Herrsprocket
100 W
Hi All,
Tom here, with the ePower Challenge race (e-assist racing) out of Portland Oregon. As some of you already know, we last year hosted a new category of bicycle racing to our venue of HPV and electrathon events, the electric assist bike category. It was very cool and a lot of fun to see what the variety of e-assists could do, and believe me, there are a lot of folks who were very impressed with the performance and viabilty that e-assisting offers. So much so, that a few of the die hard recumbent racers have been inspired to add this bit technology to their steeds and hope to compete with the gang this coming year. Those same racers and several onlookers saw also the benefit of utilizing the assist features to enhance their everyday transportation needs as well. Exactly what I was hoping for ! All in all, the event served a great purpose in educating and exposing more people to the cool world of electric assist cycling and we hope to expand this venue to capture even more interest and awareness to the general public. It's all good stuff!
And as some may recall, there was some shuffling about as to how best govern and depict the guidelines for creating a "fair" playing field for all to compete on. We knew that the best solution was to somehow employ a "metering " device to attach to each vehicle and monitor their watt hour consumption, but that in this first year, it would be impossible to incorpoate such a device on such short notice and no funding to buy/ build them. The first year gave us many valuable lessons to build from and a ton of "live" performances to help us guage our guidelines.
So, what we are looking for help with is developing a very simple meter that measures and displays a watt hour reading. All the races will be predicated on the basis of watt hour useage no matter what distance, power level on board,voltage being used, etc. The meters don't "need" to have volts displayed, amps being drawn, etc. The simpler the better ( read "cost"). One readout of showing the current total watt hours cumulatively having been used should be sufficient , yes? The incorporating of this meter will allow the participant to use whatever system they wish to utilize, and also permits the racer a nice "safety" margin to not overtax the batteries ( via using a larger battery capacity level that won't jeopardize the health of the pack by draining it severely). A diverse combination of voltage, amp hours on board, etc, can all be utilized, as long as the watt hours used per race division are met.
I'm hoping to draw upon the skills and knowledge of this forum to devise an inexpensive product that can either be built with skills available from a bonehead like me, too acquiring some other entity to undertake the construction of this meter. So where to begin? Voltages "may" range from (probably) 24 volts to 72 volts, with the "reset" being done by disconnection from the system ( no reset buttons on the display,, :wink: ). I see that the watts up and doc watsons have certain voltage limits and some racers may want to run the higher voltages, as well as pretty chunky amounts of amps drawn. I may have to limit the battery voltages to 72 (or some such number) simply to keep the construction of the meter reasonable. Seem like a good place to start?
I know that there are a few nice meters out there now that can do the job( the watts up, doc's, and the CA from the super geniuses from ebike.ca, etc), but the extra features and the cost that goes with them are just too much for this fledgling event to handle. Love what they do, just need to have a much less costly solution to address our needs.
Throw me some bones, arrrf!
Tom
Tom here, with the ePower Challenge race (e-assist racing) out of Portland Oregon. As some of you already know, we last year hosted a new category of bicycle racing to our venue of HPV and electrathon events, the electric assist bike category. It was very cool and a lot of fun to see what the variety of e-assists could do, and believe me, there are a lot of folks who were very impressed with the performance and viabilty that e-assisting offers. So much so, that a few of the die hard recumbent racers have been inspired to add this bit technology to their steeds and hope to compete with the gang this coming year. Those same racers and several onlookers saw also the benefit of utilizing the assist features to enhance their everyday transportation needs as well. Exactly what I was hoping for ! All in all, the event served a great purpose in educating and exposing more people to the cool world of electric assist cycling and we hope to expand this venue to capture even more interest and awareness to the general public. It's all good stuff!
And as some may recall, there was some shuffling about as to how best govern and depict the guidelines for creating a "fair" playing field for all to compete on. We knew that the best solution was to somehow employ a "metering " device to attach to each vehicle and monitor their watt hour consumption, but that in this first year, it would be impossible to incorpoate such a device on such short notice and no funding to buy/ build them. The first year gave us many valuable lessons to build from and a ton of "live" performances to help us guage our guidelines.
So, what we are looking for help with is developing a very simple meter that measures and displays a watt hour reading. All the races will be predicated on the basis of watt hour useage no matter what distance, power level on board,voltage being used, etc. The meters don't "need" to have volts displayed, amps being drawn, etc. The simpler the better ( read "cost"). One readout of showing the current total watt hours cumulatively having been used should be sufficient , yes? The incorporating of this meter will allow the participant to use whatever system they wish to utilize, and also permits the racer a nice "safety" margin to not overtax the batteries ( via using a larger battery capacity level that won't jeopardize the health of the pack by draining it severely). A diverse combination of voltage, amp hours on board, etc, can all be utilized, as long as the watt hours used per race division are met.
I'm hoping to draw upon the skills and knowledge of this forum to devise an inexpensive product that can either be built with skills available from a bonehead like me, too acquiring some other entity to undertake the construction of this meter. So where to begin? Voltages "may" range from (probably) 24 volts to 72 volts, with the "reset" being done by disconnection from the system ( no reset buttons on the display,, :wink: ). I see that the watts up and doc watsons have certain voltage limits and some racers may want to run the higher voltages, as well as pretty chunky amounts of amps drawn. I may have to limit the battery voltages to 72 (or some such number) simply to keep the construction of the meter reasonable. Seem like a good place to start?
I know that there are a few nice meters out there now that can do the job( the watts up, doc's, and the CA from the super geniuses from ebike.ca, etc), but the extra features and the cost that goes with them are just too much for this fledgling event to handle. Love what they do, just need to have a much less costly solution to address our needs.
Throw me some bones, arrrf!
Tom