Modularity Sketch - 11th of June, 2009

One of the strongest concepts that are coming up from the discussion of the first phase of this project is modularity.

“In an electric vehicle, modularity can also help owners, to upgrade their vehicles once new technologies come to the market, Want a more powerful motor? Need new batteries? Just swap it. Want to hit the trails on the weekend? Exchange the wheels, take the second passenger seat out and go eat some mud.” quote from project status discussion

The Idea of a plug and play electric vehicle that can be highly customized by a community of designers and suppliers seems quite interesting to me. It will be good to find examples of hardware modularity that can help us in the development of a “hardware framework” to build our vehicle around.

Final Electronics Configuration

I just finished correcting the configuration of the electronic components for our scale model.

I am very glad that it worked out! The motor accelerates when we turn the potentiometer and comes back to a stop when the “pot-meter” returns to “position zero”.

emoped-20090526-Electonics Test 01 from Henrique Monnerat on Vimeo.

Link to video

I am quite curious to what will happen when we start using big motors which we will actually be using in the future. Can we develop an open source controller for electric motors? Are there are people developing something like that??

It is probably wiser to use one of the existing controllers like the Alltrax Controllers but I would be quite curious to understand what makes up a robust motor controller.

Next Steps: Design the Laser Cut scale frame to contain all components (battery, pot-meter, motor and Board)

Quick update: Soldering was ok! Kees helped me with the wiring, we found out that the throttle Potentiometer (C) has to be placed between A and B. Back to soldering!

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Last weekend I started building the Velleman K8004 DC to pulse Width Modulator which will act as the speed controller board for the throttle and the electric motor for the first test model. It’s my first soldered circuit board! I am very happy with =) It was easy an fun to do it, kind of “meditational” also. My soldering skills dated back to 1995 when I was building R/C Cars with my Grand father…so before starting the soldering I watched this really helpful film from the Make guys, a video tutorial on soldering, so good!

Finished circuit board with external potentiometer for the throttle

My goal is to use Arduino for controlling of the motor, to stay open source, but I still don’t know much about it so I decided to start with the Velleman board instead. I don’t know if it functions yet, but I just wanted to post the pictures of the process here, more updates soon.

Just got all I need to start building the DC to Pulse Board and to measure things for the Laser-cut part I will design to hold all the components together.

Just bought yesterday what we need for the first tests on the electronics. 1. Cut pliers 2. Battery connectors 3. 9V Battery 4. DC to Pulse Width Modulator 5. Soldering Iron Set 6. 0,70mm Solder 7. Potentiometer and 8. 2 meters of wire. Total damage: 68,50 Euros.

After watching the 24 Hours of Electricross video, I am so looking foward to starting the second phase of this project. I decided that it can be a really exercise to build test model with the main electronics components and get a better understanding of the electric terms that make up an electric vehicle dictionary.

In a conversation with Kees, a fellow engineer at Flex, I got some support on relevant information about building a small test model on the electric components. Yesterday he surprised me with these motors! saying I could use one of them for the test!

Thanks Kees, really nice incentive.

With 31 Horse Power and a top speed of 100 km/h, the Zero S Electric Motorcycle is a good contestant on the electric motorcycle market race. At the Zero Motorcycle Website you can check a clip of it in Action. Price tag: 9950 Us DOllars.

via Hell For Leather Magazine

Here is another initiative that may pave the way for more electric scooters on the streets. Arjanna van der Plas sent me a link of a project she is doing together with others students from the Technical University of Delft in Holland. She explains:

A team of six TU Delft students including me is currently developing an electric moped for Eco-movement. We do because we strongly believe that we need to get people out of their cars into a sustainable, noiseless, traffic jam, less way of transportation. The electric scooters that are currently on the market lack quality: they break down often and their batteries fail, making them unreliable. They basically look like conventional scooters, but their performance is way worse. That is why we develop a new high quality, high performance electric vehicle, that does look like a conventional scooter that much, but rather is a new archetype to set a new standard for electric transportation. Furthermore, we are developing a vehicle that is cradle to cradle, which means we pay attention to its sustainability during the whole lifecycle, from supply and production to after use. We do not want to just make it sustainable, but rather make it eco-effective: make it add something to nature. For example, the tires could clean up the streets or the vehicles could be used to gain scientific data while they are driving around. On our website, that I will update very soon, is more information.

Their project website has a growing amount of information about their ideas an is defenetely worth taking a close look at.