News

It's a big day for pedal sensor options here at Grin.

ERider T17's

We've just received our first large shipment of the T17 model ERider torque sensors. These have the same convenient side cable exit as the T9 model (no need to drill your bottom bracket), but with two big advantages:

• They have 2 wire quadrature PAS sensing enabling the back-pedal regen features of the V3.2 CA firmware.
• In addition to the common 68 and 73mm bottom bracket sizes, they are also available in both 83mm and 100mm BB's to use with fatbike frames. So now no MATTER your frame type, we've got an ERider for you.

These sensors are in stock and available by themselves or with any of our conversion kits.

Budget Sensors:

For those who want torque sensing capabilities on a tight buget, we've aquired a large surplus stock of sensors made by the german company Fischer AG at a great bargain price. These are similar in electrical operating mode as the the THUN/NCTE sensors but with a more generous signal range.

• Single Side torque sensing (Measures right pedal torsion)
• 18 PAS pole pairs
• Center hole cable exit

We've had to snip and solder on a suitable connector and adapter cable to make them compatible with our kits. There is only a single size (68mm BB shell and 127mm spindle length) and installation requires drilling a hole in your bottom bracket for the cable exit. But if you are cool with that, the $60 price gives full torque control from a quality manufacturer at not much more than a basic PAS sensor.

Basic PAS with HiGo: 

And lastly we now have inventory of our two basic PAS sensors available with a 6-pin HiGo plug for direct hookup to the V5 Baserunner controllers. In our initial deployment they'll be used for activating back-pedal regen on the newly released TSM-A5 motor kits. 

The company TDCM has made some innovative motors over the years. For a while we carried their IGH motor that featured a 5 speed Sturmey Archer internally geared hub inside a direct drive motor. More recently they've introduced an even more powerful motor using a quick-release axle and featuring a torque sensing freehub body

It took us a while to develop a full kit package around this motor as it needed a custom controller, a custom torque-arm, and a customized CA3 firmware. But we've pulled it all together and are now releasing the TSM-A5 kit. Watch Robbie's summary in this video.

More detailed information including specs, user manual, CAD drawings etc. are on our Kit Info Page,and they can be purchased as part of a full conversion kit from our Ready-To-Roll Store page

This summer we actually had THREE people make prolonged stopovers at Grin while embarking on epic solar bike trips. We covered Mark Havran earlier this year with a Part3 Video. He's since continued all the way up to Alaska to catch the Northern Lights and and is now in Australia chasing summer sunshine while the days get shorter here. 

We then had one of our long term customers James visit, who's been criss-crossing america on a solar powered Elf ebike for almost as many years as we've been in business! 

And finally, a legend in the European Suntrip races, Stéphane Bertrand, has decided to do his own solo trip across both North and South America. He left from Montreal on a solar recumbent bike in August and was here in Vancouver 4 weeks later, ready to honor a debt to Justin from the 2018 Suntrip ride!

Stéphane has since progressed right down the coast and into Mexico, and you can catch more pictures of these travels on this Facebook page.

We just want to give a big shout-out to you three and everyone else out there using DIY ebike tech to explore all corners of the world, push both personal and technological limits. It is so very cool to see.  

The ebike season is starting to get in full swing and we're glad to announce a roster of new staff here at Grin to help us cope with the anticipated summer demands!

We've got Miguel now assisting with front-end sales to help customers navigate their kit purchases. Elvis is bringing to the table years of CNC experience to ramp up the productivity of our machine shop. Constantin has several years of experience as a technician the ebike industry and is helping in our support and repair department. Sean has worked in electronics manufacturing and the creative arts and had taken the lead in our LiGo battery assembly. And we have two coop students too, Ryan in software engineering making improvements to our website and Sam is doing his first mechanical engineering coop on our shop floor.

So help us in welcoming this crew of new faces to our team!

And that's not the end. We're still looking for someone exceptionally qualified at doing email based tech support. If you've got a wealth of hands-on experience assembling and troubleshooting ebikes, familiarity with the Grin systems, are looking for a change of work, well we could have an option for you so drop us a line. 

See: Info Page

First, thanks to everyone who came by to visit us at the Bike Show earlier this month, we had a great time meeting all kinds of folks with DIY ebikes on their radar.

One of our contributions to the event was a presentation on regenerative braking in ebikes. We've just edited and uploaded this talk to youtube since it's an a topic that's long overdue to get proper treatment.

If you are interested in the advanced regen control modes discussed in the 2nd half of the video, feel free to download and install the V3.2 beta firmware releases that are currently available in the Cycle Analyst software suite. We'll be making frequent updates and tweaks to this platform in the weeks ahead.

Hey Grinners,

The BC Bike Show is BACK for 2022! We're excited to be able to join everyone for our first event in a loooong time and are hard at work getting our exhibit all setup.

This Show is a great event to see the new products and offers from Western Canada’s bicycle businesses. There are a number of fun and exciting presentations going on during the show. This year Justin will be giving a talk all about Regenerative Braking, that wonderful process of recapturing energy back into the battery rather than burning it up in costly brake pads. The talk will be Saturday, March 5^th, 12:30PM at the Cycle Stage.  Our booth is setup at B207.

As in previous shows, we’ll have a number bicycles converted using our kits available for viewing and potential test rides, including one of our Electric Penny Farthings (helmet, waiver and wrist braces suggested!!).

We're happy be mingling with crowds again and will have staff around all weekend to help with any questions you might have on ebike conversions, or other interesting e-Vehicle conversions. So please drop by and visit.

TL;DR

Where: Vancouver Convention Center (Google Maps)

When: March 5th 10AM - 6PM & March 6th 10AM-5PM

Tickets: https://secure.e-registernow.com/cgi-bin/mkpayment.cgi?state=3620

Coupon Code: CYCLING22 for $3 off admission (online only, NA youth or senior tickets)

Presentation on Regenerative Braking: Saturday March 5^th, 12:30 PM – Cycle Stage

We've been producing short summary videos of key products recently, and hope these help newbies in the scene get a quick overview on the gear without going into a deeper dive. This process started off with a Double/Triple Bob video in December that was well received:

So we kicked off this year with an short explanation of Statorade ferrofluid for motor cooling:

And a summary of the Satiator charger now hot off the presses too:

We're planning to keep this up through 2022 until all of the key Grin hardware is covered this way! If you have a preference for what we should prioritize feel free to let us know by email.

Of course we will also keep up on the long form content as well, like the two recent videos on how to measure hub and rim dimensions for doing custom spoke calculations, and the detailed overview on how to use our hub motor spoke calculator.

Happy 2022 everyone and we've got good news to share on the battery stock front. The last of our large ebike battery orders that we placed at the beginning of last year has finally been delivered, including some new high triangular form factor options.

Triangle Batteries

We're now carrying battery options based on a massive 100 cell triangular frame enclosure to support long distance ebike setups. These pack over 1.2 kWhr of energy neatly in the frame cavity of most diamond frame bikes. The 52V 23.5Ah option will provide over 120 km of range with typical ebike consumption rates, and a high voltage 72V 16.5Ah model will serve well for fast EV builds requiring 72 volt operation.

Large and Small Downtube Packs

We've also replenished our stock of 52V 20Ah downtube batteries for the ready-to-roll kit systems. These have been extremely popular workhorse batteries in long range ebike builds. Supply and availability necessitated a switch from Panasonic GA cells to Samsung 35E cells but they are otherwise nearly identical in performance.

At the other end of the spectrum, we received our first set of batteries using the small Reention DP5C casing with a 36V 16.5Ah pack that is lightweight and low profile. This is an ideal choice for more discrete bike builds where the pack doesn't stand out as much.

LiGo's

Finally, both our regular LiGo and high current LiGo+ cells and BMS boards are on hand again and our manufacturing staff are working overdrive making them into finished LiGo bricks. Within a few weeks we expect to be caught up with most of the back-orders and we look forward to having extra stock of these air-travel friendly batteries.