Second Thoughts

The Bike

It’s now case of waiting for the rivet nuts to be delivered from China.  But then lying in bed last night I wondered if the bike battery might temporarily be secured using masking tape.  Perhaps sufficiently secured to test my installation!

One screw holding the top of the battery and tape at the base.  With the wiring completed I decided to use my Samsung tablet and the patch lead to reconfigure the controller.

After some searching I had found an Android App named “Speeed”.  There’s no equivalent iPear App so if you are a fan of the dark side you will have to use a Windows laptop.  The developer of Speeed has modified the Windows program to run on Android.

I apologise in advance for the quality of the following photos.  I’m not going to describe them, except to state they enabled me to read the stock configuration and then modify it.

The bike was taken for a short ride to test the brake and gear sensors worked.  The power assist level controls also worked, although the display only shows five power levels.  I managed to work out how to turn the headlight on and off.

There are two outstanding matters to finish the bike.  The battery needs to be secured properly.  I need to work out a way to access the hidden features in the display module as the instructions I found online don’t work..

Second Thoughts

After completing a materials costing for the swimming pool heater there has been second thoughts.  I decided it would be cheaper to attempt to purchase ‘collectors’ from an old residential solar water heater system.  That proved to be easier than I had anticipated and I now have two from a former 320 litre system.

   

The panels could do with a good cleaning but will (hopefully) do what I want.  The plan is to secure them to the roof of my workshop with some extruded aluminium angle.  My tame plumber (brother-in-law) will provide advice on the required plumbing fittings.  The plan includes a cheap 12V DC pump powered by a 100 Watt solar panel through a small MPPT controller.