6 Years on the Sphere - Happy New Year

fechter

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Not only is today New Years Eve, but it's the anniversary of my presence on Endless Sphere. Wow, what a wild time it was 6 years ago, with the demise of the original V is for Voltage Forum. Since then, many things have changed and we've all been through a lot. Lead-acid is no longer the king and brushed motors are becoming rare. Makes me wonder where we'll be in another 6 years.

Through all the troubles in my life, I always find an escape in the Sphere. Even though I have precious little time to advance my own projects, I can still help others one tiny piece at a time. Techy stuff makes me forget about the more serious and depressing things in my world.

My thanks to all who make the Sphere what it is. Without the kind of membership we have here, it could become a very dull place. We are still on the bleeding edge of a lot of technology and our influence finds its way into places all around the world. I'm convinced that the stuff we do here blazes the way for more advanced and intelligent designs of not only electric bicycles, but an amazing variety of devices.

I'm looking forward to some site improvements that are in the pipeline as well as more incredible creations in the coming year.

Keep the Sphere rolling... :mrgreen:
 
You are one of the techies around the sphere and I appreciate your contributions, design, advice and patients much especially in the battery and BMS area. This is a great place to relax and get new ideas for the next few days of the addiction for sure. Thanks for being and have a Happy Anniversary and New Year yourself. The same to the rest of you.
 
Thank you ES peoples for sharing your rich experiences and for mentoring me on my studies :)

Wishing you a happy new year, and safe travels - however electrified!

From the Pacific NW, Cheers! KF
 
Happy New Years guys!
This forum always has something to keep me entertained. There is a lot of personality here despite just reading a
Web page. Let's hope we have a safe and happy 2013.
 
Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh said:
does anyone have a saved copy of the emperor thred?

Damn, I wish I had a copy of that! Almost split my gut laughing.

Unfortunately the auto-prune feature killed it along with most of the other early stuff. Auto prune has since been disabled.
 
Happy New Year to All!

5 3/4 years on the Sphere for me. I joined the Power-Assist group in 2003 so, nearly 10 years at this hobby now!

Thank you to everybody for contributing to the communal work!
 
Yes, Happy new Year to all..
I'll be in the workshop all day today if I can find some hall wire
 
Yah, happy anniversary, ES! so glad to be part of this community, don't know what i'd do without you guys!
 
neptronix said:
...don't know what i'd do without you guys!
Agreed. I'd still be dreaming about an electric bike, instead of riding one!
 
I'd love to find some threads describing what was going on during the early days of ES and the split with the Voltage Forum. We could add it to a "pre-history" for the ES timeline.

For me, it all started in 1999 when I got my original Zappy scooter. I found a Yahoo group for Zappy scooters and the modifications began. The Yahoo Zappy Group still exists, but you can see from the post count it is way down from its peak around 2002.

Somewhere around 2003, a guy named Ken Trough created the V is for Voltage website. It was a lot easier to post pictures and follow topics, and soon became 'the' place for electric scooters, motorcycles, and bikes.

In 2006 the site was attacked by russian hackers and ruined. Ken disappeared at the same time and we were never able to restore the content. Everthing was lost. In the ashes, the members there wanted to start a new site. The new Voltage Forum was started by volunteers and tried to replace the old one, but the 'management' went awry and drove many away, most of whom wound up moving to ES, which was offered by knightmb at the time.
 
Yep, Happy and successful new year to all. Almost six years here also.

I had created a two brushed hub motor pusher trailer for a delta trike, plus another motor on the front wheel of the trike, with the trailer full of SLA, when I found my first forum ever, namely ES.

It's been shared information here ever since that has led me to my best ride ever, the tadpole trike with the automatic Nuvinci transmission, LiFePO4 juice, and a mid-drive motor.

Just a couple of weeks ago it was a thread by Fechter along with help from dnmun and others that has helped me smooth out the twitchy GNG throttle on a cruiser bike.

Thanks to everyone.
 
Happy New Year and many thanks to fechter, Justin and all who helped make ES what it is.

I found ES a few years ago when researching to see if an e-bike could practically make my 13 mile commute with 1,200 feet of climbing. The info and folks here convinced me it was a worthwhile project. Now I have built four ebikes and all of them are capable of making my commute run.

Now I have a Texas Instruments ARM based motor control development kit on the way and perhaps I will build my own field oriented motor controller based on their software and their plug in brain board called a ControlCard.

Thanks!
 
fechter said:
I'd love to find some threads describing what was going on during the early days of ES and the split with the Voltage Forum. We could add it to a "pre-history" for the ES timeline.
Yes, great idea. I was a member of the original Voltage Forum from the beginning but I wasn't participating much when it was destroyed.
 
Miles said:
fechter said:
I'd love to find some threads describing what was going on during the early days of ES and the split with the Voltage Forum. We could add it to a "pre-history" for the ES timeline.
Yes, great idea. I was a member of the original Voltage Forum from the beginning but I wasn't participating much when it was destroyed.
That was way back when YPedal was Buzzz. I was a dedicated lurker at VisforVoltage, but being a certified unelectric newbie dreamer, never registered. Too bad, some of the contributors there didn't seem to make the switch to the 'Sphere, I wonder where they share their knowledge now (I don't recall any of the names/builds I used to follow closely anymore)
 
fechter said:
I'd love to find some threads describing what was going on during the early days of ES and the split with the Voltage Forum. We could add it to a "pre-history" for the ES timeline.

That would be awesome. Was there really a time when posts to ES were being pruned and permanently deleted? That is too bad. It always seems to me like anything ever posted on the internet should get permanently archived forever, somewhere. Thank goodness for the wayback machine which is a pretty fun time warp experience. I doesn't go too deep in crawling/saving the threads on forum sites like this, but it turns out to still have a decent amount:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060525231004/http://endless-sphere.com/forums/

Anyways, back then I was never too active at VisforVoltage and thought that all the ebike action was on the yahoo power-assist group. I only got introduced to ES a bit late in the game when some soft-spoken asian guy showed up at our first shop while we were still organizing and renovating the space. He said we should check it out. He was also asking about custom NiMH battery pack configurations to run a crystalyte motor at over 90 Volts and swapping out all the stock fets on a controller so that it could handle way more power. I thought it was crazy talk. That person turned out to be Lowell !

Anyways, happy 5-6 years to all those who've been involved since the early days, some ES champagne should be poured all around. -Justin
 
Yes, most unfortuantely the default settings for most of the forum was to auto prune and delete after some period of time. By the time this was figured out, a lot of stuff was lost.

I found some artifacts still left on the web. Here's an interesting one:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/VRefuge/messages
Make copies while it still exists.

this site was set up as a temporary place while a more permanent solution was created.
You'll see lots of posts from George Jones aka Gman. This is the guy that had some kind of power trip thing going on and drove most of the memebers away from the new Voltage Forum and over to ES.
 
Another tidbit:
Inaugural Edition - V is for Voltage Forums Community Newsletter
V News

Voltage Forum logo (early).jpg

Happy Anniversary!

Today marks the 3-month anniversary of the V is for Voltage (.org) Forums website. In keeping with the growth of our site, we would like to invite our readers to become part of our newest element: V-News. A monthly newsletter to better serve our EV community.
The goal of our newsletter is to provide up-to-date and accurate information, a format for sharing and discussing the issues and concerns of EV owners and to provide a place where environmental issues can be examined and discussed. This newsletter is therefore dedicated to the encouragement, growth and development of our community of electric vehicle enthusiasts.

In This Issue:

Acknowledgements
V is for Voltage Updates
Upcoming Events
Letters to/from the editor
Latest EV poll
Next month

Acknowledgements:

Allow me to begin by giving out Kudos to Gman, Chas, David, and Max for the kind welcome to V is for Voltage Forums team and for the 90+ emails filled with enough information therein, to produce this newsletter.
Special thanks to Gman, Chas, David and Max for their diligence and outstanding work in pulling together this website. Great job. The addition of the tutorials (thanks Chas) will, I’m sure, prove most helpful to any new user or visitor that may want to submit copy, photos or videos to our site. Also a Bravo to Chas and Max for the many hours of work on the logo design and avatar that is distinctly V is for Voltage.
We give special thanks to some of our most active members of V is for Voltage Forums: PJD, Fechter, JDELUNA, NickF23, Wizard, knoxie, rgx, Sturdly, Patrick, GrooveConnection, mr_exon, dicanio2, decibel1, Andrew, masonsteele and davew. Thank you all, from the V is for Voltage Team, for your avid support and continued participation in the community.
I would also like to take this opportunity to show great appreciation and many thanks to our team of community volunteers whose hard work and dedication is evident as we celebrate our first quarter: Mij, Verna, Nick, Rolf, Mark, Jabari, George, Max, Chas, Oliver, David, David, Brooks and Larenzo.

V is for Voltage Updates:

As mentioned earlier, we have added the helpfulness of a tutorial that will help new comers and old hats navigate the site. Whether you want to add a new post, upload an image or insert an image in a post, these step by step instructions will make the task simple and absolutely painless. visforvoltage/tutorials/index.html
While you’re cruising the site, be sure and add yourself to the list of people, vendors, companies and organizations; on the Global EV Map. visforvoltage.org/page/352-global-ev-map Give a shout out to other enthusiasts and marvel at the number of EV'ers already mapped. Check back each time you visit V is for Voltage and witness the growth of an EV nation!
And, definitely stop by our Members Vehicles and tell us about your ride, share a story, a photo, or both. visforvoltage.org/view/vehicles

Upcoming Events:

V is for Voltage has no events schedules at this time. However, as Spring is right around the corner be sure to check back with us and watch for possible ride information, shows or races in upcoming issues. Also, be sure to let us know of any events that you know are happening in your area, so we can get that information posted. visforvoltage.org/contact

Latest EV poll:

"Was the V is for Voltage Forums Tutorial helpful?" Let us know how we can further help you navigate on our site. visforvoltage.org/poll/451-was-v-voltage-forums-help-tutorial-helpful

Letters to/from the editor:

The unique avatars that are used by the V is for Voltage Team is the brain child of Max. Max said that his intention was to have the symbol look like a unique thunderbolt The idea was to let the thunderbolt be a capital V and then mirror the image so as to create a nice frame around the name on the avatar. Lo and behold, his first avatars were born. However, after several days a few of the V is for Voltage members began asking him about the strange framework. He did take a bit of kidding from members who thought it looked evil, as in a horned devil; and, even Batman was mentioned! After a bit of explanation, this was enough to send Max back to the drawing board. With a simple cut between the mirrored images and the insertion of the capital V, Max had outdone himself and the present day avatar is the result. You can track Max's progress and posts by clicking visforvoltage.org/forum-topic/site-administration-and-governance/263-was-avatar-intended-humor-or-warning. By the way, Max is up for producing your personal V is for Voltage avatar.
As we begin our second quarter, the numbers say it all: the member list has grown to 144, 335 topics have been put on the table for discussion and these have generated over 1500 posts by the EV community. Well done! So, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your friend's neighbors that we are V is for Voltage Forums.
Now, as we continue in a forward direction, we'd like to hear from you. "What is your preferred future for the V is for Voltage Community?" visforvoltage.org/forum/113

Next month:

Looks like we’re here to stay.
 
I would like to thank everyone on this forum for sharing their ebike related experiences here. I have had a ton of fun, spent many hours working, gotten myself seriously injured, made a ton of money, and learned a ridiculous amount, all because of the stuff that I've read here since I joined three years ago. I hope that some day, somebody will learn something from the things I've posted here about my bike, even if it's all the things not to do :mrgreen:
 
That was way back when YPedal was Buzzz.

Lol.. and on yahoo Buzz48v ... that goes way back. I'm still member on the yahoo Power-assist but dont post much there anymore.

I seem to recall i had something like 3000 + posts on the old V before it went to smoke.

Happy new year to all ( even tho i'm late on the call ) and a prosperous 2013 i hope... since i'm officially out of corporate hands this year is a full go on the ebike front.

I went for my first ride of 2013 yesterday, took the KMX trike out in the snow and ice packed roads !.. 8)
 
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