Hackaday Prize Entry: An Electric Bike And A Dashboard

Over the last few years, powerful brushless motors have become very cheap, batteries have become very powerful, and the world of quadcopters has brought us very capable electronic speed controls. Sounds like the perfect storm for a bunch of electric bike hacks, right? That’s what [bosko] is doing for his Hackaday Prize Entry. He’s building an e-bike with a big motor and an electronic dashboard, because a simple throttle switch would never do.

There are two parts to [bosko]’s bike, with the front brain box consisting of GPS, an OLED display, analog throttle, and a few wireless modules to connect to the other half of the system under the seat.

The drive section of this e-bike is as simple as it gets. It’s just a big brushless outrunner motor suspended directly above the rear tire, without any other connection. [bosko] has gone with the simplest power transmission system here, and is slightly wearing out the rear tire in the process. It works, though, and a few of the commentors over on Hackaday.io say it reminds them of the French Solex bike. We’re thinking this bike is more of what a riquimbili would be if Hobby King had a Cuban warehouse, but it seems to work well for [bosko] and is a great entry to the Hackaday Prize.

11 thoughts on “Hackaday Prize Entry: An Electric Bike And A Dashboard

  1. It’s not what using a drum sander on your tire does, it’s what the sand and grit off of the road does to those bearings in that very exposed motor. It runs at a rather high RPM.

    1. Depends on where you live. I live up on a mountain side, while my office is at sea level (Norway). An electric motor turns a long winding steep slope into bearable one, you’ll still be winded when you come home. The extra help from the motor makes all the difference when deciding to bike or not to work today.

    2. im also building an e bike because I can’t be arsed peddling so hard up hills.

      I’ve been riding regularly for 30 something years as a mode of transport I certainly don’t get off on it. If I can get out of peddling all the better

        1. I started biking after a heart attack, as an effort to get back some cardiac function.
          Yes, “its so good for” me… until I have to stop and walk the bike for two blocks of uphill.

          My wife rarely gets to bike with me, due to her health issues.

          I suspect if we had a pair of these, we’d both bike more, since the pleasure of the ride would be greatly increased if it wasn’t “plunge downhill for 3 blocks, coast for 2 blocks, pedal comfortably for 6 blocks, pedal like hell for 2 blocks, walk the bike for 2 blocks while panting and heart thundering in my chest, repeat cycle”

  2. I am curious to see what sort of milage he gets out of that airplane outrunner. I usually see them last on the order of 100 miles when mounted on longboards/scooters, but I would imagine that direct driving a bike tire is going to take a number on that motor (especially in rain/salted roads). If he can get to a thousand miles it starts to become worth it since it is down to about the cost of gas for a similar vehicle.

  3. I’ll take my 12kW hub motor paired with 24s 2000 watt hour battery, over this, for my 62 mile round trip to work. 31 miles at 30mph, with 4 climbs that make the lycra’s cringe

  4. With that old battery from laptop what i have (6S .. around 10A), and with max speed of 25km/h (the roles) i travel around 20km, with max speed of 30-35km/h i travel around 16km, with speed of 40km/h i travel less then 10km.
    For me this is enough, my work is 6km from where i live, and im not wet when i come on work place.

  5. While it may have good speed or milleage, it will be weak on reliability… The best way (efficiency) is crank mounter motors, but difficult to create/install , or hub motors, way easy to instal…

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