrall (UBC Eng Phys, 2005) is on board to initially design and produce custom bags, enclosures, and mounting hardware for ebike battery packs, while Mark Stephens (UBC Electrical, 2007) is designing a series of DC-DC based ebike lighting systems and keeping the Cycle Analyst production line flowing.

We have a number of spare hub motors that we have decided not to stock for various reasons and have them available for clearance. These include small geared hub motors from Tongxin, the slightly more powerful geared hubs from elebike, and finally the latest 500W direct drive hubs that are sold by Golden Island Machinery.
January Update - The front Tongxin motors have sold out. All that we have remaining are two rear units, they have 135mm axles but the motor is centered, so at most you can fit a 3 to 5 speed freewheel.